May Day

Billy Bragg, "The Internationale"

Billy Bragg, "Never Cross A Picket Line"

Billy Bragg, "Joe Hill"

Billy Bragg, "There Is Power In A Union"

Billy Bragg and Wilco, "All You Fascists Bound To Lose"

Today is May 1st, once better known as May Day, International Worker's Day, a celebration of the working people, labor, unions and radical politics. Sadly, very few people acknowledge it in this country, probably because of its ties to Communism. It seems kinda fitting, though, that a day dedicated to workers would be ignored in a country so hostile to labor and featuring such compliant and shortsighted unions.

I don't have a lot to say, no great point to make with this post. I've been reading about the early days of the labor movement again, the life of a woman or man in the garment industry at the turn of the century in the Lower East Side. It's hard sometimes to realize what kind of world existed back then, how much we owe to our great-grandparents and grandparents for the fight they put up to recognize workers and create the conditions that we take for granted today. It's hard to remember the names of people like Joe Hill, Samuel Gompers, Emma Goldman, let alone the names of the anonymous woman who worked at a sewing 18 hours a day and had the courage to say enough is enough and strike.

I could think of no better way to remember this day and honor those people, then with the music of Billy Bragg. Bragg is one of the great musicians, so underrated that it's sad. He might be the only performer who wears his politics on his sleeve, doing it way before Springsteen. Getting up there with just his guitar singing old union songs, Woody Guthrie covers and his own amazing originals. What makes it all so powerful is that you never feel like you are being preached to, but rather you are hearing the songs of the downtrodden, the poor, the working, heartbreaking tales, joyous ones, loving ones. Listen for yourself, then go and cop his entire catalogue, which has just gotten the remastering + extras treatment.



This is a drawing by Eric Drooker, the amazing cartoonist and radical. More to come on him, but couldn't let this day go by without putting this one up.