Before there was the NATO summit or the Occupy movement, there was May Day, born and bred in Chicago...But Chicago is one of the few locations and the largest major city whose Occupy movement did not vote for a general strike on May 1, opting instead for “A Day for the 99%.”

Kyla Bourne, a member of Occupy Chicago’s NATO Summit, May Day and Labor Working Groups, acknowledged in an email conversation with the Occupied Chicago Tribune that the OChi General Assembly’s decision to not endorse the general strike call "has been contentious to say the least."...An awareness of Occupy’s complex and not always unproblematic relationship with labor groups, especially when it comes to what a strike means and who gets to call one, seems to have informed the Chicago GA’s thinking. Bourne explained it thus:

A general strike is something very different than just calling into sick for work for one day to march, blockade, etc. This opinion is by no means unanimous, but many felt that it would be a disservice to the history of labor struggle to call for something that would be impossible: a genuine general strike, that involves a halt in the means of production as the labor force refuses to work, indefinitely. I think the excitement around the ‘general strike’ speaks to a lack of education of the history of labor struggle in this country, an ignorance that corporate universities are only too eager to perpetuate. That said, I love how many people are now learning about the history of May 1st thanks to this call.

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...At one point, May 1 was also the day Adbusters had called (without talking with Occupy Chicago first) for people to descend upon Chicago and pitch tents as part of a month-long protest against the G8 and NATO summits (although that seems to have been supplanted in the minds of the Vancouver design magazine by plans for a “Laughriot,” whatever that may be). Now, NATO is likely to cast a shadow over May Day in Chicago for a different reason: Because by Tuesday, heavily armed federal agents may be patrolling the “Red Zone,” encompassing some of the march route as well as Occupy Chicago’s first home at LaSalle and Jackson.

Why Being Serious Is Hard
by Russell Baker

Here is a letter of friendly advice. "Be serious," it says. What it means, of course, is, "Be solemn." The distinction between being serious and being solemn seems to be vanishing among Americans, just as surely as the distinction between "now" and "presently" and the distinction between liberty and making a mess.

Being solemn is easy. Being serious is hard. You probably have to be born serious, or at least go through a very interesting childhood. Children almost always begin by being serious, which is what makes them so entertaining when compared to adults as a class.

Adults, on the whole, are solemn. The transition from seriousness to solemnity occurs in adolescence, a period in which Nature, for reasons of her own, plunges people into foolish frivolity. During this period the organism struggles to regain dignity by recovering childhood's genius for seriousness. It is usually a hopeless cause.

As a result, you have to settle for solemnity. Being solemn has almost nothing to do with being serious, but on the other hand, you can't go on being adolescent forever, unless you are in the performing arts, and anyhow most people can't tell the difference...I make no apology for being solemn rather than serious. Nor should anyone else. It is the national attitude. It is perfectly understandable...It is hard to be Shakespeare...It is hard to be serious.

And yet, one cannot go on toward eternity without some flimsy attempt at dignity. Adolescence will not do. One must at least make the effort to resume childhood's lost seriousness, and so, with the best of intentions, one tries his best, only to end up being vastly, uninterestingly solemn.

Writing sentences that use "One" as a pronoun is solemn. Making pronouncements on American society is solemn. Turning yourself off when pronouncements threaten to gush is not exactly serious, although it shows a shred of wisdom.

Camila Vallejo, the World’s Most Glamorous Revolutionary

The hotel had a musty, Pinochet-era atmosphere... when the bartenders found out that my friends and I were going to the student march, they cut lemons for us... In case of tear gas ...With guarded smiles, they let us know they supported the Chilean student movement and especially its most prominent leader, Camila Vallejo. A bartender said, “La Camila es valiente”; he laughed and added, “Está bien buena la mina” — “She’s hot.”

Camila Vallejo, the 23-year-old president of the University of Chile student federation (FECH), a Botticelli beauty who wears a silver nose ring and studies geography, was the most prominent leader of a student protest movement that had paralyzed the country...

Look, let's not rehash this whole "OMG GIRLS CAN ROCK" thing, OK? They can.

And the most surprising thing is that there's a fair amount of emotional vulnerability running through these songs that just adds another delicious layer to the proceedings...Don't worry, things never get maudlin but it's refreshing to see honest emotion instead of swagger and posturing in punk rock.