I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you and me.
Says I, "But Joe you're ten years dead."
"I never died," says he.
For many years, in the days we stayed up late, we'd often gather around the piano and sing old songs: "Cockles and Mussels," "Red River Valley," "Waltzing Matilda." But our favorite, along with "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair," was "Joe Hill."
Our fellow singers were generally — but not completely — left-leaning; most of us belonged to AAUP, the college teachers' union, and about half came from blue-collar families. Mainly, we all were in the throes of books and movies like The Grapes of Wrath, and sympathized with a song about Joe Hill, a union organizer executed on far less convincing evidence than that in the Casey Anthony or O. J. Simpson trials. John Steinbeck's book (1939) and the classic movie starring Henry Fonda (1940) had been around for awhile, but Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962, kicking off a surge of revivals of The Grapes of Wrath, including several stage versions performed in the Bay Area; and Joan Baez relit the union flame with her searing rendition of "Joe Hill" to the thousands gathered at Woodstock in 1969.
Now, as the '60s fade behind us while the baby boomers, chubbier and more conservative, turn nervously toward retirement, we read and sing less. Except for the kids reading Harry Potter, most people don't read long books anymore, and at close to 500 pages, TGOW is a lot of reading; why bother, when cable networks supply an endless, effortless stream of Law & Order reruns? In a way, today's fierce anti-unionism is a failure of imagination.
As unions have shrunk in size and influence, Americans have forgotten what we owe them: they were the major reason for the large expansion of our middle class. For decades the American worker, Rosie the Riveter as well as Joe the Plumber, was idealized, a symbol of American integrity and strength. But in their beginnings, the unions were the Industrial Workers of the World — IWW, the Wobblies — and hated because they represented communism, immigrants (like Joe Hill, from Sweden), and foreigners in general. The natural result was that the owners of big businesses regularly mistreated and underpaid their workers, huge numbers of whom lived in abject poverty. But in 1935 FDR restarted the economy with the National Labor Relations Act, greatly expanding unions (while reforming them) as a major part of the New Deal. In 1944, Roosevelt pushed through the "socialistic" GI Bill of Rights, and these two programs, pushed by World War II, created the greatest middle class the world has ever known.
But ever since 1947, the Republicans, passing the Taft-Hartley Law over Harry Truman's veto, have been nibbling at the unions, and the workers have gotten comparatively poorer and the rich richer. Today, in Wisconsin, Florida and elsewhere, they're taking real bites out of collective bargaining, trying to finish the job.
Common sense tells us we need unions. No one else is going to help the workers. The Civil Rights Act wouldn't have passed without the combined power of CORE, SNCC, NAACP and others. The 19th Amendment wouldn't have passed if women hadn't banded together and worked unceasingly in the Suffragist movement for the rights to vote and run for office. The Stonewall riots in 1969 brought national attention to gay rights (as the Freedom Riders did in 1961 for civil rights); the laws are changing almost daily as gays have combined their power in various LGBT organizations (witness this year's St. Pete Pride Parade, the city's biggest party). These movements in retrospect seem inevitable — but they're all earned by going through a tunnel of fire.
So music can't solve the problems that face workers today. America's awash in cash, which lies like lava over our heads, supporting 10 percent of the country. But music can hold up our spirits and create a feeling of solidarity while we reorganize. We've had corrupt and ineffective unions; they need to be fixed, not eliminated. We aren't doing away with bankers because some of them wrecked our economy.
Joe Hill famously wrote from prison just before he faced the firing squad, "Don't waste any time mourning. Organize!" It wouldn't be a waste of time this Labor Day weekend to sing a few rounds of "Joe Hill" before we buckle down to work.
"From San Diego up to Maine
In every mine and mill,
Where workers strike and organize,"
Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill,"
Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill."
from "Joe Hill," written by Alfred Hayes and put to music by Earl Robinson (1936)
Peter & Jeanne are singing to their grandchildren in New Jersey, poor babies.
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2011.