Union Songs

The Rabble Rousers' Rag

- [play]

A Song by Steve Harvey©Steve Harvey 2008
Clayton Bagwell on fiddle and Alex Turner on guitar and backing vocals

Chorus:
Well, I'm an eco-feminist/anarcho-socialist/peacenik/union/pinko
And I am not ashamed of that, whatever you may think, O
It's people just like you and me who've helped the world to change
Whether we look normal or whether we look strange

Way back in 1894, a man named Eugene Debs
decided to unite the proletariat and plebs.
He said "When harm's done to anyone, why, it is done to me"
And that is still the same today, as you can plainly see.

Every time we hit the streets, with drums and chants and signs
There will be those people, who'll say we've lost our minds
They say "You cannot change the world by taking to the streets;
Why don't you all stay at home and just put up your feet and sing........"

We know the world will never change , if we do nothing at all
we can't change the system by wishing it would fall.
But each and everything we do will add up and we'll see
the world transform inot theplace that we wish it to be.

Notes

Many thanks to Steve Harvey for permission to add this song to the Union Songs collection.

Find more of Steve Harvey's work in this collection

Steve writes:
'I wrote this after we had a peace march on the anniversary of the US inavsion of Iraq, 2 or 3 years ago. We ended up at the local War Memorial and various people decided to lay their placards at the base of the memorial. A friend of mine decided that the placards were in danger of covering the inscription and began to arrange them so that they would not do this and it was at this point that the local newspaper photographer snapped his photo. The photo duly appeared in the paper and unleashed severl rather nasty letters form people blaming us for desecration and all manner of commie pinko actions. the song came about because I thought I could either write a song refuting all the name calling or just say "Yeah, whatever you want to call us, we'll wear it proudly". In effect, it is a less eloquent and pointed distillation of Debs' speech about as long as there is anyone in prison then I am a prisoner , too. I can't write music so I am just able to provide the words. I have attached a recording of me singing the song, accompanied by my friends Clayton Bagwell on fiddle and Alex Turner on guitar and backing vocals.'

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union songs..........a selection by mark gregory