Anarchism
- Fellow Workers
- The Past Didn’t go Anywhere
- The Internationale
The Preacher and the Slave - Wikipedia
“The Preacher and the Slave” is a song written by Joe Hill in 1911. It was written as a parody of the Christian hymn “In the Sweet By-and-By”. Copying or using the musical style of the hymn was also a way to capture the emotional resonance of that style of music and use it for a non-religious purpose.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also commonly known as the Wobblies) concentrated much of its labor trying to organize migrant workers in lumber and construction camps. When the workers returned to the cities, the Wobblies faced the Salvation Army, which they satirized as the “Starvation Army”, who were said to have tried to drown out IWW with their religious music. Hill had first encountered the Salvation Army in Sweden when he was a child.
The lyrics:
Verse 1 Long-haired preachers come out every night Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right But when asked about something to eat They will answer with voices so sweet:
Chorus You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye) In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high) Work and pray (Work and pray), live on hay (Live on hay) You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (That’s a lie!)
Verse 2 And the starvation army they play And they sing and they clap and they pray Till they get all your coin on the drum Then they tell you when you are on the bum
Chorus You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye) In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high) Work and pray (Work and pray), live on hay (Live on hay) You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (That’s a lie!)
Verse 3 Holy Rollers and jumpers come out They holler, they jump and they shout Give your money to Jesus they say He will cure all diseases away See country shows near Chesterfield Get tickets as low as $20 You might also like
Chorus You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye) In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high) Work and pray (Work and pray), live on hay (Live on hay) You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (That’s a lie!)
Verse 4 If you fight hard for children and wife Try to get something good in this life You’re a sinner and bad man, they tell When you die you will sure go to hell
Chorus You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye) In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high) Work and pray (Work and pray), live on hay (Live on hay) You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (That’s a lie!)
Verse 5 Working folk of all countries unite Side by side we for freedom will fight When the world and its wealth we have gained To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain:
Chorus You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye) When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry (and bake a pie!) Chop some wood, ‘twill do you good And you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye (That’s no lie!)
There comes a time when the operation of the machine is so odious that you cannot even tacitly participate. You’ve got to place your bodies on the gears, the wheels, all the mechanism. And you’ve got to indicate to those who own it and those who run it that unless you are free, the machine will be prevented from working at all. - Mario Savio
Quoted by Utah Phillips in track Unless you are free on album Fellow Workers
We in the US have forgotten so much about our own history. It’s been sterilized with the dangerous bits removed.
Recommended Music: Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco
Billy Bragg
International Worker’s Day - Wikipedia
Today is International Worker’s Day, known as Labour Day in most countries. The date was originally chosen by the American Federation of Labor to commemorate the strike that ended in the Haymarket Massacre
It’s a day for, among other things, solidarity with protests
More grassroots anti-war activism in the US:
Walkouts, Blockades, and Student Occupations in Solidarity with Palestine Continue | It’s Going Down
Resistance to the US backed Israeli war and genocide against Palestinians living in the occupied territories remains ongoing, with a chorus of mass protests, sabotage, occupations at US universities, and blockades of weapons suppliers continuing into the spring, as a call grows “to disrupt and blockade economic logistical hubs and the flow of capital” on April 15th.