It’s Labor Day Weekend!
¡Orale!
Happy Labor Day Weekend!
Sing along with the music that celebrates the ordinary working people who keep this country — and the world — in business: 9 to 5 from Dolly Parton, Look for the Union Label, Workin’ in a Coal Mine, This Land Is Your Land, and Solidarity Forever.
Workin’ 9 to 5:
Unions:
Coal mines:
Optimism:
And that sign said – no tress passin’
But on the other side …. it didn’t say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!
********
Solidarity Forever
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn
We will break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn that
The union makes us strong
Solidarity Forever, Solidarity Forever, Solidarity Forever
For the union makes us strongIn our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold
Greater than the might of atoms multiplied a thousand-fold
We will give birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong
Solidarity Forever, Solidarity Forever, Solidarity Forever
For the union makes us strongIt is we who plowed the prairies, build the cities where they trade
Dug the mines and build the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid
Now we stand outcast and starving ‘mid these wonders we have made but
The union makes us strong
Solidarity Forever, Solidarity Forever, Solidarity Forever
For the union makes us strongWhen the union’s inspiration through the workers blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun
Yet what force on Earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one but
The union makes us strong
Solidarity Forever, Solidarity Forever, Solidarity Forever
For the union makes us strong
A version of this post first ran on Labor Day, 2012.