Fellow Workers,
The Joe Hill 100 Roadshow is sponsored by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The San Diego Caucus of the IWW will host a stop on the tour on Thursday, November 5, 2015, at the union hall of the San Diego Education Association (SDEA). Recalling the great success of the San Diego Free Speech Fight Centennial Events, we hope to see this event draw a large audience and broad participation of the labor movement in our region. We seek other unions and progressive groups to co-sponsor the event or to sign on as endorsers of the event. Co-sponsors and endorsers are asked to help publicize the event within their own memberships. Co-sponsors will be asked to make a modest donation to support the tour expenses. Both co-sponsors and endorsers will be listed on event fliers and e-notices.
We are contacting you to ask for your aid in requesting the co-sponsorship of your organization, the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council. I will be calling you soon to follow up on it.
Below please see basic descriptive information about the tour.
Solidarity,
Monty
Monty
The Joe Hill 100 Roadshow, featuring musicians from across the United States and from Sweden, will kick off May 1 with a concert in Chicago, beginning the Midwestern leg of a series of tours that will cover much of the United States over the next seven months.
For a schedule of events click HERE
To Follow us on Facebook click HERE
On November 19, 1915, labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill was killed by a firing squad in Salt Lake City, Utah. After national and international appeals for clemency that included the American Federation of Labor, Helen Keller, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the Swedish Ambassador and many more, Hill was executed for the murders of a grocer and his son, who were shot in a robbery on January 10, 1914. There is little doubt today that Joe Hill was framed for the crime because he was a foreigner and a well-known labor activist. His death inspired several songs, and his life has inspired many fellow workers, but Joe also wrote some of our best-known labor songs, including "The Preacher and The Slave," "Casey Jones," and "There is Power in a Union," which are still sung today at union rallies and events.
This year, musicians and labor activists are organizing the "Joe Hill 100 Roadshow," a national concert tour, to mark the 100th anniversary of his death. The tour will begin in Chicago on May Day and then wind through the Midwest. The Roadshow will head through the Northeast and South and West Coast in the summer and fall. Each local show will include a mix of local and national touring artists. Spoken word pieces will be included in many of the shows, and of course, the songs of Joe Hill will be sung.
Joe Hill (October 7, 1879 – November 19, 1915), was born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Gävle, Sweden. He came to the United States in 1902 and learned English as an itinerant laborer. Joe Hill was an organizer, songwriter, cartoonist and journalist during his 36 short years. He travelled from the east coast to the west coast, Mexico to Canada, fanning the flames of discontent on the waterfront and in mines and lumber camps.
After signing up as a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Joe began writing songs for IWW organizing campaigns. His first surviving effort was "The Preacher and The Slave" (which added the phrase "pie in the sky" to the American lexicon), written for the Free Speech Fight in Spokane, Washington, in 1910. His songs, written to the popular tunes of the day, have continued to inspire young agitators, and he remains the best-known songwriter among the IWW tunesmiths.
Joe Hill's life and legacy have been memorialized in songs written and sung by Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, Si Kahn, Phil Ochs, Paul Robeson, Bruce Springsteen, and countless others. Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson's "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night" has been performed in union halls and in concerts around the world, speaking to Joe Hill's lasting legacy -- the "man who never died."
FUND RAISING WEBSITE
Here is the link to send to all your friends, relatives, in-laws and out-laws for the Go Fund ME site for the Tour.
This campaign is intended to fund the travel and performance expenses as the tour travels around the U.S. Please help us present the life and music of Joe Hill on the 100th Anniversary of his execution by the State of Utah.
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