The following is lifted almost verbatim from a note from my comrade Bryan. I'm sure he won't mind.
November 19 is the anniversary of the murder of the great labor organizer and people's singer-songwriter Joe Hill by the capitalist robber barons' firing squad in Utah in 1915. Joe Hill's last written words were in a letter to Big Bill Haywood: "Goodbye Bill. I die like a true rebel. Don't waste any time mourning--organize!"
At a 1934 rally in support of the anti-fascist forces then fighting in the Spanish Civil War, the brilliant Paul Robeson, perhaps the most famous singer of the song "Joe Hill," declared: "The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
Long live the words and spirit of two great artists in the struggle for justice and liberation, Joe Hill and Paul Robeson!
