Help!

Today marks the beginning of International Bicycle Month, which includes "Bike to Work Days" and other commemorations across the globe.

Today also happens to be May Day.  On one hand, it's a mid-Spring festival with roots in ancient agricultural traditions. On the other, it's a celebration of workers' rights known as International Workers Day.

It's terribly ironic that so many workers have chosen, not only in the United States, leaders that are working, covertly or not, to destroy the very rights that their parents and grandparents fought so hard to win.  The most insidious erosion of their interests come from politicians--like the Fake Tan Fuhrer--who make vague promises that policies like tariffs will bring jobs back to their home countries.  Shuttered textile, steel and auto--and bicycle--plants that have been shuttered won't suddenly open and start churning out their wares--if indeed those plants are still standing.  New, more automated, factories will not provide nearly as many jobs.  And because more people will be competing for fewer jobs, those positions won't pay as well.  Worse yet, those new facilities are likely to be built in "right to work" (Don't you love the Orwellian doublespeak?) where unions are weak or non-existent.  Thus, laborers will have fewer benefits and little or no redress if they're hurt or incapacitated as a result of their work.

All of that got me to thinking about how "May Day!" came to be a call of distress on a plane or ship.  Why "May Day?"  Well, when goods and people crossed oceans on ships, and in the early days of aviation, French was the lingua franca.  "M'aider!" is "Help Me!" in that language.  To an anglophone, it sounds like "May Day!"  

(The Beatles have long been popular in France--even if a certain John Lennon song is all but untranslatable.)

No matter how hard they work, workers need help.  So do we, if we want safer streets--and a more welcoming environment overall--for cycling.