Two from Woody Guthrie

These come from the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

 

“[My songs] aren’t so pretty, but they’re songs that I learned or I wrote while I was doing stoop labor up and down the highways and byways of California, travelin’ with my people in their broken-down old cars and with their kids with bellies swollen from hunger, their mouths full of the dust of Oklahoma.”

“My mama and my papa

Have eight children sweet and fine;

Our house is such a little house,

And soon there will be nine.

And now today I kneel and pray

Some million dollar man

Will let my papa go to work;

He’ll do the best he can.”

We are union members and we believe in social justice

Workers' Solidarity

We began this blog with a quote from "Out of this Furnace" by Thomas Bell, still one of the best works of fiction written about working-class life. The graphics below tell a story of unions ad working-class life.

  

From the Teamsters Union.

Billy Bragg -There Is Power In A Union

The text reads:

On this date in 1933 (Sunday), Barney Graham, United Mine Workers President and Socialist, was shot dead in front of the Wilder Company Store. Shorty Green and Doc Thompson used a machine-gun borrowed from the 109th Cav of the Tennessee National Guard which they also held off Sheriffs Deputies of Fentress County with for over four hours. This was in retaliation for Graham supposedly being an Influencer in the murder of George and Floyd Winningham. The Miners of Wilder had no way to fight back after having all their firearms confiscated in August of 1932 by the Guardsmen.

We just want to make a living...

 

Safe Jobs Now!

 

Today is Workers' Memorial Day. We need to mourn for the dead, not be complicit in injustice, and fight like hell for the living.

Today is Workers' Memorial Day, the day when we remember all of those who died at work or from workplace injuries and illnesses. It should be a day of mourning---part of an extended period of national mourning for the victims of COVID and for our lack of a national healthcare policy and a national healthcare service---and a day of action and protest.

A Poem For Workers' Memorial Day (April 28)

The Plan

A poem for two voices - female & male, dedicated to all workers
who have gone before us, and who we remember on Worker Memorial Day.

I am your....
Mother. . . . . . . . . . Father
Sister . . . . . . . . . . . Brother
Child . . . . . . . . . . . Partner
Lover . . . . . . . . . . . Friend
Today, I planned to....
Take a walk . . . . . . See a friend
Tell a joke . . . . . . . . Give a smile
Pay a bill . . . . . . . . . Play a game
Take a ride . . . . . . . . Kiss a cheek
Hug a child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I didn’t plan to . . . Die today
. . . but I did
I planned to....
Go to work . . . . . . . . . Build a bridge
Pave a road . . . . . . . . . Fix a pipe
Teach a class . . . . . . . . Save a life
Paint a room . . . . . . . . Write reports
Enter data . . . . . . . . . . .Work the line
Wire buildings . . . . . . . Walk the iron
Erect the steel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I didn’t plan to . . . Die today
. . . but I did
Please think of me...
Just once today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . When you
Fulfill your plans
I am your....
Mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . Father
Sister . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brother
Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Partner
Lover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friend
I didn’t plan to . . . Die today
BUT I DID ...
—Sue Waltz

Tomorrow (Thursday) is Workers' Memorial Day

 

Workers' Memorial Day Is On Thursday, April 28---And We Need To Get Organized!

And from the Teamsters Union...

Workers' Memorial Day is Thursday, April 28

 

Farmworker Awareness Week---March 25-31

From the Catholic Labor Network:

March 25-31 marks Farmworker Awareness Week – a week that culminates on March 31, Cesar Chavez Day. The backbreaking work of planting and harvesting our food is largely performed by immigrants from Latin America for low pay under difficult working conditions.

Like domestic workers, during the New Deal reforms farmworkers were excluded from the protection of critical labor laws such as the National Labor Relations Act (which protects workers who want to form a union) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (which sets the federal minimum wage and dictates that other workers earn overtime when working more than 40 hours per week). This means that farmworkers have had to work state by state to secure these rights, a process that remains largely incomplete. Only a few states such as California and New York have passed laws protecting farmworkers’ right to organize and form labor unions. And this year Oregon joined a handful of states that have passed overtime pay laws covering farmworkers.

The Catholic Church played a critical role in the great farmworker organizing campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s, especially in California, where Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW) organized grape harvesters. The UFW sought leverage through a national boycott of table grapes. Chavez, himself deeply committed to his Catholic faith, relied on allies in the Church and the wider community to promote the boycott and secure basic rights for workers in the fields.

The Catholic Labor Network is part of the National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM), an interfaith coalition standing in solidarity with farmworker organizations such as the UFW, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Today the UFW is seeking reforms in California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act to make it easier for farmworkers to form unions; the FLOC is campaigning for RJ Reynolds to clean up abuses in its tobacco supply chain; and the CIW is calling on Wendy’s to source its tomatoes from growers committed to fair labor practices. The CLN and the NFWM continue to support farmworkers in all of these initiatives.

This is true.

 

The Church Is Called To....

 

Refugees, migrant workers, the disinherited of the world, people of all religions (and none) are accompanied by God...

 

I interviewed Joe Rastatter and Dr. David Wheeler about Portland's Faith & Labor Committee---Please listen!

Would anyone in the Keizer-Salem, Oregon area like to help form a Faith & Labor Committee? Please be in touch.

Listen to the interview here:  https://bit.ly/3syBoDk

Taken from Arise Chicago