Essay 4: Why Labor Day?
Reason #1: Social Media as Labor
I decided to release ‘Blinking Aisles’ on labor day for three reasons.
To start, let’s revisit the definition of labor day: “The labor movement in the late 19th century, driven by the harsh conditions of the Industrial Revolution, focused on improving wages, hours, and safety for workers through unionization.”
Reason #1: Social Media as Labor
As a leading job in the workforce, social media companies are overdue to improve their wages, hours, and safety for those who tirelessly work on their applications. The illusion of social media benefitting us through promotion alone without proper compensation from the company itself, is just that, an illusion. Our work is funding their tech-bro billionaire status. This is a global issue. As generative AI users typically bring up, “We’ll be fine! Technology has advanced before!” Yet they seem to forget the impact technology of the past had on human beings. Human beings needed to fight in order to live a quality life alongside technological advancement, hence Ford’s employees demanding to slow down the assembly line, and even further back in history- the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution, in a nutshell, was: “The process of change from an agrarian and handicraft economy, to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. These technological changes introduced novel ways of working and living and fundamentally transformed society.” (Encyclopedia Britannica)
1) Tech-bro priorities:
At the January 20, 2025 inauguration, tech-bro billionaires stood behind Trump in support of his presidency. This included: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Elon Musk (Twitter, “X”), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Tim Cook (Apple), Shou Zi Chew (Tik Tok), Sundar Pichai (Google.)
When the owners of tech companies, tech companies we have been set up to rely on, line up to support a dictator’s inauguration, it is a blatant signaling of where their priorities lie. We must demand a better life for ourselves before letting billionaires continue to define us as worthless. This “defining” is done in their actions, not necessary their words. When your work goes unpaid and they profit off it by a landslide, that is enough evidence to understand they consider you less valuable than them.
Reason #2: The Ford Massacre
On March 7, 1932, one month before Frida and Diego’s arrival, the Detroit Unemployed Council organized a march against The Ford Motor Company. The Ford Hunger March, also known as The Ford Massacre, took place in protest of then billionaire Henry Ford. Ford laid off over 60,000 of his employees and decreased the wages of his remaining employees by 50%. Here are their demands at the time, I think they make a good general framework for what we should be demanding as well:
Jobs for all the employees laid off
Immediate payment of 50% of full wages
A maximum limit of a seven-hour work day, without a reduction in their wages
Slowing down the “deadly speedup” aka the increased assembly line speed that led to injury
Two 15 minute breaks
No discrimination (in relation to jobs, relief, and medical services)
Five tons of coal for the winter
Protecting Ford workers homes from foreclosures, Ford takes on all back taxes, mortgages, land contracts until six months after regular full-time employment
Free medical aid on the part of Henry Ford Hospital
Abolition of servicemen (spies, police, etc.)
Immediate payment of $50 for winter relief
(peoplesworld.org)
The Ford Hunger March became re-coined The Ford Massacre because Henry Ford sent “Ford company agents armed with machine guns” (Daily Worker, March 8, 1932) alongside the police to meet protestors at their planned location: “When the protesters reached Gate Four… police officers and Ford security personnel attacked them, firing several hundred shots and killing four marchers. A fifth died later of injuries suffered that day...Sixty marchers were wounded in addition to those who were killed.” (motorcities.org)
1) Parallels to I.C.E. protests:
The 1932 Ford Massacre had parallels to the tear gas and brutality witnessed during the I.C.E raids in Los Angeles, “With machine guns and revolvers spitting a hail of leaden death and tear gas bombs throwing up dense clouds of choking fumes, scores of police brutally smashed the mile-long Ford Hunger March of 5,000 workers here yesterday.”(Daily Worker, March 8, 1932)
2) Increasing Arrests:
Another parallel involves surging criminal charges against protesters. The White House began to post mugshots on Twitter (“X”) primarily of young black men under the guise of “operation making D.C. safe & beautiful.” There’s a thread from August 11, 2025 charging these men with the same alleged crime, “carrying a pistol without a license.” Not to mention, Donald Trump also tried to charge a man who threw a subway sandwich at a police officer with a federal felony.
According to the Daily Worker, protesters in 1932 were met with similar unjust punishments. The title of the article reads: Mass Jailings to Whitewash Massacre of Jobless by Ford Gunmen, “Forty-four workers have already been arrested and they are to be charged with “homicide, assault with intent to kill,” and with “criminal syndicalism.” (Daily Worker, March 9, 1932.)
This is only one example of how the United States Government has previously weaponized paychecks from billionaires to harm their American workers and their constitutional right to protest. Because it is tied to the cover art, I decided it was relevant to include.
Reason #3: I.C.E. Targeting Workers
Trump’s deportations have resulted in 1.2 million people being erased from our labor force. 45% of those people worked in farming, fishing, and forestry industries (PBS.) I.C.E. is kidnapping and killing human beings all around the United States, going to their places of work, our communities, schools, churches, and homes. I.C.E. is ripping families apart. People are not simply “going missing,” people are being ruthlessly handled and criminally attacked. Events like this are intentional, and are done discretely. If you think you are absolved from being erased without a trace, you are horribly mistaken. It starts with those who are deemed “forgettable,” then it graduates to anyone that does not reflect an “Aryan image.”
I.C.E. is kidnapping and killing people in neighborhoods I live in, grew up in, and often visit. As a proud Chicana born and raised in Los Angeles, I am unable to conceptualize words strong enough to reflect how deeply heartbreaking it is to witness the current events unfolding.
As a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, it terrifies me to know where we are now. We are witnessing the horrifying genocide of Palestinians, and are on the brink of a genocide of American Latinos- and that’s just to start.
Here are the ten stages of genocide:
1. Classification: People are divided into “us and them”
2. Symbolization: People are forced to identify themselves
3. Discrimination: People begin to face systematic discrimination
4. Dehumanization: People are equated to animals, vermin, or diseases
5. Organization: The government creates specific groups (police/ military) to enforce the policies
6. Polarization: The government broadcasts propaganda to turn the populace against the group
7. Preparation: Official action to remove/ relocate people
8. Persecution: Beginning of murders, theft of property, trial massacres (we are here)
9. Extermination: Wholesale elimination of the group. It is “extermination” and not murder because the people are not considered human
10. Denial: The government denies that it has committed any crime
As an artist and human being, I will not wait for historians to define what is happening right now, by then it’ll be too late. I created ‘Blinking Aisles’ to make sure of that much.
Date posted to Instagram: September 5, 2025
Click me to listen to Blinking Aisles :)
If you’ve read this series, thank you for reading my essays and appreciating my art. I hope it can help you in some way. Love.