Labor Day: A Tribute to the Wobblies

We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years

I performed this, backed by the General Strike band, at the Unitarian Church in Portland. It must have been on a Sunday before Labor Day in the late 1990s.

Another labor play, grant supported, widely toured by the Portland Labor Players II, mostly in 1980: 1934: Blood and Roses. Became controversial, my only play ever given air time on NPR's "All Things Considered."

I witnessed an incredible (and sad) generation gap when this play was performed at a longshoreman's union picnic. The younger union members thought the play was "communist influenced" (!) for showing so much violence. The old-timers, a few of whom were at the historic moments portrayed, believed the play wasn''t violent enough! A real division in reaction. The younger members had little sense of how they got there.