Monday, September 03, 2007

Labor Day 2007 - Which Side Are You On?


(Hat tip to Celeste Monforton, The Pump Handle, who
led me to this incredible song!)


Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I’ll tell
Of how that good old union
Has come in here to dwell


My daddy was a miner
And I’m a miner’s son
And I’ll stick with the union
Till every battle’s won


They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You’ll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair


Oh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?


Don’t scab for the bosses
Don’t listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven’t got a chance
Unless we organize


(Written by: Florence Reece; Natalie Merchant sings it)

In 1931, coal miners in Harlan County were on strike. Armed company deputies roamed the countryside, terrorizing the mining communities, looking for union leaders to beat, jail, or kill. But coal miners, brought up lean and hard in the Kentucky mountain country, knew how to fight back, and heads were bashed and bullets fired on both sides in Bloody Harlan. It was this kind of class war -- the mine owners and their hired deputies on one side, and the independent, free-wheeling Kentucky coal-miners on the other -- that provided the climate for Florence Reece's "Which Side Are You On?" In it she captured the spirit of her times with blunt eloquence.”


- cross post: 'Alternate Brain' & 'Left Side of the Moon'

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