Picket Line Songs: Hospital Stomp and Welcome Union Members

— DC Labor Chorus

Usually, Labor Notes' music page presents the work of an accomplished artist, and the DC Labor Chorus this month is no exception, but there is a twist.

Some of the members of DCLC are professional musicians in the Washington DC area, but most are just union members and activists who love to sing. The chorus sings for rallies, demonstrations, and picket lines. It welcomes union members to the annual Great Labor Arts Exchange at the National Labor College in nearby Silver Spring each summer. Started by Joe Glazer in 1979, the GLAE is the core engine of its activities.

This month's songs are typical picket line songs. Both set new words to traditional religious or popular tunes.

Hospital Stomp uses Siyahamba, a South African hymn, written by Andries vanTonder in the 1950s, now popular in America. The first line translates from the Zulu to "We are marching in the sight of God." Here, as you can hear, it is a "zipper song," meaning picketers can “zip” in an alternative word or verse, to suit a particular situation, in this case DC General Hospital.

The tune for Welcome Union Members was borrowed by Susie Rucks from Welcome Holy Spirit, a traditional African American hymn.

Both songs illustrate the power of ordinary human beings -- who may not think of themselves as creative -- to take something that already exists and transform it in a way to harness our potential and build a better life, collectively with fellow workers.

Elise Bryant, the DCLC director explained it more eloquently in this excerpt from an interview by Jeff Ditz of SEMCOSH:

What would you do if you were appointed tomorrow to be the assistant director of organizing for a union?

I would bring every organizer we had on staff into some place like the Meany Center [now the National Labor College, where she works]. I’d take all the conferences out of hotels, we don’t need to give Marriot our money and we don’t need to be in that environment.

Photo: Earl Dotter

I’d put all the organizers through teaching techniques training and then have them do a train-the-trainer and go back to their local unions and identify people who should also get the training. At every organizing target I’d do the same thing. Have the organizing staff identify the potential leaders and organizers and give them training in facilitation, listening, the history of racism, value and culture, the history of the social justice movement and the history of the labor movement. And keep thinking about how to break these things down to the smallest unit.

Lead organizers should not be heroes who come into town and ‘save the workers’. Lead organizers need to be facilitators.

The Latin root of the word ‘cultivate’ is ‘cultus’ which means ‘care’. When you cultivate the ground you do the things you need to do so growing can happen. You use different tools at different times. If we see ourselves as cultivators – not just creating dues machines, but helping people see themselves as part of a collective process for social change – then the work we do will be different and more powerful.

How do we bring people together when society divides us?

Click for pop-up.

We cannot allow ourselves to be divided. In our country that’s about the color line and we know this comes from the legacy of slavery, but there’s something older than that. I go to Croatia and the people there are talking about Serbs and Croats and Bosnians and what I see is "well it’s all white people". So they, the few who are rich and powerful, are always trying to divide us.

The biggest hurdle is this dominance of corporately produced culture that is all about the individual. We need to know that it’s not about an individual rising higher in the union hierarchy or being able to afford one of those four-car-garage beginner-castles. It is about, has always been about, making it possible for all of us to rise together.

Elise Bryant with Sam Kirkland.

The rich know this. The Bushes and the Kennedys they all stick together. Corporations stick together, they create ways for people to come together.

The labor movement is missing soul and spirit. We didn’t maintain the culture. It’s just shirts and mugs and caps now. The power of the people raising their voices together has been left at the side of the road. Now it’s just chants.

People say, "We have tv, we don’t need theater" but how are you going to help people losing their jobs facing that reign of terror and fear coming down in their lives with a pamphlet or a book or a video. You put real people in front of real people and it’s different.

It can be a homegrown talent show in a local. Okay, so it’s not great theater but that’s what people do: sing, dance, put on plays. It’s in our basic nature.

I’m not going to say to anyone "you have to throw away the vcr, tv, cd and dvd player" but sometimes you need to turn them off and just sing, play, converse. Until we reclaim that, our culture, they will control us because it’s a drug.

We’re hungry for our own culture, for our own community.

People say it’s the worst of times, but it’s not the worst of times. We’ve been through worse times, but the history is forgotten. We need to reclaim our history and culture and community.

The labor movement should be the tip of the spear, organizing workers into their own collective movement for social change and social justice.

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Pictured in top photo: Ken Giles, Elise Bryant, Steve Jones, Saul Schnidermann, Jackie Fralley, Pam Parker, Peter Jones, Sharon Wilson, Hetty Scofield, Joe Carillo, Dottie Madison, Jobari Parker-Namdar, Larry Smoot and KipuKai Kualii.

Recording: Heidi Gerber, Bias Studio.

Order the DC Labor Chorus CD, I Feel Like Going On, or email .

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Songs not otherwise attributed were recorded at the annual Great Labor Arts Exchange in 2001, 2003, 2004, or 2005 at the National Labor College/George Meany Center, Silver Spring, Maryland. Engineers: Bob Barnes, Ellis Boal, Charlie Ray Fetty III, Joe Jencks, Ray Korona, George Mann, Dave Sless, Isaac Wilson.

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