The rebellious spirit of Matthew Maguire’s first Labor Day is spreading again across our country. Join the parade.

Plus: help flip Texas with an important event next week

Do you want to help flip Texas blue?

A lot of people talk about wanting to flip so-called red states, but there are actually people doing it. And they need your help!

Next week, I’ll be joining activists at the Caldwell County Democrats’ annual fundraiser with Rep. Greg Casar and Monique Alcala, president of the Texas Democratic Party. There’s an opportunity in this rural Central Texas county to win two Commissioner seats, which would turn the tide for real change on the ground.

Power-building and party-building are long-haul practices, and I’m in it for that long haul. Join me?

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Ed. note: Here’s a throwback to an archived edition of the Lowdown, sharing the history of America’s Labor Day holiday. We hope you enjoy it while getting that last bit of rest and fun in! —dz

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Labor Day Fan by Brian Duffy

It’s a bit odd that in America’s thoroughly corporatized culture we have no national day of honor for the Captains of Industry, and yet we do have one for working stiffs: Labor Day! Where did it come from? Who gave this day off to laboring people? History books that bother mentioning Labor Day at all usually credit president Grover Cleveland with its creation: He signed a law in July 1894 that proclaimed a holiday for workers in Washington, D.C., and the federal territories.

Cleveland? Holy Mother Jones! He was an extreme laissez-faire conservative, a “Bourbon Democrat” who never lifted a presidential pinkie to ameliorate the plight of exploited workers. To the contrary, in that same month of 1894, Cleveland enshrined himself in Labor’s Hall of Eternal Infamy: At the behest of robber baron George Pullman and other railroad tycoons, he ordered some 12,000 U.S. Army troops in to crush the historic Pullman Strike, which was being led by union icon Eugene V. Debs. Thirty workers were killed, Debs was arrested on trumped-up charges of conspiracy, and all workers who supported the strike were fired and blacklisted.