When I was in college, during the summer I'd get together with a friend who played banjo and another who played mandolin. We'd hit the open mic circuit at coffee shops and bookstores and sing folk songs. Here are a few of our standards:
Casey Jones - Union Scab
I'm gonna be an engineer
Union Maid
Deportees
Once after our set an older man came up to us and thanked me for keeping the old union songs alive.
This summer I found a new voice who's not singing, but writing the same sense of the old union songs for a new audience. Cory Doctorow's For The Win is a young adult novel set in the near future about a labor movement for workers who are gold farmers in mmorpgs (massively multiplayer online role playing games). It is sad, it is inspiring, it is awesome. It's also free, so download it and read it now.
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