December 30, 2015

Joe Hill: 1915-2015

It was the end of 1915, one hundred years ago. In Salt Lake City, Utah, the courts and the state killed Joe Hill, militant and bard of the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union. From prison, he wrote: “I know that many prominent rebels say that satire and song are out of place in a workers’ organization, and I admit that songs are not indispensable to the cause; but whenever it comes to me, I will continue to write these sung nonsense of mine, even though I know well that the class struggle is a serious thing.” Tom Morello, today’s rebel musician, writes: “Without Joe Hill, there would be no Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, the Clash, Public Enemy, Minor Threat, System of a Down, Rage against the Machine.” Joe Hill explained: “A booklet, no matter how good it is, you read it once and that’s it, but you learn a song by heart and you sing it and sing it; if you take a bit of bare facts and common sense, dress them up with a bit of humor to make them less dry, and put them into a song you can reach many workers who are too poorly educated or too indifferent to read a pamphlet or an editorial. ” The IWW’s base was migrant and seasonal workers, and nothing is lighter, stronger and more transportable than a song; like the civil rights movement, the IWW will be a singing movement, whose militants travel around America carrying two things in their pockets: the card that allows them to be recognized as comrades wherever they go, and the red songbook, The little red songbook, the whose declared aim was to “fan the flames”, stoke the flames of the revolt. Joe Hill was a genius at parody. He took hit songs, popular songs, gospel songs, and reversed the meaning while maintaining the sound. He takes a popular song, the story of the heroic railway worker Casey Jones, and transforms it into Casey Jones the scab, who kills himself to keep the trains running during a strike, arrives in heaven where the angels are fighting, works as a scab there too and ends up shoveling sulfur into hell. From church songs he takes the ability to create community, to sing and improvise all together, and transforms them into hymns to workers’ unity. “There is power in the blood of the lamb,” becomes “there is power in a band of working man,” there is power in a band of workers, when they are united, hand in the hand. As we listen to the bands of the Salvation Army announce the future bliss in the sweetness of the sky (“in the sweet bye and bye”), we invent a phrase that has become familiar to us too: “eat and pray, live on nothing, and you will have pie in the sky.” Without Joe Hill, even a little bit of Gianni Rodari (Pie in the Sky, 1966) wouldn’t be there. Tom Morello writes: “Joe Hill didn’t just write songs against injustice. He was on the front line, risking his life, to create a better and more just world. This is why the powers that be were afraid of him. That’s why they killed him.” His songs have had such an extraordinary and lasting impact because they arise from within the rebellious proletariat, imbued with the language that Joe Hill, a proletarian immigrant, had absorbed on the docks of the port of San Diego, among the lumberjacks of Oregon, in the copper mines , in the saloons of the Bowery, in all the places where he had worked and fought. Joe Hill remains an icon of the left (there is also a film by Bo Widerberg, Joe Hill, 1971. It’s a shame that in the Italian version the songs are sung in pedestrian Italian translations) both for his songs and for the injustice symbolic of his death. The charge of murder by robbery was supported only by vague evidence; the witnesses changed their story ahead of the trial; the trial documents disappeared from the archives; The Utah government refused to listen to protests from around the world and President Wilson’s message calling for a review of the trial. Any resemblance to the story of Sacco and Vanzetti is historically founded. In 1938, Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson remembered him in a song immediately made classic by Paul Robeson’s interpretation: “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill tonight, alive like you. I told him, but Joe, you’ve been dead for years; and he: I never died. Wherever workers are on strike, in every factory and mine, where workers are fighting for their rights, that’s where you’ll find Joe Hill.” There is a trace of this song in Tom Joad’s speech in Steinbeck’s Fury (and in the film John Ford): “Where there is a fight to feed the hungry, I will be there. Where there’s a cop beating someone, I’ll be there…” From the novel and the film, these words reach Woody Guthrie and then Bruce Springsteen: “Where there’s a cop beating someone, where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air, look for me and I will be there…” “My will,” wrote Joe Hill the day before the execution, “is easy to make: there is nothing to divide, because the moss it does not stick to a rolling stone” (already: a rolling stone). If I could decide, I would like my body to be made ash and the ash scattered to the wind, which will carry it where the flowers grow, and perhaps help a withered flower to be reborn.” 30,000 marched at his funeral. But perhaps Hayes and Robinson were right: Joe Hill is not dead, his ghost is here together with that of Tom Joad. Who knows, remembering it and singing it might help to make the workers’ movement for which he lived and was killed a hundred years ago flourish again. Joe Hill, 1971. It’s a shame that in the Italian version the songs are sung in pedestrian Italian translations) both for his songs and for the symbolic injustice of his death. The charge of murder by robbery was supported only by vague evidence; the witnesses changed their story ahead of the trial; the trial documents disappeared from the archives; The Utah government refused to listen to protests from around the world and President Wilson’s message calling for a review of the trial. Any resemblance to the story of Sacco and Vanzetti is historically founded. In 1938, Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson remembered him in a song immediately made classic by Paul Robeson’s interpretation: “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill tonight, alive like you. I told him, but Joe, you’ve been dead for years; and he: I never died. Wherever workers are on strike, in every factory and mine, where workers are fighting for their rights, that’s where you’ll find Joe Hill.” There is a trace of this song in Tom Joad’s speech in Steinbeck’s Fury (and in the film John Ford): “Where there is a fight to feed the hungry, I will be there. Where there’s a cop beating someone, I’ll be there…” From the novel and the film, these words reach Woody Guthrie and then Bruce Springsteen: “Where there’s a cop beating someone, where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air, look for me and I will be there…” “My will,” wrote Joe Hill the day before the execution, “is easy to make: there is nothing to divide, because the moss it does not stick to a rolling stone” (already: a rolling stone). If I could decide, I would like my body to be made ash and the ash scattered to the wind, which will carry it where the flowers grow, and perhaps help a withered flower to be reborn.” 30,000 marched at his funeral. But perhaps Hayes and Robinson were right: Joe Hill is not dead, his ghost is here together with that of Tom Joad. Who knows, remembering it and singing it might help to make the workers’ movement for which he lived and was killed a hundred years ago flourish again. Joe Hill, 1971. It’s a shame that in the Italian version the songs are sung in pedestrian Italian translations) both for his songs and for the symbolic injustice of his death. The charge of murder by robbery was supported only by vague evidence; the witnesses changed their story ahead of the trial; the trial documents disappeared from the archives; The Utah government refused to listen to protests from around the world and President Wilson’s message calling for a review of the trial. Any resemblance to the story of Sacco and Vanzetti is historically founded. In 1938, Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson remembered him in a song immediately made classic by Paul Robeson’s interpretation: “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill tonight, alive like you. I told him, but Joe, you’ve been dead for years; and he: I never died. Wherever workers are on strike, in every factory and mine, where workers are fighting for their rights, that’s where you’ll find Joe Hill.” There is a trace of this song in Tom Joad’s speech in Steinbeck’s Fury (and in the film John Ford): “Where there is a fight to feed the hungry, I will be there. Where there’s a cop beating someone, I’ll be there…” From the novel and the film, these words reach Woody Guthrie and then Bruce Springsteen: “Where there’s a cop beating someone, where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air, look for me and I will be there…” “My will,” wrote Joe Hill the day before the execution, “is easy to make: there is nothing to divide, because the moss it does not stick to a rolling stone” (already: a rolling stone). If I could decide, I would like my body to be made ash and the ash scattered to the wind, which will carry it where the flowers grow, and perhaps help a withered flower to be reborn.” 30,000 marched at his funeral. But perhaps Hayes and Robinson were right: Joe Hill is not dead, his ghost is here together with that of Tom Joad. Who knows, remembering it and singing it won’t help to make the workers’ movement for which he lived and was killed a hundred years ago flourish again. where workers fight for their rights, that’s where you’ll find Joe Hill.” There is a trace of this song in Tom Joad’s speech in Steinbeck’s Fury (and in the film John Ford): “Where there is a fight to feed the hungry, I will be there. Where there’s a cop beating someone, I’ll be there…” From the novel and the film, these words reach Woody Guthrie and then Bruce Springsteen: “Where there’s a cop beating someone, where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air, look for me and I will be there…” “My will,” wrote Joe Hill the day before the execution, “is easy to make: there is nothing to divide, because the moss it does not stick to a rolling stone” (already: a rolling stone). If I could decide, I would like my body to be made ash and the ash scattered to the wind, which will carry it where the flowers grow, and perhaps help a withered flower to be reborn.” At his funeral, 30,000 marched. But perhaps Hayes and Robinson were right: Joe Hill is not dead, his ghost is here together with that of Tom Joad. Who knows, remembering it and singing it might help to make the workers’ movement for which he lived and was killed a hundred years ago flourish again. where workers fight for their rights, that’s where you’ll find Joe Hill.” There is a trace of this song in Tom Joad’s speech in Steinbeck’s Fury (and in the film John Ford): “Where there is a fight to feed the hungry, I will be there. Where there’s a cop beating someone, I’ll be there…” From the novel and the film, these words reach Woody Guthrie and then Bruce Springsteen: “Where there’s a cop beating someone, where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air, look for me and I will be there…” “My will,” wrote Joe Hill the day before the execution, “is easy to make: there is nothing to divide, because the moss it does not stick to a rolling stone” (already: a rolling stone). If I could decide, I would like my body to be made ash and the ash scattered to the wind, which will carry it where the flowers grow, and perhaps help a withered flower to be reborn.” At his funeral, 30,000 marched. But perhaps Hayes and Robinson were right: Joe Hill is not dead, his ghost is here together with that of Tom Joad. Who knows, remembering it and singing it might help to make the workers’ movement for which he lived and was killed a hundred years ago flourish again. 

Alesandro Porteli at 10:19 AM