The Americanization of St. Patrick's Day—Not a Quiet Catholic Feast Day Any More

This vintage St. Patrick's Day greeting card is emblematic of the adoption and popularization of the holiday in the U.S.  In reality the acceptance by Yankee Uncle Sam--presumably Protestant--of Catholic "bog trotters" was far from smooth or cordial.  

Note:  For those of you unaware, this is my natal anniversary. I Turn 77 today.  Bet you wondered how I got the name.  Anyway, I am rerunning a version of an oft run classic. Meanwhile to the Irish and wan-a-be-Irish, enjoy the day.  Have fun but try not to live down to some unfortunate stereotypes.   And for Christ’s sake don’t drink the damn green beer, an abomination and insult to the soul!  Have a dram of Jameson’s with a Guinness back for me!

Today is the Feast of St. Patrick, originally a low-key religious celebration in the Auld Sod.  In the U.S. it’s St. Patrick’s Day, which is, as they say, a whole other kettle of fish.  For better or worse this quasi-holiday is an Irish American phenomenon.  Let’s trace the metamorphosis from religiosity to ethnic muscle flexing, to Irish nationalism, to partisan political display, to equal opportunity public drinking festival. 

"Everybody's Irish!"  is the new equal opportunity slogan of American St. Patrick's Day promoted by breweries, bars, and bottle peddlers of all sorts.  The message seems to be working.

It all began on March 17, 1762 with the very first St. Patrick’s Day parade anywhere in the world.  Irish soldiers in a British regiment headquartered in New York City marched behind their musicians and drew cheers from the small local Irish minority, both Catholic and Protestant—mostly Protestant in those days.  It became if not an annual event, one which was observed most years.  When the Redcoats left the city at the end of the American Revolution various local Irish mutual aid societies like the Hibernians and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick held often competing events which, if they happened to intersect, sometimes devolved into brawls. 

After the United Irishman Uprising of 1798 was crushed, the British imposed a harsh repression including the banning of the wearing o’ the Green, a new wave of Irish refugees flooded New York, Boston, and other Eastern cities.  They inoculated the annual St. Patrick’s Day observances with a new political significance and wearing green (instead of the traditional Irish colors of blue and gold) became a protest against British rule in the motherland and a call to action to overthrow that rule. 

The Potato Famine unleashed yet another wave of immigration bringing throngs of displaced peasants to the already growing slums of the city. Competing Irish aid societies finally decided to unite behind a single, massive demonstration in New York in 1848.  The theme of independence for Ireland was mixed with an act of aggressive defiance by the now largely Catholic masses against the nativists from Tammany Hall who controlled the city government, the Know Nothings, and street gangs who harassed and bullied them.

In trying to market to Irish Americans, not everyone got it right.  This tonedeaf greeting card featured the pug-nosed Irish stereotypes featured in Know Nothing and anti-immigrant publications.  The figure on the left has a sash identifying him as a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.  The one on the right supposedly is from a competing organization that had frequently brawled with the AOH for supremacy on St. Patrick's Day.

In 1858 the Fenian Brotherhood was organized in the United States in support the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a secret oath society agitating for the establishment of a “democratic Irish republic.”  The St. Patrick’s Day parades in New York and other cities became powerful recruiting tools for the Fenians. Social events around the day annually raised thousands of dollars, much of it to support fantastic plots and buy arms.  On more than one occasion Fenian plots to attack Canada brought the U.S. and Britain perilously close to war, which, of course was the objective. 

By the second half of the 19th Century New York's St. Patrick's Day parades had become elaborate celebrations of Irish nationalism and a display of raw political power in the city.

The failure of the Easter Rebellion in 1916 in which labor leader James Connolly, fresh from several years in America as an IWW organizer, and an Irish-American unit of Hibernian Rifles were both involved, led to a fresh round of frenzied support for independence back home.  The campaign of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which led to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the Irish Civil War between the Free State government and republican rebels were both largely financed by Irish Americans.  Even after the establishment of the Republic in 1937, Irish-Americans continued to fund rebel groups aimed at uniting Ulster to the rest of the island, including support for Sein Fein and the Provisional IRA in their armed struggle through The Troubles.  All of this was reflected in the parades and other celebrations of the day which had become dominated by Rebel songs.

St. Patrick’s Day celebrations also were important displays of Irish culture.  Traditional Irish music and dance was so suppressed at home that both nearly disappeared.  Irish-Americans like Chicago’s Police Chief Francis O’Neill collected and preserved the songs and began schools to teach them and traditional Irish step dancing.  Both were re-introduced into Irish culture because of these efforts and put on display in St. Patrick’s Day parades, banquets, and concerts.

Hizzonor da Mayor, Richard J. Daley steps off with his blackthorn stick and green fedora at the head of the 1963 Chicago St. Patrick's Day joined by officials of the sponsoring Plumbers union, the Irish Consul General, Cardinal Albert Meyer (second from left} and actor Pat O'Brien to the Mayor's left and a bevy of politicians in the second row jockeying for position.  Then Republican Cook County States Attorney James P. Thompson can be spotted just over Daley's shoulder.

The Irish also excelled at political organization in this country.  Unlike other ethnic groups with large concentrations like the Germans, they were able to create viable political organizations with alliances with other ethnic groups that allowed them to control many city governments for decades.  In Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley brought the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, previously a South Side neighborhood event, to the heart of the Loop and dyed the Chicago River green every year in a display of political power.  Politicians of all ethnicities jockeyed to be as close as possible to Hizonor in the front ranks of the parade. 

By the late 20th Century St. Patrick’s Day spread well beyond its ethnic roots.  “Everyone is Irish on St. Paddy’s Day” became a byword pushed by breweries, bars, and distilleries making the day one of the biggest party days of the year.  Green beer and vomiting teenagers have become new symbols of the holiday. 

The semi-legendary Saint whose feast day is the occasion of all of the hoopla.  He wasn't Irish and did not drive the snakes out of the island--they never lived there to begin with.

And what about St. Patrick?  Well, what about him!

Remembering the Blood Sacrifice of Rachel Corrie

 

                                Rachel Corrie as a student at Evergreen State College in her hometown of Olympia, Washington.

It was 23 years ago today on March 16, 2003 that Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was killed by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) armored bulldozer as it attempted to destroy the home of a Palestinian doctor in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza.  The Palestinians she died protecting are in even greater peril today as an Israeli invasion has turned much of the area into charred rubble, turned most of the populations into internal refugees who continue to suffer under managed starvation. 

Eyewitness members of her ISM team say that Corrie, wearing a bright orange jacket, was clearly visible to the driver of the bulldozer before she fell off the mound of earth it was pushing up and was crushed underneath the debris and the tractor, which they said ran over her twice. 

Corrie defying an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza moments before she was run over.

The IDF and Israeli government disputed that and claimed that her death was an accident in which the driver never saw her and the tractor never touched her.  Despite promises, the official autopsy report and the results of an official investigation were never released. 

While Corrie’s death stirred up international outrage, she was painted by Israeli media as, at best, a naïve dupe of terrorists and more likely an active accomplice who deserved her fate. 

Corrie was born to middle class, politically liberal parents in Olympia Washington.  She attended her hometown school, Evergreen State College, long known as hot bed of activism.  She wanted to be an artist and writer.  She studied and was deeply moved by the writings on non-violence by Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  In her senior year she devised an independent study program that included service with the ISM in Gaza.  She had already organized a pen pal program between children in Rafah and Olympia youngsters. 

She arrived in Israel on January 22 and received two days of training in nonviolent tactics at ISM headquarter on the West Bank before being posted to Rafah.  It was an intense period of the Second Intifada with regular clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinians.

Corrie spent much of February at the Canada Well, a water facility built by the Canadians that was been damaged by the Israelis.  She protected Palestinian workers trying to do repair work.  She and they came under fire. 

Corie burned a hand drawn paper American flag protesting U.S, support of Israeli displacement of Palestinians from their homes.

On February 15 she was present at a demonstration and was photographed holding a burning paper replica of the U.S. flag.  American right-wing commentators would use that photo later to claim she was a traitor to her country. 

The IDF was in the midst of a massive campaign to clear hundreds of homes and farms from a new buffer zone by the Egyptian border.  ISM observers routinely interceded by placing themselves in front of bulldozers to prevent demolitions.  Although there had been violent incidents and camps where Corrie and others stayed were subject to harassing arms fire at night, tractor drivers had always stopped before harming the volunteers.  Until the day Corrie died. 

Witnesses and International Solidarity Movement (ISM) comrades surrounded Corrie's crushed body.

In April two other ISM volunteers were severally injured by the IDF.  American Brian Avery was shot in the face while protracting Palestinian medical workers and Briton Thomas Hurndall was shot in the head.  He was declared brain dead and finally died in 2004.  About the same time an experienced British news cameraman was killed by IDF fire despite wearing clearly marked press identification. 

There was speculation, never proven, that Israeli authorities may have decided to target Western witnesses to their activity in Gaza. 

Protesters carried portraits of Corrie in her Palestinian keffiyeh.

After Corie died her family released letters and e-mails she sent from the Gaza.  Articulate and moving they were published posthumously as Let Me Stand Alone in 2008.  The material was also used to create the play My Name is Rachel Corrie which opened in London in 2005 to good reviews and large audiences.  An attempt to mount an American production initially fell through with the British producers alleging interference by pro-Israel forces.  It eventually opened off-Broadway.  The play has been produced successfully around the world, including, finally, in Israel. 

Corrie’s life and death have also been celebrated in a cantata and songs by over 30 artists. 

A playbill for the original London production My Name is Rachel Corrie.  Famed British actor Alan Rickman co-edited the text taken from Corrie's own letters and journals.

Meanwhile a counter industry of anti-Corrie books and magazine articles has sprang up.  As her death is commemorated today by those who knew and loved her and by those who admired her, she will be reviled, in often lurid terms on-line by commentators in the U.S. and in Israel.

All of that—the good and the hateful—will be dredged up again today.

I, for one, just try to remember a lively young woman who dared put her life on the line for others.

Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout Illinois Democratic Primary Endorsements Revisited

 

Democratic candidates in the Illinois U.S. Senate primary dusted it up in a televised debate--Rep. Robin Kelly, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton.

Back on February 10, after Early voting began in the Illinois Democratic Party Primary this blog reviewed candidates up and down the ballot in McHenry County and made some early endorsements.  But the unfolding campaigns have caused a reassessment of those endorsements in some critical races.

Evolving, multi-candidate races like these are why I prefer to vote on Election Day rather than cast an early and lock in a premature judgment.

Perhaps the most significant change has occurred in the fierce contest to replace Dick Durbin in the U.S. Senate. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who was on the air and in social media for nearly a year seemed to put himself in an unchallengeable lead.   Despite her endorsement by popular Governor J.D. Pritzker, Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton with a significant disadvantage in fundraising only got on the air just as early voting was getting underway.  Rep. Robin  Kelly was among the top three contenders trailed by a string of nonentities and longshots, but was cash poor and counted out of the race by pundits and political operatives alike.

In an increasingly brutal campaign Krishnamoorthi and Stratton beat each other up badly in escalating negative campaign ads, each charging the other with accepting campaign donations from Trump supporters,  companies involved in an ICE detention facility in Broadview and other contractors.  Raja was also tied to big donations from the so-called crypto bros and Stratton was accused of "alleged" campaign finance offences.  Both of their reputations were tarnished and confused and conflicted voters finally began to open the door to Kelly who had kept mostly out of the mudslinging.

Rep. Robin Kelly for U.S. Senate.

The blog endorsed Krishnamoorthi based mostly on his electability.  Pritzker and establishment Dems rallied to Stratton, but perhaps not enough.  Both of the two leaders have let third-party Pacs run adds with unsubstantiated attacks and fact-checked ads.  Neither candidate distanced themselves from their deep pocket benefactors.  Both could be so damaged that the winner might not be able to unify the Party for the fall or appeal to independents.

Kelly, once Barack Obama's seat mate in the Illinois State Senate, has a solid record in Congress and was popular enough to be elected Democratic State Party Chair in the wake of the Mike Madigan scandal.  She had to vacate that post because of conflicts with her duties as a sitting U,S. Representative, but remained on good terms with most party factions.  She has finally gotten her media campaign going and has picked up some key endorsements.  Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout now endorses her in Tuesday's election.

State Senator Karina Villa (center) with early supporter former Congressman Chuy Garcia (right), has strong support from the Latinx communities, labor, and progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders for her run for State Comptroller.

State Senator Margaret Croke got the strong support of Governor Pritzker but the incumbent State Comptroller Susana Mendoza, who is reportedly eyeing a run for Mayor of Chicago charged that Croke would not have enough independence from the governor to challenge his policies.  Lake County Treasurer Holly Kim picked up the endorsement of both the Lake and McHenry County board chairs as well as Congressman Brad Schnieder.  State Senator Karina Villa got strong support from Cook County, the critical Latinx community, labor unions, and progressive heroes Chuy Garcia and Senator Bernie Sanders.  We gave an early endorsement to Croke but now prefer Villa for Comptroller.

Two usually low interest races for the Democratic Party posts of Congressional District State Central Committee posts are hotly contested.

Chicago 48th Ward Alderman Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth for State Committee Woman for the 9th Congressional District.

In the 9th District, the race mirrors the knock-down drag-out for the Congressional District of retiring Rep. Jan Schakowski.  State Sen. Laura Fine and Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss lead their races for State Central Committeeman contest and both appeal to the important Jewish vote in the district.  But Schakowski and other progressive attacked Fine for her support from the American Israel Public Affiars Committe (AIPAC).   Schakowski endorsed and Sen. Tammy Duckworth back Cook County Board Member Josina Morita, an urban planner, community advocate, and working mother for Committeeperson.   Critics of Israeli genocide in Gaza oppose all three leading candidates.  Another candidate, Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth is a veteran community activist, founder of Indivisible Illinois, and 48th Ward Alderwoman in Chicago is a progressive alternative with a low visibility campaign.  The blog endorsed Morita first time out but urges voters to consider Manaa-Hoppenworth.  Voters must cast ballots for both a male and a female Committeeman.  

                          

Peter Janko and State Rep. Anne Stava for Democratic State Central Committee posts from the 11th Congressional District.

In the 11th District two term progressive incumbent Peter Janko, long a burr under the saddle of former McHenry County Democratic Chair and retiring Committee Woman Kristina Zahorik  is probably safe for re-election.  Which is why extraordinary campaign funds are being funneled to Committee Woman candidate Janet Yang Rohr, endorsed by Zahorik and 11th District Congressman Bill Foster.  Democratic voters in the District have been flooded with multiple slick and super-sized campaign mailers unheard of in this usually low-key race against State Rep. Anne Stava, who has done no campaigning for the office as she runs for re-election in Illinois House District 81.  So why the big money surge for Rohr?  Suspicion leads to an endorsement of underdog Stava.

Other endorsements from our original recommendations stand.  View that post here.

Lesson Learned When Labor Forced the Hand of a Conservative Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court surprised everyone by upholding the Adamson Act in the face of a looming and crippling national railroad strike just weeks before the U.S. entered World War I.

One of the enduring myths about the U.S. Supreme Court is that in its lofty supposed impartiality it is above and immune from popular pressure, politics, or protest.  Of course, since it first asserted the right to rule on the Constitutionality of laws enacted by Congress and executive actions of the President as a Federalist thumb-in-the-eye to Thomas Jefferson, decisions by the court have often been nearly nakedly political.

Over most of its history the Court was in the continuous hands of the most conservative elements of society and naturally served the interests of the national elite from which its members were almost unanimously drawn.  Which is why until the Warren Court shifted into liberal hands, you never heard charges of judicial activism as it routinely struck down social reforms and efforts to regulate the excesses of unfettered capitalism.

But today we are going to tell the all-but-forgotten tale of how a conservative Court bowed before a powerful and united labor movement which had in its hands the power to bring the economy of the United States to a dead halt.

The Supreme Court in 1917—seated, William R. Day, Joseph McKenna, Chief Justice Edward D. White, Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr., and Willis Van Devanter, and, standing, Louis D. Brandeis, Mahlon Pitney, James C. McReynolds and John H. Clarke.

On March 15, 1917, the Court surprised the nation by ruling that the Adamson Act of 1916 which established an eight-hour workday, with no loss in pay, for interstate railroad workers was Constitutionally sound.  The Court voted 5-4 to reverse a lower court decision which ruled the legislation unconstitutional.  The majority cited the emergency nature of the Act and conformity to the “public character” of interstate rail transportation.  It represented a significant broadening of the interpretation of the Interstate Commerce provision of the Constitution in that it covered a government action that went beyond regulation.

What moved the Court in this unexpected direction?  It was simply the sure knowledge that 200,000 members of the Railroad Brotherhoods acting in full cooperation were prepared to go on a strike that would paralyze the nation.

Those same railroad workers had already forced the hand of both the President of the United States and Congress.

The eight-hour workday had been the holy grail of the labor movement for 60 years.  Wage workers in the rapidly industrializing nation routinely worked 12, 11, and 10-hour days, six days a week in often brutal conditions.  Such drudgery dramatically shortened the life expectancy of laborers, disrupted ordinary family life, and contributed to a culture of heavy binge drinking once a week on paydays as a release from the stress and misery of the job.

The Eight Hour Day had been the Holy Grail of the Labor movement since the Civil War as evidenced by this 1906 newspaper illustration.

In the post-Civil War era the National Labor Union, the country’s first national labor body, launched a series of strikes to demand an eight-hour workday with no decrease in wages.  Although the strikes failed, Congress was alarmed enough to pass weak 8 Hour legislation in 1868.  But there was no enforcement mechanism, and no proscribed punishments for employers who ignored it.  The law was essentially dead before the ink dried.

In the 1870s and ‘80s the Knights of Labor took up the call.  A nationwide strike for the eight-hour day supported by the Knights and by the craft unions which would later become the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was called for May 1, 1886.  After the so-called Haymarket Riot in Chicago the executed anarchist editors, organizers, and labor leaders who became martyrs to the movement.

For the next decades virtual open class warfare raged in America.  In some local situations and in some industries, the 8-hour day was won—often to be snatched away later when the repeated cycle of panics of those years routinely drove down wages and set workers fighting amongst themselves for the scraps.

In the early 1890’s Eugene V. Debs united craft divided workers into a powerful industrial union, the American Railway Union (ARU).  Their first great victory against the Great Northern Railway included an eight-hour day.  But in 1892 Federal troops smashed the ARU’s Pullman Boycott and sent Debs and his fellow union leaders to jail.  Although the eight-hour day was not an issue in the Pullman affair, the destruction of the ARU effectively ended progress to winning that goal in the railroad industry.

By the early years of the 20th Century the old Railway Brotherhoods, who regarded themselves as the aristocracy of labor, learned the bitter lessons of being divided by craft.  They agreed to act in concert for a new push for the eight-hour day.

The timing could not be better than 1916.  The country had emerged from yet another Panic and was in a solid boom caused in no small measure by the horrible war raging in Europe.  American industry was stepping in to fill a global market disrupted by the war.  It was also in the process of re-arming America in Preparedness in case the country was dragged into the foreign squabble.

The railway unions announced that they were ready to launch a nationwide strike unless they were given an eight-hour workday with no decrease in wages and time and a half pay for overtime.  Railroad operators were intransigent but were aware that the Brotherhoods were well organized, had strong rank and file support, and could rely on broad support from the labor movement.

In the White House, President Woodrow Wilson had a problem.  Although he was running for re-election with the boast “He kept us out of war,” he was increasingly convinced that the United States would sooner rather than later be ensnared.  He launched his highly publicized Preparedness campaign to quickly ramp up production of war materials and supplies for a huge new Army and modernized Navy.  A railway strike would disrupt all of that.

Moreover, he had a political problem.  He was running as a progressive Democrat, but unlike 1912, the Republicans were once again united and Deb’s Socialist Party was making serious inroads in his support among urban workers.  He could not afford to force the railroads to continue operations with military force like another Democrat, Grover Cleveland, did in the Pullman Strike.  Such an action would alienate the big city working class without which no Democrat could hope to be elected.  And armed action against the strikers would inflame general anti-war sentiment and threaten national unity he would need to go to war.

Wilson called the Railroad operators and the Railway Brotherhoods together for a meeting at the White House where he offered to act as “an honest broker.”  Wilson proposed the eight-hour workday, but without wage guarantees.  The railroads agreed but the unions balked.  They would not accept a plan that essentially reduced the take-home pay of their members.  They walked away from the negotiations and noisily resumed plans for the strike.

This anti-Wilson political cartoon from 1916 illustrates the pressure on the President over the eight-hour issue before the Presidential elections that year.

Wilson had no good options.  On August 29, 1916, he appeared before a joint session of Congress and demanded emergency legislation to prevent the looming strike.  In a virtual total capitulation to labor he called for the eight-hour day with no loss of wages and the overtime provision which discouraged bosses from simply continuing to schedule long shifts. 

Enabling legislation was introduced by Democratic Congressman William C. Adamson of Georgia.  It sped through congress and passed both houses beating a September 4 strike deadline.

Even though a special commission was set up to allow the railroads to raise their freight rates, which were regulated by the Interstate Commerce Commission, there was no doubt that the Railroads would turn to the courts to block the new law.  Wilson not only expected it, but he was also pretty sure that the operators would prevail.  He himself vetoed far less sweeping reform legislation in the past based on his constitutional doubts about the authority of government to meddle in private industry.  None-the-less, he directed his Justice Department to defend the expected attacks.

This full-page newspaper illustration shows the owners and managers of the nation's most important railroads united in opposition to the Adamson Act and the pressure they put on Wilson.

The Act was quickly struck down by the United States District Court for Western Missouri.  The unions announced that they would resume preparations for a nationwide strike.  May Day, traditionally tied to the struggle for the eight-hour day, was a likely target which enhanced the possibility that it might even spread into a general strike.

The Justice Department urged the high Court to rapidly consider its appeal.  Questioning lawyers on both sides of the case by the Justices led the press to speculate that the law was doomed.  The Brotherhoods allowed scattered local “wildcat” strikes to occur as demonstrations of power and major rallies and marches were held in cities across the country. The labor and radical press were full of news and offers of support and solidarity.

Finally, on March 15 enough justices bowed to the pressure of an impending national emergency to uphold the Adamson Act by the narrowest of margins.  Chief Justice Edward D. White, a Louisiana Democrat first appointed to the Court by Grover Cleveland and made Chief Justice by William Howard Taft, was the surprising author of the 5-4 majority opinion.

Soon the U.S. was at war. In December Wilson nationalized the railroads for the duration.  They continued to operate under the provisions of the Act, however.  And the law remained in effect after the operators resumed control of their lines.

The war proved to be a body blow to militant labor.  Wilson enthusiastically intervened time and again against strikes in “essential” industries like copper mining and timber.  He equated the most radical wing of the labor movement, the Industrial Workers of the (IWW), major champions of the eight-hour day, with treasonous interference with war effort.  An unprecedented wave of repression stung not only the IWW but Debs and the Socialist Party, and even AFL unions’

After the war was over the great Red Scare saw thousands of labor leaders deported or jailed.

Under those circumstances moves to extend the eight-hour day to other elements of the economy fizzled.  It did not become the law of the land until late in the New Deal when the Fair Labor Standards Act finally went into effect in 1937.