Salt of the Earth (for Labor Day)

[TomInTib]

This goes out to my dearest Father, my Uncle Joe, my Brother-in-Law Rick, Joe Hill, Wiley50, and all the hardworking Men and Women who labored so hard and long to make our Country what it used to be.

And to each and every underdog Soldier in the night.

I wish to thank each and every one of them.

lyrics courtesy of M. Jagger and K. Richard


Salt of the Earth

Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let's drink to the salt of the earth

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth

And when I search a faceless crowd
A swirling mass of gray and
Black and white
They don't look real to me
In fact, they look so strange

Raise your glass to the hard working people
Let's drink to the uncounted heads
Let's think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead

Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio

And when I look in the faceless crowd
A swirling mass of grays and
Black and white
They don't look real to me
Or don't they look so strange

Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth

Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
Let's drink to the two thousand million
Let's think of the humble of birth

[bleever]

1. I'll drink to that.

Here's to a better America, where work is honored more than wealth.

:toast:

[begin_within]

2. There's a great film with the same title, and it's also about labor!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047443/

[Steepler0t]

3. Salt of the Earth is public domain

And can be watched in full decent quality for Labor Day.


A Labor Say must see!

[begin_within]

4. Thanks, I didn't know that

The production values are shoestring, in particular the sound quality was never very good. But the story overcomes all that. This is one film that really deserves a remake with full production values.

[pnorman]

7. Thanks for that!

I have the DVD of it (gave my VHS tape away to a friend). I'll now be able to pass this around to some of my union friends.

SOLIDARITY FOREVER

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong.

CHORUS:
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong.

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong.

It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;
But the union makes us strong.

All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
While the union makes us strong.

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong.

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYiKdJoSsb8

pnorman

[pnorman]

8. My union, although "middle of the road if not downright conservativ;

put out a list of noteworthy labor films on its weekly email bulletin. Here it is:

*1. HARLAN COUNTY USA - Kentucky coalminers' early 1970's strike turns violent.

*2. MATEWAN - A union organizer in a West Virginia coal mining town meets resistance from the company.

*3. FIST - Sylvester Stallone works his way up in a truckers' union.

*4. HOFFA - Jack Nicholson is legendary Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa.

*5. NORMA RAE - Sally Field is a textile worker trying to unionize her factory.

6. GERMINAL - French coal miners' strike in the 1800's.

7. BOUND FOR GLORY - Biography of folk singer Woody Guthrie, friend to the working class.

8. BRASSED OFF - A brass band unites in English coal mining town.

9. NEWSIES - Disney musical where newsboys organize against greedy newspaper publishers.

10. SILKWOOD - Meryl Streep is a whistleblower at a plutonium processing plant.

*11. SALT OF THE EARTH - Chicano mine workers in New Mexico strike.

*12. BREAD AND ROSES - Documentary on Justice for Janitors struggle in L.A.

13. LIVE NUDE GIRLS UNITE! - San Francisco topless dancers organize.

14. (THE) FIGHT IN THE FIELDS - Cesar Chavez and the struggles of the Farmworkers.

*15. AMERICAN DREAM - Documentary of Meat Packers' strike at Hormel.

16. (THE) DEVIL AND MISS JONES - Comedy about NYC department store strike.

17. ROGER AND ME - Michael Moore pursues GM President after plant closure devastates Flint, Michigan.

18. AT THE RIVER I STAND - Short film with Martin Luther King Jr. supporting 1968 sanitation workers' strike.

The ones marked with asterisks are those I own. In PARTICULAR, I recommend "Matewan" (#2), which is based on actual events during the Coal Wars of the early 20s.

pnorman

[pnorman]

11. There's an excellent book about the attempt to suppress that film.

Here's the review: http://www.culturevulture.net/Books/Suppression.htm It's available for $5.00 (used, "good") at Amazon, but I just checked Questia.com (paid on-line books & periodicals service) and it's there! I'll read it later today.

pnorman

[Jack Bone]

5. here's vid of Mick & Keith doing that song....

@ The Concert For NYC..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW-sJqO5qDM&mode=related&search=

I like Keith's laugh after changing the lyric to "the good not the evil"...

:toast:

[havocmom]

6. K & R

:kick:

Yes indeed

[pnorman]

9. Here's a suitable quote for Labor Day:

"We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living--a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age." -- Theodore Roosevelt address, Before the Convention of the National Progressive Party in Chicago, August, 1912 --

I recently heard this on the Thom Hartmann Show, on Air America . He played the Edison recording of the actual speech.

"...a standard high enough to make morality possible" TR was sometime viciously racist, and vindictive too, but he also had a heart. And that quote must have STUNG some of the pious plutocrats of his day!

pnorman

[pnorman]

10. Here's an appropriate poem with a suitable illustration

"The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play.":

The poem was by Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/216.html

pnorman

[Wiley50]

12. Thanks For Including Me, Tom. I'm Humbled n/t

In covering floors for 30 years, I'd sometimes hear from the oldtimers that, once upon a time

there was a Floorcovers Union, but it was broken long ago

about the time when TN became a "Right To Work (For Nothing) State.