May 1st, International Workers' Day, commemorates the historic struggle of working people throughout the world. The celebration of Labour Day has its origins in the eight hour day movement, which advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest. May Day in this regard is called International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, and is a commemoration for those involved in the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago, Illinois. As the culmination of three days of labor unrest in the United States, the Haymarket incident was a source of outrage and admiration from people around the globe.
DAKILA salutes the Filipino Workers whose toils and sweat oil the wheels of our economy. We are with the workers in the struggle for the protection and advancement of labor rights and welfare and the uplift of labor dignity.
Working Class Hero
by John Lennon
As soon as you're born they make you feel smallBy giving you no time instead of it allTill the pain is so big you feel nothing at allA working class hero is something to beA working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at schoolThey hate you if you're clever and they despise a foolTill you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rulesA working class hero is something to beA working class hero is something to be
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd yearsThen they expect you to pick a careerWhen you can't really function you're so full of fearA working class hero is something to beA working class hero is something to be
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TVAnd you think you're so clever and class less and freeBut you're still fucking peasants as far as I can seeA working class hero is something to beA working class hero is something to be
There's room at the top they are telling you stillBut first you must learn how to smile as you killIf you want to be like the folks on the hillA working class hero is something to beA working class hero is something to beIf you want to be a hero well just follow meIf you want to be a hero well just follow me
*The song "Working Class Hero" is a classic exposition of the humiliation of being a worker in such settings as home, school, and work. John Lennon, though himself a millionaire many times over, has nonetheless here identified with the plight of working masses and himself arrived at full class consciousness when he sings that: "There's room at the top they are telling you still, but first you must learn how to smile as you kill, if you want to be like the folks on the hill." (from www.worldsocialism.org)
*Regarded as one of John Lennon's most caustic and overtly political songs, "Working Class Hero" explores themes of alienation and social status from childhood to adulthood, and comments on elements that "distract you from your fate": In 2007, Green Day contributed a cover of the song to the Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, which was released on June 12, 2007, proceeds from which help support Amnesty International's campaign to focus attention on the conflict in Darfur, Sudan. When asked why they chose the song, front man Billie Joe Armstrong said, "We wanted to do 'Working Class Hero' because its themes of alienation, class, and social status really resonated with us. It's such a raw, aggressive song -- just that line: 'you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see' -- we felt we could really sink our teeth into it. I hope we've done him justice.". Blind Melon covered the song in many of their live shows. Marilyn Manson covered it on his 2000 single "The Fight Song." Ozzy Osbourne recorded a version for his 2005 collection Under Cover. (from wikipedia.org)
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, AWAKEN
By Joe Hill (1914)
Workers of the world, awaken!Break your chains. demand your rights.AII the wealth you make is takenBy exploiting parasites.Shall you kneel in deep submissionFrom your cradles to your graves?ls the height of your ambitionTo be good and willing slaves?
CHORUS:
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!Fight for your own emancipation;Arise, ye slaves of every nation.In One Union grand.Our little ones for bread are crying,And millions are from hunger dying;The end the means is justifying,
'Tis the final stand.
If the workers take a notion,They can stop all speeding trains;Every ship upon the oceanThey can tie with mighty chains.Every wheel in the creation,Every mine and every mill,Fleets and armies of the nation,Will at their command stand still.
Join the union, fellow workers,Men and women, side by side;We will crush the greedy shirkersLike a sweeping, surging tide;For united we are standing,But divided we will fall;Let this be our understanding --"All for one and one for all.''
Workers of the world, awaken!Rise in all your splendid might;Take the wealth that you are making,It belongs to you by right.No one will for bread be crying,We'll have freedom, love and health.When the grand red flag is flyingIn the Workers' Commonwealth.
A songwriter, itinerant laborer, and union organizer, Joe Hill became famous around the world after a Utah court convicted him of murder. Even before the international campaign to have his conviction reversed, however, Joe Hill was well known in hobo jungles, on picket lines and at workers' rallies as the author of popular labor songs and as an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) agitator. Thanks in large part to his songs and to his stirring, well—publicized call to his fellow workers on the eve of his execution—"Don't waste time mourning, organize!"—Hill became, and he has remained, the best—known IWW martyr and labor folk hero.
Hill became more famous in death than he had been in life. To Bill Haywood, the former president of the Western Federation of Miners and the best-known leader of the IWW, Hill wrote: "Goodbye Bill: I die like a true rebel. Don't waste any time mourning, organize! It is a hundred miles from here to Wyoming. Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don't want to be found dead in Utah." Apparently he did die like a rebel. A member of the firing squad at his execution claimed that the command to "Fire!" had come from Hill himself.
After a brief service in Salt Lake City, Hill's body was sent to Chicago, where thousands of mourners heard Hill's "Rebel Girl" sung for the first time, listened to hours of speeches and then walked behind his casket to Graceland Cemetery, where the body was cremated and the ashes mailed to IWW locals in every state but Utah as well as to supporters in every inhabited continent on the globe. According to one of Hill's Wobbly-songwriter colleagues, Ralph Chaplin (who wrote the words to "Solidarity Forever," among other songs), all the envelopes were opened on May 1, 1916, and their contents scattered to the winds, in accordance with Hill's last wishes, expressed in a poem written on the eve of his death:
My body? Ah, if I could choose,I would to ashes it reduce,And let the merry breezes blowMy dust to where some fading flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flowers thenWould come to life and bloom again.This is my last and final will.Good luck to you.
*Hill was memorialized in a tribute poem written about him c. 1930 by Alfred Hayes titled "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", sometimes referred to simply as "Joe Hill". Hayes's lyrics were turned into a song in 1936 by Earl Robinson. Joan Baez's Woodstock performance of "Joe Hill" in 1969 is the most well-known recording. Bob Dylan claims that Hill's story was one of his inspirations to begin writing his own songs. His song "I dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" is loosely based around the story and Robinson's version. The Nightwatchman (a.k.a. Tom Morello, former guitarist of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave) refers to Joe Hill in his song "The Union Song". For Rage Against the Machine's second Album, Evil Empire, a suggested reading list was included. Included is the biography Joe Hill written by Gibbs M. Smith. (from wikipedia.org)
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