"We have fed you all for a thousand years,
And you hail us still unfed.
Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth,
But marks the workers' dead.
We have yielded our best for to give you rest,
And you lie on a crimson wool.
Well if blood be the price of all your wealth,
Good God! We have paid in full!"

Willi Carlisle - We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years (2025)
https://youtu.be/MTlrMRLk8LQ

#Music #WilliCarlisle #Folk #LaborSongs

I've been researching old Bundist songs for a workshop for a few weeks now and I can't believe I didn't know about this book till now. Arbeyt un Frayhayt, a collection of #Yiddish revolutionary, workers and folk songs mostly dating to 1903-05, published by Schmul Lehman in Warsaw in 1921.
https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/yiddish-books/spb-nybc212450/lehman-szmil-arbeyt-un-frayhayt

#LaborSongs #1905 #Bundism #JewishMusic

Today in Labor History June 7, 1929: Striking textile workers battled police in Gastonia, North Carolina, during the Loray Mill Strike. Police Chief O.F. Aderholt was accidentally killed by one of his own officers during a protest march by striking workers. Nevertheless, the authorities arrested six strike leaders. They were all convicted of “conspiracy to murder.”

The strike lasted from April 1 to September 14. It started in response to the “stretch-out” system, where bosses doubled the spinners’ and weavers’ work, while simultaneously lowering their wages. When the women went on strike, the bosses evicted them from their company homes. Masked vigilantes destroyed the union’s headquarters. The NTWU set up a tent city for the workers, with armed guards to protect them from the vigilantes.

One of the main organizers was a poor white woman named Ella May Wiggans. She was a single mother, with nine kids. Rather than living in the tent city, she chose to live in the African American hamlet known as Stumptown. She was instrumental in creating solidarity between black and white workers and rallying them with her music. Some of her songs from the strike were “Mill Mother’s Lament,” and “Big Fat Boss and the Workers.” Her music was later covered by Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie, who called her the “pioneer of the protest ballad.” During the strike, vigilantes shot her in the chest. She survived, but later died of whooping cough due to poverty and inadequate medical care.

For really wonderful fictionalized accounts of this strike, read “The Last Ballad,” by Wiley Cash (2017) and “Strike!” by Mary Heaton Vorse (1930).

https://youtu.be/Ud-xt7SVTQw?t=31

#workingclass #LaborHistory #EllaMayWiggans #textile #women #feminism #union #communism #vigilante #policebrutality #police #acab #solidarity #folkmusic #laborsongs #racism #poverty #northcarolina #fiction #HistoricalFiction #author #writer #books #novel @bookstadon

https://mattrivers.bandcamp.com/album/may-day

#MayDay #MattRivers #laborsongs

May Day Hellraiser memorial
https://labornotes.org/blogs/2024/04/anne-feeney-pittsburgh-hellraiser-memorial-events-planned-may-1

#AnneFeeney July 1 1951 - Feb 3, 2021
Video with #UnionMaid song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsYBHPxVQu4

#mayDay #may1 #Pittsburgh #workingclasshistory #union #solidarity #laborsongs

https://jacobin.com/2024/01/solidarity-forever-iww-labor-songs

#iww #DirectAction #Solidarity #Union #RalphChaplin #LittleRedSongbook #LaborSongs #solidarityforever

Emmett Doyle wrote a song for the UAW Strike and wants it shared. He’s offering it for everyone to use and encourages people to modify it as needed. Here you go.

https://soundcloud.com/user-310458959/uaw-big-three-strike-song

#UAWStrike #Labor #LaborSongs #Union