Vanquishing poverty, racism, and the clap

A curated boozeletter podcast playlist to pass the time on your Labor Day Weekend travels

It’s Labor Day Weekend, a federal holiday established to celebrate how the United States vanquished poverty, racism, and the clap with equitable and stable socioeconomic institutions designed to foster mutual understanding and benefit for workers and bosses alike. We did it, folks! Mission accomplished.

Heh.

To the extent that most Americans consider Labor Day as anything beyond a precious day off to drink beer wine canned cocktails and rue summer’s end, it’s mostly as a vague commemoration for the American worker’s contributions to this country. Which is good! Lost on many is the important fact that the holiday was fought for and founded by the American labor movement, and that its 1894 enshrinement in law was a bid by capital to rob the movement’s left flank of oxygen for its much-more-radical May Day tradition. If you’re just learning this for the first time, well, that’s because it was a very successful bid, and also because those same forces have systematically eradicated labor history from textbooks, and… well, you get the picture.

(For a related take, check out my column today at VinePair about why craft brewing needs to rethink its relationship with the labor movement before it’s too late.)

Yes, and: today, Labor Day is a holiday, and we all deserve a break. I hope you get one. If you’re on the road this holiday weekend, headed to the beach or the lake or the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, I’ve put together around 24 hours’ worth (!) of podcast episodes I’ve recorded for VinePair and Fingers over the past few years for your listening pleasure, all organized into a handy Spotify playlist for your listening convenience. Tune in.