Ira Grupper irag@iglou.com
LABOR PAEANS— December 2010 - January 2011
Ira Grupper
(published by FORsooth, newspaper of Louisville, Kentucky chapter of F.O.R. [Fellowship of Reconciliation] )
The Salt of the Earth
As the year draws to an end, my mind is divided into two camps. One is almost overwhelmed at the whipping the working class has gotten from the ruling class, all over the world.
The other looks to the poetry and songs of the U.S. working class, and draws hope from this wellspring, a tributary of the worldwide toiling masses, the valiant fightback taking place today in France, Greece, Venezuela, and beginning to cohere in the United States as well, thru One Nation, the creativity of the Steelworkers (USW), the continuing work of the UE (electrical workers) in international solidarity, the fight for Single Payer, the courage of nurses in building their strength.
One problem in the U.S. is class consciousness. A number of years ago I heard the following conversation on the street: Person # 1: “What’s happenin’?” Person # 2: “Aint nothin’ happenin’.” This metaphysical analysis was followed with: Person # 1: ”You aint shit.” Person # 2: “I know.”
Well, truth be known, there are, indeed, things happening. And we are, to be sure, more than just the dregs of creation; in fact, now, as in times past, and notwithstanding automation, “without our brain and muscle not a single wheel would turn.”
How did our consciousness, of our class, of ourselves, fall so low? Here’s how. We are all in the desert, and our mouths are parched and dry. We’re going to die.
Well, comes Ira to the rescue. I tell you there’s a water hole down yonder. Y’all are so grateful you make a mad dash for the water hole. And when you get there you discover there is no water hole. It was a mirage, “an optical phenomenon, esp. in the desert or at sea, by which the image of some object appears displaced above, below, or to one side of its true position as a result of spatial variations of the index of refraction of air.”
Hell, it aint no spatial variation, but, rather, I done told you a big fat lie. So you rush back to get to me for positing false hope, for tricking you.
But I’ve been busy in the interim. I drank from the real water hole, got strong, and then hired workers to put a high wall around it. And on top: machine guns and machine gun turrets. Y’all return, and I magnanimously tell you: if you want water, if you want sustenance, you will have to work for me.
So, you work for me. But some among you realize that there’s more of you than there are of me, and I get scared. So, I divide you. I get men to think they are better than women, whites to think they are better than non-whites. I set up soup kitchens while I cut folk off unemployment and health insurance. And I keep making money from your labor power.
But, lest you think I have no heart, I take my ill-gotten gains and set up the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, aided and abetted by Warren Buffett. Then I pepper you with Fox News and, in the interest of full disclosure, CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN as well. Have mercy.
Still, there is remembrance of the valiant efforts at evolving class consciousness:And so the powers that be call us names: anarchists, communists, hippies, troublemakers. The Brazilian Catholic priest, Dom Helder Camara, responded: “When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist.”
“…we have a glowing dream/ of how fair the world would seem,/ When (men and women)
live their (lives) secure and free./ When the earth is owned by labor,/ And there’s joy
and peace for all,/ In that commonwealth of toil that is to be.”
We have a tracking system we call U.S. high school curricula. In the universities, with their faux self-actualization, nobody tells you that the janitor who supplies the restrooms with toilet paper is as important as the professor who supplies the mind with information.
This topic of misinformation was addressed so eloquently by the magnificent Malvina Reynolds, so many decades ago:We are hog-tied with right-to-work legislation, flummoxed by slick media vomit, and courted by tv ads for furniture and gadgets.
It’s not the world I thought it was.
It once seemed fair,
Singing with laughter everywhere,
And all on fire
With spring bloom and the gleam
Of young desire, And filled with song.
But I was wrong.
It’s not like that at all.
Sunlight is empty,
And there’s such darkness in the day,
I cannot figure any clear design,
Nor find my way.
It’s not the world’s fault,
It’s mine.
It’s mine and theirs
Who fed me dreams
Instead
Of coarse bread,
And taught me how to hear
The music of stream and bird,
Instead of how to cry
Without being heard;
Who had me learn verse
Instead of how to curse.
Cheer up—there is hope! We are our own hope. There is beauty in the world. There is truth. There is sex. There is music.
A few months ago I had the blues. And then I was listening to Bettye Lavette singing Mick Jaggers’ “Salt of the Earth (Raise your glass to the hard-working people).” It didn’t make the problems go away. But it was so smooth, it gave courage to fight for a better world the next morning.
I am not a drinker. But I salute the imagery, and the message, in wishing y’all, in advance, a Happy New Year:
Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the uncounted heads
Let’s think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange
beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio
Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth
Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth
Let’s drink to the two thousand million
Let’s think of the humble of birth
Contact Ira Grupper: irag@iglou.com