Labor Day 2009

Welcome to the New 12^th Gate Coffee House

So pour yourself aa up of coffee or tea and join in the spirit of this Labor Day weekend. Tonight, we move from the old to the new, but the battle to affirm honest work and a living wage remains the same. Tonight, we give thank to those who have gone on before us – what they have endured and what they have won.

Let’s start with Pete Seeger and the Weavers singing Solidarity Together – great pictures!

I love this song by the late Tommy Makem – the Cobler. I do wish there might been a different song to tell the wife’s side of the story!}

Sweet Honey and the Rock reminds us that workers often got More than a Paycheck –

Bob Dylan’s – Working Man’s Blues

Finally, this is a little bit different for the New 12th Gate – Celtic punk folk and rock band DropKick Murphys Worker’s Song

In case you miss the lyrics, here they are.

Yeh, this one’s for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead

In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We’ve often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they’ve streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed

[Chorus:]
We’re the first ones to starve, we’re the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And we’re always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat’s about

And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who’s given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we’ve never owned one lousy handful of earth?

[Chorus x3]

All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We’ve been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can

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Links

Labor Day

Drop Kick Murphys

Have a great weekend!