When it comes to “A Tribute to Hard Working People Everywhere,” Si Kahn and George Mann sure know what they’re singing about. Having both spent many years as close-to-the-ground union organizers, they know first-hand the hardships and challenges everyday working people face – but also how with courage and hope we can organize together to realize our dreams.
I first met George 25 years ago, when we were both hard-working organizers with the 600,000 member Communications Workers of America (CWA). Even back then, he was already a fine labor singer and songwriter.
Si and I go back even further, to 1987, when I asked him to emcee the founding convention of Jobs with Justice, today a powerful national organization working and fighting for the rights of all workers. Si played important roles as an organizer in such historic winning union campaigns as the Brookside Strike in ‘Bloody Harlan’ County, Kentucky with the UMWA, and the J.P. Stevens Campaign across the South with ACTWU.
Si wrote these 21 songs (one a co-write with Tom Chapin) to celebrate workers and our organizing. As Si turns 80, please join me in celebrating not only generations of courageous union organizers and musicians, but your own life and work, as we organize and build our movement together: “For the Union Makes Us Strong”
Solidarity Forever,
Larry Cohen
Like all prayers, the great union songs connect us across time. What matters when we close our eyes and link arms are the images that float before us: of picket lines, strikes, shift meetings, marches, demonstrations, vigils, jails. We hear the places we have been, ourselves and others like us, in the lilt and lift of the songs. We hear the people we want to be.
We hear, too, those who are not like us, the union-busters, gun thugs, strikebreakers, police chiefs and sheriffs who so often blocked the way. They, too, are immortalized in the songs, frozen in time, caught as if by a camera in a fast-moving moment of history.
If it were not for Florence Reece’s unforgettable question in song, Which Side Are You On? who would ever remember Bloody Harlan’s Sheriff Blair? Yet as our singing voices build, we swear again that we will not thug for J. H. Blair, in Kentucky or anywhere else, because we are for the union, we know which side we are on.
She’s right, you know. The union does make us strong. The truth will make us free. We shall live in peace.
And we shall overcome.
— Si Kahn, Charlotte, North Carolina
##########
When Si and I began talking seriously about making this album, there were two guiding principles: getting a bunch of Si’s unreleased songs and recordings out there, and including selections from some of the many artists who have recorded Si’s songs over the years. We also wanted to keep the focus on songs of workers, work, and the trade union movement that is so dear to both of us. Thank you, Si, for having faith that we could make this album together, and trusting in my choices. I also extend my great appreciation to Will Russell and Electric Wilburland, the wonderful studio I discovered so many years ago, and the perfect cocoon for creating these new recordings. Happy birthday, Si, and solidarity to all fellow workers!
— George Mann, Ithaca, New York
Order the CD or download the songs as MP3s on the shop page.