Music Video: Cows With Guns

An oldie but goodie, more info can be found at Cows With Guns


Click the pic for full size high definition Flash video

Music: Rebel Inc.

Had these fellas befriend me via MySpace, they got some cool aggressive tunes , take a listen, I enjoyed it.

In August Rebel Inc. teamed up with Iraq Veterans Against War and played some free shows for our active duty servicemen in NC, TX and GA, heres a snip of the story from Rebel Inc.'s blog:

The IVAW State of the Union Base Tour Update/review

Rebel inc. just finished our first tour which took us to 4 different stops in 2 weeks. The band joined forces with a group called the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). The group's message is clear, "you are not alone". The tour was designed to create outreach for vets as well as providing vets and active duty soldier's free entertainment. The tour was a success right from the start upon forming 2 new chapters of the IVAW in sought out cities.

The first stop was Fayetteville, NC (Fort Bragg) on August 6th. August 8th took us to Jacksonville, NC (Camp Legeune) where the Marines were thoroughly entertained. Then the tour moved to Savannah, GA (Fort Stewart) August 10th, where civilians, vets, and politicians enjoyed a hard hitting show with Lastman as the opener. From there we moved on to Austin, TX (Fort Hood) where we played a very unique venue, Ruta Maya. The crowd was very receptive to the show and the message and was a great setting for the closing of the tour.

Along with great entertainment for the troops, there was a big buzz about what rebel inc. and the IVAW were doing. A lot of press coverage was given to both parties along the way. Here are a few excerpts of what was written about this recent adventure. The rest of the articles and more information about the IVAW can be found at http://ivaw.org/

Below is the MySpace Player, ripped from MySpace, there's a good chance that in the near future it will disappear, if it does, just check em' out at http://www.myspace.com/rebelincmusic

You can visit Joe's Union Review Myspace page at:
http://www.myspace.com/joesunionreview

Frank Zappa on Freedom Of Speech

God rest Frank Zappa's soul, I miss his influence

Rage Against The Machine video

"Wake up! Wake up!, Wake up!, Wake up!, Wake up!, Wake up!" - Rage Against The Machine
That's not the song, this one is "Killing In The Name", It's a great protest song with some explicit lyrics

Joe's Union Review welcomes another Labor blog, a letter to the editor that made my day, SEIU performs ABBA at John McCain camp

Was noticing where my links were coming from and saw a new blog out there, I'm used to the US Chamber of Commerce and other anti-union agencies websites popping up unexpected, but it's always a pleasure to find yet another person who has been motivated enough to jump into the action and help promote our struggle, from the upcoming election and explaining that in his field videography, The Employee Free Choice Act is as necessary as in my own, the construction industry, so without further ado, a big welcome to Decision List, who's latest post is a great music video.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON - NATALIE MERCHANT

Though many folks try to make things more complex than they really are, it really always comes down to a simple question.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Hope to be reading more, and I hope he checks out Broadcast Union News, who has a lot of entertainment and broadcasting news.

Speaking of broadcasts, UnionGal posted a great video on her site, from 7/17, of a SEIU(Service Employees) theater production outside of John McCains headquarters on her site called "McCain as the "Loophole King"

Last week SEIU protested outside of McCain's campaign headquarters in Virginia. How they got ABBA to join them, I'll never know...

Richard at Union Review and Kirsten at UnionGal have been crazy busy, Richard attended Netroots Nation and Kirsten is running for office in DC, I will eventually be posting about all that sooner or later, I'm still reading through it, but I have a ton of stuff on my plate and a guy I worked with has passed away, a great guy who would give you the shirt off his back if you were in need, I feel really bad, I'm gonna miss him.

So I'm kinda doing all sorts of stuff, including getting more information about The Employee Free Choice Act petition for my own local to sign up, I'm meeting with the NYS AFL-CIO rep here in NYC tomorrow to get that stuff. Found a great article from over a year ago entitled "Who's afraid of The Employee Free Choice Act" from Common Dreams.

It's also nice to see Omaha Steve is still posting away at Democratic Underground, especially a letter to the editor he spotted from a The Providence Journal :

Brian Wilder: What union have brought us

01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, July 17, 2008

It’s tiresome reading such nonsense as the letter from Steve Lemois (June 18) who claims to know what unions are doing.

Here are some of the programs and laws that union workers have fought hard to create, many of which we still protect from regular attack by wealthy interests: Social Security, Medicare, the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, child-labor laws, family/medical leave with employer-paid insurance, unemployment insurance, temporary-disability insurance, workers’ compensation insurance, and the minimum-wage law. And we have much more hard work ahead of us, such as the need for affordable access to health care for everyone and human-rights protections for workers making our products both here and abroad.

We union workers sure do manage to do an awful lot for non-union people while just “looking after our own behinds,” which Mr. Lemois claims is all we do. Can he even be serious?

BRIAN WILDER

Cranston

Spread the word people, the American worker, the heart of the labor movement, will not go down without a fight.

That's about it for now, sorry for the lapse in covering recent news, maybe if we had a few more writers, ah, but we can all just dream a little...

Video and Music: History of Solidarity Forever, Anne Feeney and my favorite labor song

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.

From YouTube

Solidarity Forever sung by Pete Seeger & The Weavers, with old photographs of the labor movement in US History.This is a tribute to all the workers who sacrificed to make a better world for their children and grand children.

The history of this song can be found at Wikipedia,

"Solidarity Forever", written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915, is perhaps the most famous union anthem after The Internationale. It is sung to the tune of "John Brown's Body" and is inspired by the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Although it was written as a song for the Industrial Workers of the World, other union movements, such as the AFL-CIO, have adopted the song as their own. The song is still performed by musicians such as Utah Phillips, and was redone by Emcee Lynx. It is still commonly sung at union meetings and rallies in Australia and Canada, and has also been sung at conferences of the Australian Labor Party and the Canadian New Democratic Party. The use of the originally patriotic tune for a progressive and left-wing cause also inspired the anthem of the consumer cooperative movement, "The Battle Hymn of Cooperation."

heres a new verse I didn't know existed

They say our day is over; they say our time is through,
They say you need no union if your collar isn't blue,
Well that is just another lie the boss is telling you,
For the Union makes us strong!
(Chorus)

They divide us by our color; they divide us by our tongue,
They divide us men and women,; they divide us old and young,
But they'll tremble at our voices, when they hear these verses sung,
For the Union makes us strong!
(Chorus)

Anne Feeney: War On The Workers, my favorite labor song

Copy and pasted from my new Joe's Union Review MySpace account
Speaking of Anne Feeney, heres a clip from the 2002 G8 protest in Calgary with Chris Chandler

Hit the pocket books of working families, Schwarzenegger gearing up to hurt working class and retirees

"Every day I care for a blind man and a woman with mental disabilities. They're able to live alone, somewhat independently, with my help. Both my consumers would be doomed without services," "They would both be devastated if they were forced into nursing homes because of these cuts." -Rosie Byers, homecare worker in San Francisco.

You work all your life to retire and along the way you and your wife get sick, but you can make it in your own home with a little help, lord knows that my own mother needed home help when she was dying. In San Fransisco, CA., the budget cuts are being aimed at working families and retired, sick and those in need. Cutting jobs and reducing hours, wages and benefits for those that make the cut potentially hurts all San Fransisco residents.

From PRNewswire (6/14/08):

More Than 13,000 Home Healthcare Workers,
Clients Protest Governor's Cuts
Union Members Gather to Call, Write Letters to
Schwarzenegger Expressing Outrage

SAN FRANCISCO, June 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An unprecedented
number of home healthcare workers rallied Saturday to protest Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger's proposed cuts to their hours of service, wages and
benefits. These dramatic reductions would force some of California's most
vulnerable workers and the people they serve deeper into poverty. It also
would force many clients out of their homes and into nursing facilities
prematurely.

In San Francisco, Sacramento, and Fresno, workers, their clients and
supporters gathered to write letters and make phone calls urging the
governor to lay down his budget ax and pledge to save these vital services
for seniors and people with disabilities. Thousands participated in the
demand that the governor craft a budget that's fair to all Californians,
and encouraged Republican lawmakers to withdraw their support of the latest
plan.

In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) provides personal care and domestic
services to more than 408,000 seniors and disabled people, enabling them to
live in their homes. The program is funded by federal, state and county
governments.

In his most recent budget proposal, Schwarzenegger advocated
"permanently eliminating domestic and related services" to 84,000 people,
or 20 percent of all IHSS recipients.

The American Nightmare continues. Speaking of California...

Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy - California Uber Alles (Live 1992)



The title translated is California above all others, it was written at a time when California had another pro-corporate Governor, Peter Wilson. While the names have changed, as have the times, the message is the same, sing along...

"At a time when AIDS is in a crisis,
I cut healthcare and I raise prices,
sales tax, snack tax, excise tax
Informational tax with a newspaper tax.

Hit the pocket books of working families,
increase tuition at the universities,
Some day I'll command all o' you,
even your kids are gonna pray to me in school,
Soon I'm gonna be the president
you might remember the last one this state sent"

I wish I heard this when it came out...the studio version is awesome

Names changed, story is the same, maybe even worse.

The Man behind the music

So who is the front man of this work?

Michael Franti, who continues his career as musician and movie maker, now with the band Spearhead, heres a live show from 2006:


You can find more free to listen music and audio files at the Internet Archive

Original tunes by Tig Wired, music for tradespeople of the world.

From Canada, for Tradespeople

Tig Wired, who according to their website is:

TIG WIRED is music geared towards the people who work in the industrial service areas, welders, fitters, riggers, brickies, tin bashers, boiler hogs, pipefighters, inspection guys, scaffold gods and the like...you get the picture..you'll get the meaning too!!.
If you like good solid music with a taste for blues, rock, reggae and some new age stuff, then you are gonna love this site....

You can catch the band at their website or at:



Buy the Tig Wired CD here

Thanks goes out to Tammy at Weekly Toll for reminding me about these guys with her post: Workers' Memorial Day 2008

Re: History is written by the winners of war, the truth lies in music. Union songs on YouTube

After my post"History is written by the winners of war, the truth lies in the music. Labor songs from MySpace" made it's way onto TeamstersOnline.com, the unofficial Teamster message board, I got some nice responses from a user Moosesteaks, who cordially added some YouTube videos into the mix, heres his reply:

I have this song on my kids mp3 players , every so often i will hear them singing it, i just have to sit back and smile.


heres couple more i found on youtube

this is billy bragg


(Solidarity Forever sung by Pete Seeger & The Weavers)


(Tom Morello shows his support for the WGA strike in front of Fox Studios, 11-09-07)


and of course Dropkick Murphy

Thanks Moosesteaks

History is written by the winners of war, the truth lies in the music. Labor songs from MySpace

"History is written by those who have hanged heroes" - Braveheart opening narration

"The history of a nation is, unfortunately, too easily written as the history of its dominant class." - Kwame Nkrumah

"Memory says, 'I did that.' Pride replies, 'I could not have done that.' Eventually, memory yields." - Nietzsche

Music is written by the people. Heres some labor songs from MySpace I have grown fond of


War on the Workers - Anne Feeney
The ultimate rally song.

According to the Anne Feeney MySpace page:

I'm an activist, organizer, songwriter, folksinger, troublemaker and hellraiser from Pittsburgh, PA. I graduated from high school in 1968 and worked for a year to save up enough money to buy the beautiful Martin D-28 guitar that I still play. The Vietnam war and the Civil Rights Movement shaped my conscience and consciousness. My musical influences are pretty varied, but I love Phil Ochs, Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger, Jimmy Collier, Brian MacNeill, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, Billy Bragg, Jon Fromer, Rosalie Sorrels, Hazel Dickens, Utah Phillips, David Rovics, Leon Rosselson, Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Pam Parker, Anais Mitchell, Evan Greer, Pat Humphries, Rebel Voices, Chris Chandler and so very many more. I worked for a dozen years or so as a trial attorney and served as President of the Pittsburgh Musicians' Union. I have two great kids, Dan and Amy Berlin. ...Now, I'm on the road 200+ days a year... all over the US and Canada, and more recently, Sweden and Denmark. If you're on strike, or in an organizing drive, or doing community organizing for women's rights, the environment, human rights, anti-poverty or anti-racist work, I want to be there. You can donate to her cause there.

We Can't Make it Here - James McMurty
It's really a no brainer, especially when you could go cross country and see the devastation that NAFTA, WTO and the unending corporate driven government has done to the American people.

Heres a snippet from the James McMurty MySpace page:

The Texas native long has been known as an astute, clear-eyed observer and concise, no-holds-barred chronicler of the human condition, but a growing socio-political edge fairly exploded just prior to the 2004 elections when his scathing, palace-rattling “We Can’t Make It Here” was made available online as a free download. The seven-plus-minute diatribe against social injustice and the Administration’s hypocrisy and deceptions repercussed wildly across the Internet and the airwaves, igniting a grassroots firestorm that has brought legions of new fans to the singer/songwriter’s work. As of this writing, fan-made videos of “We Can’t Make It Here” have been viewed more than 150,000 times on YouTube.