On this Labor Day, remembering Mister Rogers as an advocate for labor and its love

This sculpture along Pittsburgh’s riverfront memorializes Mister Rogers, who, in his advocacy for children was also a powerful advocate for labor. Flickr

On this Labor Day, I find myself in Pittsburgh. It’s a big labor town with a powerful union history and presence. My wife and I will be heading downtown to march in a parade with the U.S. Steelworkers. While walking along the rivers yesterday, though, we made a pilgrimage to the memorial for a powerful advocate for labor who isn’t always recognized as such: Mister Rogers.

While Fred Rogers is typically celebrated as a child advocate of sorts, Mister Rogers Neighborhood powerfully centered the work we all do. Among the many lessons Mister Rogers taught children was to value all the work we collectively do in the world. He challenged the way our society devalues labor, asking us to see all the work we do as necessary expressions of mutual care that bind us together, without which none us could live.

His show asks to see and value the work we do for each other differently from the way our society and economy typically do.

Episode after episode, Mister Rogers unravels for us, particularly through the show’s representation of work and labor, the mysteries of the made world, as well as the reality of our own abilities to take part in making our world, with which we engage constantly in our everyday lives. Take, for example, the beginning of the episode of…