Labor Power Blog is extending Mothers' Week to Mothers' Month. Today we remember :
http://peoplesworld.org/today-in-labor-history-remembering-florence-reece/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzudto-FA5Y&feature=kp
http://unionsong.com/u015.html
Which Side Are You On?
A Song by Florence Patton Reece
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how that good old union
Has come in here to dwell
Chorus
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
My daddy was a miner
And I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union
Till every battle's won
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair
Oh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?
Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize
French Translation (Gwénaël Forestier)
Venez vous tous, les bons ouvriers
j'ai de bonnes nouvelles à vous dire!
Comment va ce bonne vieux syndicat?
Je te dirais qu'il est là pour durer!
Choeur
De lequel le côté es tu?
De lequel le côté es tu?
De lequel le côté es tu?
De lequel le côté es tu?
Mon papa était un mineur
Et je suis le fils d'un mineur
Je resterai fidèle au syndicat
Jusqu'à ce que chaque bataille soit gagnée
Ils disent dans le Comté de Harlan
Qu'il n'y a personne de neutre ici
Vous, êtes vous un syndicaliste?
Ou, vous êtes, un voyou de la bande à J.H. Blair?
Oh, comment les ouvriers peuvent-ils vous supporter?
Oh, dites-moi comment vous le pouvez?
Êtes vous une vieille croûte?
Ou serez-vous des hommes?
Ne faites pas de boulot pour les patrons
N'écoutez pas leurs mensonges
Nous les pauvres gens, nous n'aurons aucune chance
Sans que nous nous organisions
Notes
Pete Seeger in an introduction to "Which Side Are You On?" on his record "Cant You See This System's Rotten Through And Through" says: "Maybe the most famous song it was ever my privilege to know was the one written by Mrs Florence Reece. Her husband Sam was an organiser in that "bloody" strike in Harlan County, Kentucky in 1932.
They got word that the company gun-thugs were out to kill him, and he got out of his house, I think out the back door, just before they arrived. And Mrs Reece said they stuck their guns into the closets, into the beds, even into the piles of dirty linen. One of her two little girls started crying and one of the men said "What are you crying for? We're not after you we're after your old man"
After they had gone she felt so outraged she tore a calendar off the wall and on the back of it wrote the words and put them to the tune of an old hard-shelled Baptist hymn tune, although come to think of it the hymn tune used an old English ballad melody ... And her two little girls used to go singing it in the union halls."
Many thanks to Gwénaël Forestier for the French translation
"Florence Reece (née Patton; born April 12, 1900, died August 3, 1986) was an American social activist, poet, and folksong writer. Born in Sharps Chapel, Tennessee, the daughter and wife of coal miners, she is best known for the song, "Which Side Are You On?" which, according to folklorist Alan Lomax who collected it from her in 1937, she wrote at age 12 when her father was out on strike. In 1931, during the Harlan County War strike by the United Mine Workers of America and the National Miners Union in which her husband, Sam Reece, was an organizer.[1] She wrote it out on a calendar, possibly updating it, and that's the version known today.
Pete Seeger, collecting labor union songs, learned "Which Side Are You On" in 1940. The following year, it was recorded by the Almanac Singers in a version that gained a wide audience. More recently, Billy Bragg, Dropkick Murphys, Natalie Merchant, and Ani DiFranco each recorded their own interpretations of the song, DiFranco's being a complete rewrite.
Alan Lomax, writing in the American Folk Song Book (1968), says "Florence Reece, a shy, towheaded Kentucky miner's daughter, composed this song at the age of 12 when her father was out on strike. She sang it me standing in front of the primitive hearth of a log cabin in the backwoods of Kentucky in 1937 and it has since become a national union song. The tune is an American variant of the English Jack Munro, "which side are you on" having been substituted for "lay the lily-o"."[citation needed]
Reece appeared in the Academy Award-winning documentary film, Harlan County, USA, singing her anthem to rally the striking miners.
Florence and Sam Reece were married for 64 years, until his death from pneumoconiosis (black lung) in 1978. After a lifetime of speaking out on behalf of unions and social welfare issues, Florence Reece died of a heart attack in 1986 at the age of 86 in Knoxville, Tennessee.[2]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Reece
West Virginia Coal Mine, With More 250 Safety Violations In 2013, Kills Two (VIDEO)/ By Mother Randa Morris
http://take10randa.blogspot.com/2014/05/west-virginia-coal-mine-with-more-250.html
Mining execs among 24 detained by Turkish police
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-turkey-mining-disaster-20140518,0,2134058.story
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