LEVER WEEKLY: Labor Day’s Secret History

This is Lever Weekly, a recap of our work from the past week. If you only read one email from us all week, this should be it.

Along with a breakdown of our reporting, podcasts, and live events for all subscribers, we are providing paid subscribers with an original column. In this week’s piece, Lucy Dean Stockton digs into the secret history of Labor Day — and explains why it’s time to redefine the holiday.

👇 Following is an excerpt of our subscriber-only column, and below that is a recap of all of our other work from the week.

Labor Day’s Secret History

By Lucy Dean Stockton

On Monday, the United States will celebrate Labor Day, a holiday that the government calls an “annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers.” That definition obscures that the holiday was created in part to distract from the labor movement’s radical origins. The fact that much of this history has been lost is by design.

In the rest of the world, working people celebrate worker solidarity and revolution in the spring, on May Day. The day is often marked by protests and even riots against austerity measures and worker exploitation. Not here in the U.S., where Labor Day is at best a...