EO59 Celebrates Labor Day
A Holiday for Workers
What it means to work in America has evolved year by year as our nation has grown. Today we sit, in relative luxury, at desks connected virtually to computers of astonishing power, crunching away at billions of calculations to deliver information from the sea of chaotic raw data in our business of satellite InSAR. Yet still, we should pause in this moment and reflect on what it means to be a company in 2021, an insight and information company at that.
We have our ethics out front, leading the way. Yet, we must also reflect on the moments in history that led us to being so capable of statements such as “people first.” Labor Day is a part of that story.
Created as part of the turn of the 19th Century efforts at inventing the America to come it was a similar moment to what we face today. There were, and are, immense challenges facing society in America, and globally. Was it the role of companies to put their heads down, focus on business and stay quietly on the sidelines? Certainly it isn’t today, and isn’t in our nature in this team at EO59.
It is simply a fact that each of us holding it together in this second year of global pandemic is the hero in our own stories. From the clerk at a gas station putting themselves at risk every day to ensure we can smoothly function as a society - to the ground station operator who must stay healthy to show up for work and ensure the raw data from the constellations of satellites in the sky stays active. The iconic Copland Fanfare for the Common Man is for each of us. Written to raise money for the war effort in 1943 it was released at income tax season to encourage America to feel pride in paying taxes - such a unique moment in history.
“Fellow Citizens We Cannot Escape History”
A remarkable quote from Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”
Fascinating that Copland was a member of the Popular Front, a Communist, and yet considered one of the greatest composers of America’s patriotic fanfare. It gives us all pause on Labor Day to consider that no matter the politics of the moment, the humanity and pull of music and art draws us to this conversation.
We believe that our team is engaged in raising to the occasion of facing today’s storm. We fight hard for fair market standards, for excellent thought provoking and out of this world work for our team. This Labor Day we celebrate not only those who work hard each moment in our organisation but across the space industry. We are slinging the virtual hammers of today’s toil long into the night, gazing at math till you can’t remember what the word means to ensure the safe and viable operations of our partners and clients around the world. We are fighting for our health, for the stability of the families and communities we are part of and never forgetting where we come from.
The challenges of InSAR, SAR, remote sensing will not be solved through science alone, through pricing alone, but through the labor of spirit that we bring to the occasion. Though the people working together across all manner of differences.
This Labor Day be proud of all that you have done in your career as a scientist, an engineer, a public policy wonk, a vital member of this thing we casually call a society. The occasion is piled high with difficulty … so, we must think anew and act anew.
Stay close, stay sharp, we are in this together.
