What kind of an impact struggles of working-class have had to this day we live now, and how much are our struggles similar to those fought, different than those going on today that are, were fought, are being fought. Paycheck, length of the working day, working conditions, safety issues, holidays, paternity and maternity leaves, kindergartens, schooling for children of working-class families, inexpensive and decent housing, democratic institutions, inexpensive healthcare, equal rights for everyone to live a good life, possibilities to study and work. Welfare that offers chances to grab life instead of losing it. Those who cannot take care of themselves are taken care of. It is a long list of benefits that must be taken into consideration to make a sustainable and equal welfare state.
”Work and pray, live on hay/ You’ll get pie in the sky when you die” The Preacher and The Slave, 1911
“Heaven above, and ours Hell right here ,I ain’t a Communist necessarily, but I’ve been in the red all my life.”
Political message into the arena of entertainment, books I imagine in my hand, small, worn out with yellowish smelly pages, the ongoing rebel, ongoing inspiration of coal miners, their wives, copper miners, their wives, textile workers, their husbands, Me inspired by Woody Guthrie, This Land Is your Land, 1944. ”I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world..that make you take pride in yourself and your work” Woody Guthrie’s mission statement which he read on the radio 1944 in his weekly show on New York’s WNEW.
This is a kind of Poem, this is a kind of scribbles, I end up seeing the same thing, a pattern, but I cannot put my finger on it
“Failed to quicken the pulse, Ella May Wiggins who was shot dead during the Gastonia textile strike 1929, hero of the left. Message belonged to whoever stuck a flag on it. And increasingly the flag was red.” “common man full of bad luck and violent ends.”Dorian Lynskey, History of protest songs, 33 revolutions per minute, 2010