Spirit in Action
In Union We Are Strong - Si Kahn
Si Kahn is a powerful singer/songwriter - and an historian, capturing the actions and lives of those who are working for a better world. With over 40 years fighting and singing for civil rights, worker's rights, he speaks with experience and authority. His newest book is Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists & Quiet Lovers of Justice and his latest CD is Courage. Si comes from strong Jewish roots.
- Broadcast on:
- 13 Mar 2011
- Audio Format:
- other
(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - As I speak, Wisconsin is very much in the midst of an astounding experience of combative energies. A Republican governor and legislature determined to dramatically weaken the unions of public employees in this state. And of course, the same attack is progressing in a number of other states. In response, there has been a powerful and clear voice from the unions, public and private, and from a wide range of other concerned individuals with tens of thousands of them marching in Madison and around the state daily. So it's particularly appropriate that my spirit in action guest today is Sai Khan, organizer and Baladir. His recent book is Creative Community Organizing, a guide for rabble-rousers, activists, and quiet lovers of justice. And his latest CD is Courage. Sai has strong Jewish roots and lives his life to help lift up the well-being and voices of all people. Welcome back, Sai, this time to spirit in action. - Well, I'm really happy to be back. - Even when you were being a song of the soul, you were a spirit in action. They're just so inextricably entwined for you. - Well, I think they are for just about everybody that inhabits our world, don't you, Mark? - Well, maybe, but I don't really quite understand. The statistics I see are that people spend an average of three, four, five, six hours a day watching TV. I have no idea how anybody finds that much free time. - Well, but they're watching Glenn Beck and then they go out and go to Tea Party Rally. That's the spirit of action. It's just doesn't have to be my particular spirit. - Yeah, right. Speaking of Tea Party, that kind of interaction, I mean, you know, you're a union organizer. I don't know if I have a sense that Tea Party is pro or anti-union. That kind of thing, do you actually run into these people when you're performing or doing your activism? - You know, I actually never have, you know, friends who are Tea Party, not so much activists, but sort of sympathizers. And we just don't talk about that, or we do, but no, I don't actually have that. That's a very interesting question. Now, Nikki Haley, the Tea Party activist who became elected governor of South Carolina, just to the South of me here in North Carolina. She has been vociferously and fairly vitriolically, anti-union, that has said that the state of South Carolina, we use its power to prevent the unionization of a plant down there in Charleston. She's been sued as actually a Boeing factory down in North Charleston, South Carolina. And she's been sued by the International Association of Machinists, the IAM, for crossing the legitimate line and opposing workers' rights to organize. That is not something a governor has the right to do. So I don't know that Nikki Haley is typical of a Tea Party anti-union attitude, but you know, it wouldn't surprise me. There's a set of attitudes that tends to go together, sort of nativist, anti-immigrant racist, and I think that's, frankly, just flat out true of the majority of Tea Party leadership. They're somewhat careful, but not careful about, but it's clearly a white movement, not a multiracial movement. And anti-unionism tends to go very strongly along as a part of that. So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised, and I don't want to assume things that I don't know. And I would be very pleasantly surprised to discover that the Tea Party is supporting the right of workers to organize. That would be great. - Of course, you've been active in all kinds of organizing for decades now. Union organizing, certainly, is part of it. You grew up in a union family? - Well, yes, yes, no. My dad, Rabbi Benjamin Kahn, was the head of the Hello Rabbi's Association, which later became a local of AFSCME, the American Federation of State County and municipal employees. And they had buttons that said union rabbi, actually one of my favorite musical moments with this particular rabbi's local, AFSCME, the Sing It There Annual Meeting. And my dad came, and he had some of his, you know, rabbinical friends from the '30s were all in the back, linking arms and singing along on solidarity forever, it was a great moment. So I grew up in a pro-union, but not union family. Although I said my dad was the head of the Rabbi's Association, he used to say to me later, he said, you know, I tried to get persuade the guys that we were a union, that we were workers too, but, you know, they were into being professionals and having an association, that's a common attitude. So, yeah, so I grew up with good attitudes, but in a very anti-union part of the country, in the Worcester County, Pennsylvania, people think the North is uniformly pro-union, it isn't. - We've got some of that story in the Song of the Soul interview I did with you. I wanna call our listeners' attention right away to your book from this past year, Creative Community Organizing, a guide for rabble-rousers, activists and quiet lovers of justice. It's quite an inspirational set of organizing principles and stories, and of course, stories are the thing that you do so well in your music and in your book. I'm not ignoring that one. - That's, well, I was gonna ask you though, do you think that my book, Creative Community Organizing, a guide for rabble-rousers, activists, and quiet lovers of justice, do you see that as an example of spirit and action? - Well, absolutely, absolutely. I think any time, well, any time that we take the spirit that's within us and we help share it with the world, we're doing that. And of course, you talk about all the ways in which you do it and which you can free people to follow their indwelling spirit and live it out in the world. And to make a difference, I mean, one of the things I love about spirit in action is as it expands and covers more of the earth and people get to see each other's spirit moving in the world. Some people, the last line in your title or in your subtitle, and quiet lovers of justice, sometimes, and this is something with a Quaker saying this, sometimes we can be too quiet. We need to convert our inner spirit into light that shines into the world. And you're doing that. - Well, thank you very much. Now, I think there's actually a song on my latest CD, which is called "Courage", which is actually a companion volume companion CD to my book "Creative Community Organizing" and vice versa. Each of the chapters in "Creative Community Organizing" starts with a set of song lyrics and half of those song lyrics, eight of them and all, come from the CD "Courage" 'cause on the CD, I'm talking about the quiet heroism of everyday people. So many of those are songs about real people, people I've met, people I've known, people I've talked to who are over the phone, who demonstrate a kind of spirit in action. So maybe we could play one of those songs, this particular song is called "Karens Khelen". And let me just say a few words in introduction. Clarence was a friend of mine from Madison, Wisconsin, just south of you guys, right? - Yep, that's right. - So Clarence was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. And very briefly, here's what that was about. In the 1930s, as Nazism was rising in Germany and as fascism was rising in Italy, and as fascist and pronouncing movements were rising in every European country, right? Every country had its pro-fascist movement. As that was happening, the people of Spain, who had never had a Democratic Republic, who had always lived under a monarchy, finally abolished the monarchy and established the Democratic government, which was called the Spanish Republic. At the same time, fascist forces within Spain objected to the implementation of democracy. And the army of North Africa, which was actually part of the Spanish army at that time, Spain occupied what is now Morocco. They invaded Spain under General Francisco Bronco, allied with the Nazis in Germany and the fascists in Italy, attempted to overthrow the Spanish Republic and establish a fascist government. Many folks who don't know the history might know Pablo Picasso's painting, Wernica, a giant canvas with great violence and then people dying and in pain. That commemorates the bombing of civilians in the town of Wernica, which is held in the Basque Park of Spain, that was carried out by the Luftwaffe, Hitler's Air Force, is an act of solidarity with the Spanish fascists. And the United States and the so-called Western democracies, Europe, France and Spain, basically said, this is a civil war, we're not gonna interfere. What it was was a staging ground for World War II and Hitler and Mussolini trying out their new airplanes and warships and bombs and rockets and trying to establish a fascist ally for them within Europe. So they said, we will not interfere, we will maintain neutrality. But all over the world, young people, socialist, communist, Quakers, serving in non-combatant positions, peace activists went to Spain to volunteer the fight to defend the republic against fascism, against the laws of their own countries. And Kyrus was one of those. He was very, very badly wounded, came back to Madison and could have spent his life as a war hero. He could have got around the country lecturing about what he had done in the Spanish Civil War. And instead, he just became a passionate volunteer for everything that was good. It didn't matter what it was, it was a take back the night march, it was a peace vigil, it was a soup kitchen. Whatever it was, he was there as a volunteer, never taking leadership in an aggressive way, always taking quiet leadership, leading from the center of the crowd. And this song was commissioned by the Wisconsin Community Fund. They didn't pay me anything for it, but they asked me to do it. When they had a celebration in honor of Clarence's 90th birthday but it tells the story of somebody who was motivated by a set of beliefs that we can call faith that we can call. It's a, you know, Clarence was Jewish, she was profoundly secular, but he had great faith in people. And I think that's what spirited action rests on. So there's two things to help you understand the song. Lake Bendona is the big lake in the middle of Madison, and I imagine that Clarence would never have accepted a statue of himself, but I wanted one on the shores of Lake Bendona. Just if Clarence got a quiet, you know, slim as he was, and even in old age, just kind of look it out towards the future. Then there's a reference to a mighty potluck wire. That's because Clarence was the founder of the Madison Socialist Potluck, which still meets every month, and then you can go online. And if you're a Madison, you should find a covered dish and come by. Clarence Kaling, by Saicon. The decks are cleared, the hold is full. All right, wing cargo jettisoned. Our course is set as we go proudly, sailing forth from Madison, and who has come to see us all, as he has done so often, to stand and gaze out from the shore, far beyond Wisconsin. From Lake Bendona to the sea, our freedom ships are set, all hands to work and to dip the sails as we pass Clarence Kaling. Though he's been constant through the years, it's not every fight he's been in. Somehow, he missed both Valley Forge and Battleship, the Texan, but he has always done his part and tried to do his share of good. From the Spanish Civil War to the front lines of his neighborhood. From Lake Bendona to the sea, our freedom ships are set, all hands to work and to dip the sails as we pass Clarence Kaling. As Clarence how to live a life of purpose and direction, he says you simply make a left at every intersection. He is a conscience and a guide when clarity is unraveled, whatever roads we choose to ride, whichever sea we travel. From Lake Bendona to the sea, our freedom ships are set, all hands to work and to dip the sails as we pass Clarence Kaling. As Clarence how he likes these lines, he's briefly introspective, then says all songs of praise should be both modest and collective. So altogether, let us form a mighty potluck choir. And simply say it comes, you have raised our voices higher, you have raised our voices higher. From Lake Bendona to the sea, our freedom ships are set. All hands to work and to dip the sails as we pass Clarence Kaling. As we pass Clarence Kaling. Again, the song is Clarence Kaling. It's by Saikon who's with us here today for spirit and action. He's been moving his spirit and stirring up spirits, rabble rousing, song raising, he does all of that. And you should check him out, Saikon.com is placed to find information on him. So Clarence Kaling, we start out with him and this is also part of the stories that you weave through your book, Creative Community Organizing. This isn't your first book though, how many others do you have out? You know, I've got three others that are in print, and a couple of them are in manuscript and may stay there, who knows? No, actually I've got four others. There's a Saikon song published by Hal Leonard, a Wisconsin-based publisher. There's my first organizing book called How People Get Power. My second organizing book, Organizing A Guide for grassroots leaders, these are in print at the National Association of Social Workers Press, and then there's the Fox in the Hand House. Our privatization threatens democracy, which I co-wrote with a feminist philosopher, a public philosopher, Elizabeth Minigmy, very long term and much loved partner and spouse. You're quite a student I think of history. I think maybe being so involved in movements, unless you do look back and learn from history, a lot of the lessons are lost on you today. We'll repeat the same mistakes, of course, and any great experiences you had with that, you start out your first chapter, you're talking about organizing in Arkansas and the way that they patiently led you along through your learning curve. Well, you know, what I would say is this is not exactly the answer to your question, so you could force me to answer it, but my academic training is, as a historian, by undergraduate degree, is in medieval history and literature. You know, people look at me funny and say, medieval history and literature, and I say, you know, it turns out that if you're going to spend your life trying to organize the South, it does turn out that understanding of feudalism is very useful, right? And it is. I mean, it's about economic relationships and political relationships, exploitation, all of those things. And I also realized, and actually, fairly recently, a couple years ago, that part of what I'm doing with my music is acting as a historian. I'm translating from one form of history to another. I could, for example, have written an essay about Clarence Kalen. I could have written a newspaper or a magazine story about Clarence Kalen. I could have produced a radio program about Clarence Kalen, but my way of presenting history is through song. In particular, I'm trying to document the history of first of activists, of, you know, all the wonderful people that you and I know that believe the change is possible in our lifetimes and beyond, and who fight for justice. I pay tribute to and tell about the lives of these people, and I hope that it inspires others. Clarence Kalen is that kind of song. I hope right after this we'll play Custodian. It's that kind of an example, a piece of real history that came to me and that I felt would be inspiring to people, so I've turned it into a song. I'm also documenting in song the communities that I've worked in and the ways of life that are actually passing pretty much out of existence and in front of our eyes. When I first started working with the Textile Workers Union of America, PWA Textile Workers Union of America, there were a million Textile Workers in the South. Today there are probably not 50,000 Textile Workers left in the entire United States, so, you know, milk town after milk town is gone, you know, with the wind. When I started working with the United Mine Workers of America, on the Brookside Strike at Harlan County, Kentucky, there were probably 750,000 underground miners left. The day where data may be 50,000 at most, and the fight is over strip mining and mountaintop removal. Small farms used to be common where I grew up in Central Pennsylvania, where I've worked across the South, pushed out of existence by corporate farming. So, I'm documenting these ways of life in song. So, here's the story behind Custodian. Custodian, I think, also really speaks to spirited action after the song. I'll comment on it. But here's how it came to me. When Elizabeth Minnick and I wrote The Fox in the Head House, how privatization threatens democracy, you know, of course, we went to our friends in radio and did interviews. We did a lot of them together. We did some of them separately. So, I was doing the labor show on cable radio, great progressive radio station out of Portland, Oregon, and it was a call-in show. And the host said, "Oh, it's you, Grant. I figured you'd be calling in. Grant here, Si." And Grant said, "Sci, good to hear you this morning?" He said, "I've got a story you need to hear." And he proceeded to tell me the story that I then made into the song Custodian. I was interviewed last week on public radio. A man called up with something that I didn't know. My name is Grant. He said, "Here's what you need to hear. I'm a Custodian. At least I wasn't until last year. This word Custodian. Hitting me is to take good care. Or something might have hurt the kids. Well, I was there. For any troubled kid, I was their right-hand man, the school Custodian. There to land a guiding hand. But now the jobs we did have all been privatized. Our lives, the public goods sold for the lowest price. A corporation does the cleaning work we did. They want the money. Not to help some troubled kid. I see them on the street down at the movie show. My kids rush up to hug me. Grant, where did you go? Their parents say to me, "The school's just not the same. If no one cares, Custodian is just a name." We're standing at the edge of a forest of lies. Where all we hold in common has been privatized. Work corporations own every quarter of the land. When everything is private, where will freedom stand? Those who only live for profit, work to tear this country down. All we have to stand on is our common ground. And only we can find. Our way back home from here, we are Custodians of all than we hold dear. We are Custodians of all than we hold dear. A real tribute to a Custodian, a real Custodian in Oregon. Here shared by Saikon, who's with us for spirit and action today. And Keboo, by the way, has run some of my programs. Don't run them regularly yet, but I think we better talk to him right Saikon. I think you better talk to him right now. And here's what's not in the song. Grant Walters, the guy who told me this great story, was the President of the Service Employees International Union local that represents the Custodian. And SEIU sued the Portland Oregon Board of Education on behalf of its members. And the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the school board had acted illegally and ordered them to offer everybody their jobs back. So after the saw was over, there was a significant victory. And part of what I did in this song is it starts with Grant's story. It's very particular, it talks about him, what happened to him. But then in the third section, there's a shift. And it starts talking about our common responsibility, our responsibility for the common wealth, for the public, for public spaces. It ends by saying we are custodians of all that we hold dear. And I think there, that's reflecting the Christian concept of stewardship, the Quaker concept of stewardship. We are responsible for what we hold in common. We are responsible for the common good. And I see that as very much something about how you take spirit and move it into action. You know, you said Christian or Quaker stewardship. I assume Jewish as well, isn't it? And now what you learned growing up? Well, it's what I learned growing up, not necessarily by that name. I mean, I'm thinking here particularly of the use of the words stewardship. I think it's very deeply ingrained in Jewish theology, religion, tradition, and history. Good point, thank you. You're so great at telling these stories. Is it always you just one person on stage when you go out? Is it just you up on stage or do you go with a band or do you perform in other ways? You know, I ordinarily perform solo. That's as much about economics. But also telling stories is not an activity that on stage usually involves multiple people, unless you get into theater, which we're going to do in about five minutes. I do work with many different artists in concert. Usually to get a fuller and richer instrumental sound, sometimes just to have company on stage so we can create harmonies. I've worked for years with my great friend John McCutchen, a wonderful humanitarian as well as a phenomenal artist and president of my local of the American Federation of Musicians, a great union president. I've done extensive work with Jane Sapp, a great African-American gospel and freedom singer from Augusta, Georgia, with Pete Seeger, with Tom Chapin, Kathy Fink, and Marcy Markzer. I work extensively with the Kruger brothers who came to this country from Switzerland, or now living an hour from me. I work in Europe with a German bluegrass band called the Looping Brothers, and with a Dutch duo of two young women who are called Ingresil. I think part of the fun of being an artist is the chance to create music with other people and for other people. Storyteller, the way I tell stories collectively is through musical theater. I can't even remember where it was marked, but a kid about ten years old came up to me after a concert or a talk and said, "Are you famous?" Which is a great question. And I said, "Okay, let me explain it like this. Have you started studying statistics in school yet?" And this kid said, "Yeah, a little bit. They're probably a little older than maybe they're twelve or fourteen." And I said, "Okay, well, there's six billion people in the world, right?" The kid said, "That's about right." And I said, "Well, statistically, nobody knows who I am." And they thought for a minute and then laughed, right? Because statistically, the percentage of the people even in this country who know who I am is infinitesimal. But then I said, "But you know what?" And the kid said, "What?" I said, "There is a tiny group of people who do know who I am, and they are wonderful people." And now that's really, but I do preach to a certain choir, which I think is a valuable function. I tell people that, "But don't you feel you shouldn't just preach the choir?" They first, you know, "I don't know who's listening." I try to create music that's open to everybody. It's not sort of Dr. Anair left-wing music that that internalized, which I think is very valuable. And there's some artists that do a great job of that. I try to make my music accessible to anybody, including Tea Party members and conservatives. I spend my life working with poor and working people. I want my music to be accessible to them as well as to those who have an education or who have privilege. I'm not trying to leave anybody out of my music. So you mentioned this musical theater. How do you do that? What are you talking about there? It's the same thing as what I do an individual song except there's a lot more people on stage. Although sometimes it's a one-person show, so for example, John McCutchen and I are working together on a musical. I should say, all my work in theater is its own musicals. And again, I'm doing the same thing that I do as a musical historian. I'm taking history of translating it into music and onto the stage. So I wrote, as a gift for John, a one-person show called Immigrant. Oh, I should say, it stars John. He's the one on stage. I'm the one in the audience in wondering how extraordinary he is. There's another Wisconsin kid for you. Sure, I know he's from over by Wasa. I've had him on my spirit in action. I still haven't got his song of the soul, but we'll work towards that. Yeah, you'll get him. Yeah, it does a wonderful, wonderful guy. So I wrote a show based on the life of Joe Hill, the great immigrant labor activist songwriter and martyr, having been judicially executed by a firing squad at Utah State Penitentiary in Salt Lake City in 1915. I've got half a dozen musicals that I've done. One is as a world premiere this year, and we'll hear about that. Another is a revival this fall. So for all of the other musicals, I did the music and lyrics, and somebody else wrote the script. For Immigrant, Joe Hill wrote the songs. They're 100 years old, and I wrote the script. That's one example. So what I try to do in Immigrant is create a sense of history to tell a story that is politically important and humanly important. Here we have Joe Hill, a Swedish kid who comes to this country and his teens and becomes just sort of a migrant worker. He works on the docks. He works in lumber camps, timber camps. He does any kind of work he can find or pick up. He gets caught in the San Francisco earthquake, and having come here like so many immigrants, you know, my Yiddish speaking grandparents has called it the Golden Medina, the Golden Land. And it turned out that it was not that at all. And Joe Hill, like immigrants then, like my grandparents, like the immigrants today, they encountered every kind of prejudice, racism, anti-Semitism. They encountered poverty and hardship and laws designed to force them back where they came from. And when Joe Hill ran into this, he became radicalized. He joined the industrial workers of the world, the IWW, the Wobbly, and he discovered a talent for songwriting. He wrote all these songs making fun of the bosses. We still sing the preacher and the slave. We still sing Casey Jones, the scab engineer. These songs will survive for a hundred years. And people all over the world know them and sing them in many different languages. So that's a piece of story marked a piece of history as well as a piece of story that people should hear. They should be inspired by it. They should say he had courage, he fought for what he believed. He paid a very high price for it. That's what I try to do. The musical that's coming up next, and for your listeners who may be in New England in May and June, this is called Silver Spoon. I'm not going to tell the story, but it opens on May the 19th at the Nora Theatre in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It runs through June the 19th. We've got a five-week full production. The best thing is to Google the Nora Theatre or go to centralsquaretheatre.com, or you can just Google Silver Spoon. It'll come up. It's very funny. My co-author is an established boss at Playwright named Amy Merrill. It was a wonderful sense of humor and of drama. And this is a song from that musical. It's called Washington Square. On the southeast corner of Green Street and Waverly. On the east side of Washington Square. The air is still troubled, the sidewalk unsettled. Young voices still crying through the afternoon air. March 25th, 1911. This is the way she told it to me. A factory of immigrants, Jews and Italians are hard at their work when a fire breaks free. We've got the triangle, shirt-waste factory. Women fall through the bitter spring air. Their young faces turn to question me. I still hear their voices as I walk in Washington Square. They rush to the doors, but the bosses have flocked them. Let someone step out for breath of fresh air. Trapped in this wreckage, they run for the windows. Stir ten stories down to the street lying there. They stand on the ledges, the fire behind them. The wider before them, they jump holding hands. They cry out in the ish, cry out in a tag. And plunge to the street where my own mother stands. At the triangle, shirt-waste factory. Women fall through the bitter spring air. Their young faces turn to question me. I still hear their voices as I walk in Washington Square. One two years later, she still can't believe it. She cries through her story, I said at her feet. 123 immigrant women, 23 men, lighted in the street. This is our history, this moment that shapes us. My mother falls silent, tears frame her cheeks. She could never forget, I will always remember. It could have been her, it still could be me. At the triangle, shirt-waste factory. Women fall through the bitter spring air. Their young faces turn to question me. I still hear their voices as I walk in Washington Square. I still hear their voices as I walk in Washington Square. Another great slice of history, Washington Square. It's amazing the things that we don't know about in this country. One of the things I've lamented over the times I've been on the earth, and it's 56 years and counting at this point, is the decrease in power of unions and the unbalanced rise in corporate power. Those two so far out of balance does good for very few people. Oh, absolutely. There was a time when unions were not just powerful, but in a sense no big deal. You didn't have to explain why you were a union member. You didn't have to say, "I won't buy that. It doesn't have the union label. That's all changed. That's all changed." This is another history that the other musical that I've got coming up this year tells. And again, it's something nobody knows about. There are almost nobody knows about. So here's the story that became the musical some sweet day. In 1937, in the tiny little Mississippi River Delta town of Taranza, Arkansas, 11 white man and 7 black man met under cover of darkness in Clay East gas station on the main and only street of town. They were all sharecroppers and tenant farmers, and they pledged to each other that they would no longer pick cotton or 20 cents, 100 pound, that they would go to the plantation owners, go to the planners, go to the bosses and say, "We demand a dollar, 100 pounds for picking cotton, or we will let that cotton lie in the fields and rot when it comes to picking time." They organized the union that was called the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Got lots of assistance from the American Socialist Party under Norman Thomas from the British Socialist Party, which said, "Observers to help." And when the plantation owners laughed at them, they went on strike as soon as the cotton was ready to pick 30,000 black and white workers, all up and down the Mississippi River Delta on the Arkansas side, walked out and refused to pick cotton. And against anybody's expectations, they won, and they got their dollar, 100 pound. It is as far as we know, but we are quite certain that we know. The first time in the history of the United States that black and white agricultural workers, sharecroppers, intended farmers, built a biracial union and went on strike. And this is the story that we hear in the musical Some Sweet Day. It opens on Labor Day weekend appropriately. September 2nd, Friday night, it's going to play at the Heritage Music Theater. It's in Sedoma County, California. You were in the process of assembling a cast. It's absolutely wonderful. The book is by long time friends, Mac Prickle and Don Jones out of Nashville, Tennessee. And you know, it's a story of the most dispossessed, the most terrorized, the most having to do without workers, having the unbelievable courage to form a union black and white together in the deepest self in 1937, and to stay together and to win. And the song "We Are Strong" helps from this musical. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ In the silence of a world gone crazy ♪ ♪ Truth and justice lose their way ♪ ♪ We are standing at the edge of midnight ♪ ♪ Longing for a new day ♪ ♪ Though the night divides us from each other ♪ ♪ Though the days are hard and long ♪ ♪ When we walk along this road together ♪ ♪ We are strong ♪ ♪ We are strong ♪ ♪♪ A beautiful song and a beautiful message. We are strong. Thank you so much for that song and that message, Si. It's just incredible. Mark, you're absolutely welcome. I think that's a hymn. I think there's no way that's not a hymn. It doesn't belong to any particular denomination and it shouldn't. You know, I sometimes say that what I write is Jewish labor gospel. You know, it sounds like gospel, but it's actually non-denominational. And hopefully it doesn't have anything that would offend any particular religion or faith or lack of it. It is, for me, very much a message of spirit and action. It says, you know, when the years of dust have choked our voices, till there's not a word to say, we will look to where the plow is turning longing for a new day. Now, that's somewhat apocalyptic language. You could find it in different religious texts, the image of the plow used in different ways. I really see we are strong as a hymn. Of course, there's politics in there, but the politics depend on who is singing it. In this case, it's a group of African-American and white chaircroppers and tenant farmers singing it while they're on strike in 1937 in the depths of the delta. That politicizes it immensely. But these are also people who have faith in the future and who are religious people. And so that comes out as well. It comes out beautifully. While we're getting down to the end of our hour, I'd like to have one more song. Can we have a story and a song together? Let me end with one more song from some sweet day that speaks explicitly to the importance of spirited action. And in this case, a religious face in motivating people to political action. The story behind this dog is of Therabigues. The Therabigues is an imagined character made up by my friends Don Bogey-Jones and Mac Perkel, you know, writing in Nashville, but based absolutely on the many, many women who were union organizers, organizers for union, for the chaircroppers who participated in the Southern Tenant Farmers Union Strike in 1937, who worked for the Socialist Party, for the Communist Party, who helped build the CIO, the Congress of Industrial Organizations. And Sarah is a preacher's daughter from Tyrontha in our show, right? And so she grows up at her daddy's church, and she has passionate religious faith, which she never loses. She never becomes a secular activist. She always remains a religious-based activist. And she goes away to school, and she hears ideas that she never heard in Tyrontha, that she never heard in her daddy's church, because she's white, and the church is racially segregated. And, you know, her father is probably a good man, but he's not going to allow African Americans into his church. While she's away, there are Jane Biggs learns a new way of looking at the world. And she realizes that her mission, and for her it is a religious mission, is to return to Tyrontha and to open the eyes of the people with whom she has grown up, to a different way of looking at race, to a different way of looking at unions, to a different way of looking at religion. And in the last verse, as she begins to think if she leans down and she picks up dirt from in front of her, there's real dirt on the stage, and she lets it run between her fingers. She says, she sings, "I can feel the future running like this dirt between my hands. I have seen a new day coming for the people and the land like my daddy preached before me. Let me stand for what is right. Hallelujah for the union. Praise the Lord and bless this strike." [music] Have you ever been like some lost child? What until this world so all alone? Have you ever felt you were a stranger? Trying to make your way back home? Trying to get back where you started? Where they know your people and your past? Have you ever stopped, stood and wondered? If you'll ever find that place at least. So my old times are not forgotten. They shine like childhood in the light. Old memories sleep, he's sad to come, and dreams dance too, on the river tonight. [music] I have dreamed beyond the delta, past this world of black and white. Seeing the truth behind the pictures, photographed and wrong and right. Felt the power that can shake us, far beyond the lives we've found. Seeing the unexpected flower, from more who's beneath the ground. So my old times are not forgotten, they shine like childhood in the light. Old memories sleep, he's sad to come, and dreams dance too, on the river tonight. [music] I can feel the future running, like this dirt between my hands. I can see a new day rising, for the people and the land. Like my daddy preached before me, let me stand for what is right. Hallelujah for the union, praise the Lord and bless the strength. So my old times are not forgotten, they shine like childhood in the light. Old memories sleep, he's sad to come, and dreams dance too, on the river tonight. [music] What a beautiful hymn for what is right. Bless this strike, wow. We don't see enough of that in the USA, they still do it pretty commonly over in France and in England. Maybe just because they're older than we are, maybe we will grow up to people who are like to have with that respect. I also want to say, there's far more of it in the United States, it's not always progressive, right? But if you're a democracy, you actually have to believe that everybody should organize, that everybody should ever write to say their piece. That's what freedom of speech is about, it's what freedom of action is about. So let's get into the public arena and let's plug it out for what democracy means, but let's not make that about anything other than human beings. We should not be allowing corporations to dominate the public discourse. It should be about you and me and she and he, we should as individual people alive in this world be doing what we can to make it a better place for everybody. And we should do that without interference from corporations, whether the Supreme Court says they're just like human beings or not. You're absolutely right. And for our listeners again, Saikon's book is Creative Community Organizing, a guide for rabble-rowsers activist and quiet lovers of justice. The accompanying CD with many of the songs, with many of the stories from the book is Courage. You can find the link to Saikon, via my NorthernSpiritRadio.org site. Thank you so much, Saik, for doing the work for these decades for founding grassroots leadership, for leading this country forward to a better day. Well, Mark, you are most welcome. I've had a great time doing it. I continue to do it. And, you know, thank you for doing spirit and action and bringing these really critical issues and so many of my wonderful friends. You know, Josh Dudley, John McCutchett, most recently, but also so many other wonderful artists and musicians and people who really exemplify what it means to have spirit in action. Saikon was with us today for spirit and action. Go to NorthernSpiritRadio.org to find a link to Saikon.com and to listen also to Saikon's Song of the Soul interview. And please send out your intentions and prayers to the workers of Wisconsin and to the rest of our nation and world. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit in action program is an effort of NorthernSpiritRadio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along and our lives will feel the echo of our healing.