The UK-based Radical Poster Collective has issued a new poster commemorating Joe Hill, with a couple of stanzas from the song “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill last night.” They also have some IWW-themed posters, including a reprint of the General Strike poster issued during the Wisconsin occupation.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=564689962985327&set=pcb.564690182985305
Today’s Marketplace Morning Report features a piece on the history of labor songs and their role in sustaining strikes and other labor struggles. There is a brief discussion of Joe Hill and excerpts from several labor songs. Here’s a link to an earlier report which includes images from an IWW Songbook: https://www.marketplace.org/2024/08/12/how-song-makes-the-union-strong/ It starts like this:
Union organizer and balladeer Joe Hill, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, once said, “A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over.”
and ends with this:
Want to listen to more tunes? Independent labor reporter Kim Kelly curated a playlist of labor and union songs for Smithsonian Folkways. And in 2006, a CD compilation of songs featured in “Harlan County U.S.A.” was published. Here is a Spotify link to that album.
An evening dedicated to the legacy of Joe Hill, a songwriter and labor activist who was murdered by Utah authorities in 1915 in an attempt to silence his voice. This multi-media event, featuring actor and folk singer Tom Kastle, will bring to life Hill’s enduring songs and story, from his contributions to the Industrial Workers of the World to Joan Baez’s iconic performance of “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” at Woodstock.
Saturday, August 10, 2024 6 p.m.
Woody Guthrie Center, 102 E. Reconciliation Way, Tulsa OK 74103
Free for Woody Guthrie Center members; $5 nonmembers
Actor and musician Joseph Shaw is performing his one-man show, “Joe Hill: The Man Who Never Died,” July 31 – August 25, 2024. The show, part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, features songs and readings from Hill’s letters.
C Arts, Lauriston Halls, 28 Lauriston Street, Edinburgh EH3 9DJ. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/joe-hill-the-man-who-never-died
A monument to IWW organizer and songwriter Joe Hill was unveiled in Salt Lake City’s Sugarhouse Park (site of his 1915 judicial murder) on November 18.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2023/11/18/sugar-house-park-has-new-memorial/
(Joe Hill: A Man of Many Identities)
A play by Emma Boström
Touring Sweden
Nov. 22, 2023 – Regional Theater in Uddevalla
Nov. 23 – House of Music in Gothenburg
Nov. 25 – The People’s House in Sala
Dec. 2 and 3 – Gävle, Scotland’s Music Theater
April 11-13, 2024 – Reflexen in Kärrtorp, Stockholm
This year’s Solidarity Forever labor history calendar commemorates struggles including the Detroit auto workers whose sit-down strikes in the 1970s fought speed-ups and racist supervisors to the 1910 uprising of New York garment workers; the Parisian cafe workers who stopped work to stop managers from stealing their tips to Alabama sanitation workers’ long struggle demanding union recognition and decent working conditions; from Tokyo workers who beseiged the stock exchange to demand fair wages to maritime workers fighting Taft-Hartley injunctions to London dockworkers whose direct action freed shop stewards jailed for enforcing union conditions.
Copies are $13.95 postpaid ($15.95 outside North America); a bundle of five to the same address is $41.95. Calendars open to 11 by 17 inches, with a color cover and black and white insides. As always, they are union-printed and can be ordered at https://joehill100.com
The Shelby Bottom Duo will reprise their Joe Hill Road Show multimedia program Sunday, March 5, at 1 pm. First Congo Church, 1000 S. Cooper, Memphis TN
While supplies last, we will offer copies of the 2023 Solidarity Forever Labor History Calendar at $3 off – $9.95 to addresses in the United States, $12.95 abroad….
The transition has been completed, and our site should be back to full functionality.
For more than a year, our webhosting service (EZOS) has been refusing our requests for technical support. They have also refused to provide access to our domain registration, and the phone number and contact information available through WhoIs for the domain registrar they used appears to be bogus.
Without access to the domain registration we cannot switch to a new webhost, and so we are forced to abandon JoeHill100.com even though the domain is registered for the next several years. We expect this site will go dark at some point in September, access to its contents should be available through the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine). Alternately, you can download any files you are interested in access to so long as this site remains live. We do not anticipate being able to regain access to this domain.
Our annual labor history calendar will continue to be available through http://iwwhlf.org, and we can be contacted via email [iwwhlf at gmail.com] or by post [PO Box 42531, Philadelphia PA 19101] to order Joe Hill-related literature or other material we distribute. We regret the inconvenience, but this is an issue we have been trying to resolve for many months without success and there are no remaining options to keep the site live available.