New York City teachers on union solidarity and class-conciousness in classic country music
Travis Tritt used to not be terrible.
Words From John
Howdy.
This week’s dispatch includes more footage from the trip to NYC covering the Amazon Labor Union’s march for recognition.
For all my fellow enlightened rednecks, there’s plenty of 90s country political analysis as well. I’m pleased to inform you that I’ll be following that trend more in future content. Perhaps I’ll even make a “Country for Commies” playlist that talks about each song as it’s added. Good idea? Lemme know.
MOST IMPORTANTLY. My good friend and fellow rabble-rousing labor man, Mike Elk of the PayDay Report, is raising money for an end-of-the-month trip to cover the Brazilian election. Read up on his work here, it’s some of the most important work that could be done and I’m asking all of you to make a small donation to the PayDay report to help it happen.
Please donate to help cover this reporting trip here.
OK! I’m off to bartend for karaoke night!
Until then,
JR
New York City teachers on what solidarity means
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Video Transcript
John Russell 0:00
Solidarity is one of those big words that's thrown around in the labor movement. We caught up with teachers who were marching with the Amazon Labor Union in New York City who can tell you what it really means. Take a listen.
Frank Marino 0:09
If the Amazon workers and the Starbucks workers in this country win their unions, it's gonna have a ripple effect. And the strength of our union is just as strong as the strength of other workers’ unions.
Martina Meijer 0:20
And the way that we treat workers reflects the way that our society can function. So certainly like for education, you know, we are called essential but we're not treated essentially. Meanwhile, the CEOs, the Jeff Bezos is they walk away with billions and billions, they're hiding on their yachts and it's just like a dystopia. I'm over here, you know, buying pencils for my students with my money that like, you know, clearly Jeff Bezos could be contributing more taxes, we could all do better.
John Russell 0:43
We're from West Virginia, here to cover labor....
A Chorus of Rowdy Teachers 0:47
Yayyy WEST VIRGINIA TEACHER'S STRIKE!!!
Olivia Swisher 0:50
I worked in Georgia that year and a right-to-work state. And I just remember being like, holy shit. If they can do it, we can do it. And the coolest thing about that strike was that it was solidarity not just of educators, it was all public sector workers that the teachers were unifying with and working towards better conditions for everyone. Like that's the type of fight we need to be engaged in, we can't be siloed in our fights. We have to be together in our fight. So when red states revolt, it sends a huge message. It still in my heart stands out as like one of the most powerful moments in the labor movement.
Martina Meijer 1:23
Watch this country run without workers. Watch the city run for one day without workers. Like, you know? They don't stand a chance! Shut it down! Hot labor summer!
NYC teachers on billionaire wealth
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Video Transcript
John Russell 0:00
You know teachers always tell it like it is. We caught up with a group marching with the Amazon Labor Union in New York City. Listen to what they had to say about Jeff Bezos getting super rich over the pandemic.
65 billion over the pandemic. How does that make you feel as teachers?
Frank Marino 0:12
It makes me want to throw up.
Martina Meijer 0:13
Who needs 1 billion? Like, I don't even... as a fourth-grade teacher... it's actually a very large number. Like it would take your entire lifetime to count to 1 billion. So like, you know, many more of those billions?! Nobody needs that much money. How are you spending that much money? How can we live in a society where we have people who are homeless, children who are living in shelters, and then we're over here like buying multiple... it is a dystopia that I cannot fathom and it just like keeps getting worse. The gap keeps getting bigger.
Talking about unions with skeptics
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Video Transcript
John Russell 0:00
Maybe you're in your workplace and people are a little skeptical about unions. Well, we caught up with his group in New York City teachers standing in solidarity with the Amazon Labor Union. Here's what they say about talking to skeptics about unions.
Frank Marino 0:12
I would say, talk to the people you work with every day. And chances are, the concerns you have about your job are the same concerns that they have about their job, the same struggles they're experiencing and trying to put food on the table, care about take care of their families help ensure their children have a planet that's hospitable, they're gonna feel that connection, you know? And so, you know, put politics aside and just talk to them about your like human conditions. And the chances are, you're gonna find that that sense of connection and work from there, right?
Martina Meijer 0:42
When the unions are demonized, it's like, you gotta listen to like, who is demonizing them? Who are the criticisms coming from? Because things like the New Deal didn't happen because FDR felt like being benevolent one day, it happened because of union power, because of labor action. And, you know, the weekend and nine to five like these, our working hours like this is because labor is organized. So the things that we take for granted, or we appreciate, it's actually the result of labor. Even just the PPE, like, you know, nurses and hospitals, the labor organizations had to fight to make sure that they had PPE for the nurses on the front lines. Like, I don't know why people think that corporations in a capitalist society are somehow going to turn around and be benevolent. People are out to make a dollar. They literally do not care whether we live or die. So you know, who does care are our siblings, our brothers, and sisters in the labor fight. And so exactly as Frank said, you gotta connect on your same level. If the boss is telling you that unions are bad, you gotta read through the lines and be like, Oh, if it makes you mad, then it's my jam. You know you got to really think about where's the message coming from and what's their ulterior motive.
Olivia Swisher 1:42
The reality is nobody's going to give you anything. Like so the more that you have these conversations with folks who stand arm in arm, you're like at the watercooler, whatever you're doing, just talk to people. It's all about building relationships and relationships are what make us strong and that's how we fight back. You can't do it alone.
Class-conscious 90s country
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Video Transcript
John Russell 0:00
I'm about to go deep on some country music.
Uncle Sam’s got his hand in my pockets, and he helps himself each time he needs a dime.
This is a lyric from Travis Tritt's 1992 banger, "Lord Have Mercy on the Working Man," and it's one of my favorites. It's the height of class-conscious country music with lines like, "they're billing me for killing me." And, "why is the rich man busy dancin’, while the poor man plays the band."
Travis is sticking it to the owning class and uniting the overworked masses. And right when he says "why is the rich man busy dancing," guess who he points to in the music video? Ah, Donald freakin’ Trump, who then, like now, is the mascot for everything making life hard for the working class: greed, wealth hoarding, stolen labor, one set of rules for the rich and another for everybody else.
Fast forward to today and Travis Tritt is simping for Donald freakin’ Trump and... Gross Domestic Product? Gross Domestic Product is a tally of how much wealth was stolen from the people who made it in the first place. You sir (Trump) can get your hands off of my country -- the one that I live in and the one that I listened to. And Travis Tritt for God's sake eat a burger, they taste better than boots.
What happened to the “men” in this country?!
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Video Transcript:
John Russell 0:00
What happened to the men in this country?! Back when men were MEN!
Have you ever heard of the Battle of Blair mountain? Where the "men" of this country, 10,000 of them, took up arms against the coal company and the law for trying to bust the union they were fighting for?
You see, the men of this country used to know which side they were on. They had enough self-respect to literally fight for the wealth that they created. They were the ones crawling into a hole in the ground to haul out the stuff that built fantastic wealth and the country as we know it today.
None of it would have happened without their labor and they respected themselves enough to fight for a union and not just buy the company line, that somehow making a handful of people fantastically rich is the best use of your one and only life.
So I kind of have the same question. What did happen to the men of this country and why right now are so many of them, willing to line up and kiss the ass of someone who sits on a gold toilet now?
Bonus hilarity about a time when the country music was good and the CEO-to-worker pay gap wasn’t unimaginable
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Video Text:
Remembering when trucks were stuck, the country was steely, and the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 30:1.
Song in the background: 1982, Randy Travis.