English adaptation of Nestor Makhno's song. I'd love to give credit to the artist behind this image, so if you can find that information please share! 


C Gm A 
Our wheels are spinning on the highway 
C F 
Freedom has no price
Gm A Bb
The fascists gather ‘round like locusts 
G A
We’ll watch them coming through our sights

Chorus:
Bb Dm
Mother Anarchy adores her children
Bb A
Mother Anarchy will deal the cards
Bb Dm Bb Dm
With a blanket of lead from the back of a tachanka 
Bb A Dm
Anarchy sends her regards! 

Our chests are beating with a fire
Sneaking closer in the night 
We offer no apologies 
We ask no quarter in the fight 

Chorus


The master’s grip is cold and lifeless
The worms are eating it away 
This world we’re building in our hearts
Is growing stronger by the day 

Chorus

Mother Anarchy

Cm, bouzouki and vocals. Song by Lluis Llach, translation by anonymous internet contributor. Internationally famous song of resistance to dictatorship and fascism.

L'Estaca (English)

A reflection on the massacre of striking workers in Novocherkassk, in the USSR, on June 2 1962. They were striking against inflation of food and the devaluing of their wages. At least 26 were murdered; many hundreds were imprisoned. Solidarity with workers on strike in defense of their class- against any state and any boss.

Novocherkassk Massacre
¾, bouzouki and mandolin (or balalaika)

Em D Em D Am G
The stones of the wall sit quiet, at the edge of the factory light 
Am Bm Em A[modal] Bm
The story they saw is a whisper, passed on a breeze in the night 
Em D Em D Am G
The sun, it will rise, the sun it will set, the rivers forever flow on
C Bm Am Bm G D Em 
Down from my city of Novocherkassk the Azov is touched by the Don. 

From the east to the west we are working to be broke at the end of the week
The language of hunger, the language of sweat, is the tongue every worker can speak 
How much like your hands of the market, this game that the bureaucrats play
One on the scale to raise up the prices, the other cuts down on your pay 

We rebuilt this town from the ashes, built up the engines and tracks
We carried the weight of each five year plan like an infantry kit on our backs
To build up the world that our parents had dreamed, when they tossed off the Tsar and his yoke
When we walked out on strike, from the train factory- some dam inside of us broke

The orders came down to Shapashnikov, crush the picket line under your guns
He said there’s no enemy here to fight, no battle to be lost or won 
When Petrograd rose up, the cossacks stood down, no longer the empire’s pawns
I’m swore to defend this worker’s republic that stands on the banks on the Don

From the factory to the city center, in thousands we marched on our way
The red flags that flew at the head of the band, were bright in the light of the day 
As we surged past the bridge on the Tuzlov, the bureaucrats made a retreat
And we took back the buildings, the halls of the people- our Soviet was there in the street  

The sun was high over the city, the June day was sunny and green
When the army pushed into the square, in a line of their armored machines 
First a cry for the soldiers to join us- march with us for roses and bread
Then a crack in the air, and a wail of despair, their answer delivered in lead 

Silence was over the city, the curfew had muzzled the streets
And silence was over the country, but rumors that spread and repeat
What became of the strike outside Rostov, some dared in a murmur to ask
There are answers not found, and not given in sound, in the tombstones of Novocherkassk

The stones of the wall sit quiet, at the edge of the factory light 
The story they saw is a whisper, passed on a breeze in the night 
The sun, it will rise, the sun it will set, the rivers forever flow on
Down from my city of Novocherkassk the Azov is touched by the Don.

Novocherkassk Demo

Capo'd up one step

Dm A Dm 
Makhnovschina, Makhnovschina 
F c Dm
Black army of Ukraine 
Gm
Banners red with our blood 
A Dm
Banners black with our pain 

Like a thunder over the mountain
Like wind racing over the plain
Our partisans are rising 
Across all of Ukraine 

In the springtime, Lenin’s treaties
Sold Ukraine to the German’s hands
In the autumn, Makhnovschina 
Like a wind swept through the land 

Denikin’s army came singing 
Across the steppes where they tread
But the arms of the Makhnovschina
Drowned them in the Sinyukha’s bed

Trotsky made us his offer-
unite the Red and the Black
But the hand he gave in friendship
Drove a knife into your back 

They betrayed you, Makhnovschina, 
But though you were torn apart, 
Like seeds cast to the wind, 
You are rooted in our hearts

Makhnovshchina Demo

Kropotkin was buried in Moscow on 13th of February, 1921- barely two months after the leadership of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army in Ukraine were arrested and executed at a meeting with Red Army commanders, several years into the process of subordinating the workers' factory committees to top-down management, and just before the workers' strike in Petrograd demanding political freedoms for socialist parties and a redress of food supply grievances would lead to the Kronstadt Uprising. This winter was the last stand of the Russian anarchist movement, and it was a grim sign that in burying Kropotkin, the movement had to ask the government to release  their imprisoned comrades, and asked for permission to carry their anarchist banners and slogans critical of the state. In asking for such permission, the balance of power was already painfully clear. Anarchist prisoners, such as Aaron Baron, the co-editor of the Nabat paper in the Free Territory, were released from jail for this single day; after burying Kropotkin, they  would be interned into the prison system never to see freedom again. Others, such as Grigori Maksimov of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation of Russia, would flee in exile. Many of the architects of their demise, among the Old Bolsheviks, would themselves fall victims to the purge as their own rivals and enemies took power within the party.

Kropotkin's Funeral

For legal purposes, this track is a joke.

Cells of Fire

Adaptation of Il Bombarolo by Fabrizio de Andre

The boss says that I’m lazy, always dragging through my shift
But my after-hour hobbies are where I put my gifts
My baby’s almost ready, and I’ve nursed through every glitch
Now he make his grand debut, with a detonator switch 
My little Pinnochio, my dear handcrafted son
The physics are ideal although it’s short a couple tons 
I won’t get shining medals like Verdun or at the Somme
I’m not an general, no- I’m the man who sets the bomb
 
I double check each recipe before I will proceed
And step lightly with the package- I’m not here to die shahid! 
When in my hand’s the power, by my wit and my chutzpah
To grant the state forgiveness or to make the coup de grace 
There are those who throw us under so they don’t get overthrown
Those who wait out in the rain so they don’t have to cry alone 
Or who get their kicks with marches and the drummer’s rom-pom-pom
Thats not the life for me- I’m the man who sets the bomb

Today’s stale dinosaurs were yesterday’s avante garde 
My theory’s not in ink; but on the marble it is charred
Let them foresee revolution in their dialectic charts
I’ll make my own solution with self taught destructive arts
I’ll track those class enemies, who you’ve battled over tea
Then take my place among the lumpen when I’m finished with my spree
But as long as I am out there, it’s not me who’s on the run
I’m the spectre haunting everywhere- the man who sets the bomb

They took our pride and power, they seized our minds and reins
And they poured it back down on us from the bellies of their planes 
I’ve come to pay the masters back their breadbaskets and toys
The terror of confusion, the fire, dust, and noise 
If I’m not completely right, then at least I’m barely wrong 
And history needs some dynamite to help it move along-
The revolution is not coming on a breeze that lifts a song
But on the breeze that reeks of powder, says the man who sets the bomb

The Man Who Sets the Bomb

This translation of Dan Berglund's Swedish song for those killed in the workplace is dedicated to Björn Söderberg, murdered by fascists for exposing their infiltration of his local union. The struggle is against both the paramilitary violence of the fascists, and the daily structural violence of capitalism.

Key of Bm, performed on a bouzouki, D pennywhistle, and bodhran.


Bm A Bm 
I ate my oats, and read the morning news
D A
Kissed my wife goodbye, and then put on my boots
F#m A Bm 
Underneath the stars my footprints in the snow
Bm A Bm 
Marked the road that 13 years have seen me come and go

On that day, the north wind blew around
We were welding on a platform, 30 meters off the ground 
I heard a crash, and someone shouted Sven
It disappeared in blood and fire and darkness fell again

As I woke up, in a box made out of pine, 
I figured I’d be damned, it’s the end of the line 
My wife’s was pale as ice and tears fell from her eyes
While the priest prayed unto god with his nose turned to the sky

And I was lowered into my simple hole
Twiddling my thumbs in the midnight of my soul
“Dear Comrade and Corpse”, some distant voice there said
Welcome to the Free Republic of the Murdered Dead 

And there in the rocks, roots, sand, and soil
People lay in rows, the whole ground was full 
Of women and men who’d worked on everything
And the earth shook from their voices as they all began to sing 

We are the dead of the factories and the mines, 
Of fisheries and lumber mills, butchered like swine  
500 every years, bled out from the herd
And the greatest of the murderers in Jacob Wallenberg

We are the ones who ran the factory lines, 
Carried out like firewood and stacked up in the pines
We bowed before our killer and made sure his belly grew
While the parties and the unions were spit-shining his shoes 

Now we shout for revenge, so everyone can hear
Our bitter song in the roar of engines and of gears
In the whisper of the pines, and in the north wind’s breath
Demanding you to do your duty and avenge our death

We sing for you through the noise of the machines, 
Let every strike carve out for us the pathway to be free 
Class against class, that’s the battle we must fight
And we will rise in silence and be marching at your side

Free Republic of the Murdered

This is my demo for a song about the Jewish anarchist, Sholem Schwarzbard, avenging the murdered Jews of Ukraine by assassinating Petliura in Paris. The highly publicized trial shone light on the persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe and resulted in his release from prison, fined one franc to Petliura's widow. Schwarzbard, a watchmaker by trade and anarchist by conviction who had served in the French Foreign before being wounded and fighting as a revolutionary in Ukraine, would be known as "Ha'nokem", or The Avenger, for his actions that day in Paris. He wrote Yiddish poetry under the name Baal-Khaloymes, or The Dreamer. 

I wrote the tune while fooling around on the classical guitar I recently recovered from the family farm, and wrote the eight verses of lyrics in a single sitting earlier today. I'm thinking of being a bit more intentional about the tempo and beat, and making this work as a tango-style piece.

Since the initial upload, I overlaid a mandolin accompaniment in one take, and uploaded the version with this accompaniment. If you would prefer the file without the mandolin, contact me and I'll send it to you. 


Am Bm 
Your honor the judge and gentlemen of the jury, 
Dm C 
I do not deny the deed, but let me explain- 
G Am 
Boulevard Saint-Michel should never have seen such fury 
E Am 
This matter should have been settled back in Ukraine 
(repeat last two lines)

My Croix de Guerre, I earned in the Artois trenches 
As part of the Legion, my nation I had to forget 
But when in the Vosges, a bullet ended my service 
Reborn from my wounds, I yearned for my homeland yet

Black was the earth of the steppes and the little shtetls
Black was the flag of the anarchists, bringing new life 
And black was the smoke where the White Army columns came burning
Or where my people were cut by Petliura’s knife

I have walked in the ashes where families have burned together
Seen lovers and friends marched to die while soldiers there jeered 
Was hunted by men through the narrow streets of Odessa 
And escaped ‘cross the sea, my heart overflowing with tears

When the salt wind bit at my wound on the Black Sea rolling
It wasn’t the bullet where pain twisted ‘round like a screw
But fourteen holes in my breast for my family murdered, 
Fourteen stars in a sky full of our martyred Jews

As a worker in Paris, I let all my anger lie fallow
But news of Petliura’s arrival stole all of my peace
What terrible providence let him slip loose from the gallows? 
And escaping Ukraine, delivered this duty to me? 

Is not a Jew also chilled by a cold wind blowing?
Do not the same passions, our hearts either suffer or mend? 
If you should cut us, will not our blood come flowing? 
And if you wrong us, have not we the right to revenge? 

You honor the judge, and gentlemen of the jury 
I do not deny the deed, but this is my defense 
I have killed an assassin, the murderer of a nation 
A nation whose voice cried out through my gun for revenge

Sholem Schwarzbard

D, A D
It’s high up on the scaffold I stand, hemp on my neck and hemp on my hands
D, A Bm
Wait for the hangman to get the command, and swing us off of the wood 
But sure I’ve no fear to be underground, whether to heaven or hell I am bound
For I’ve spent all my life in wage slavery bound, digging the devil’s own blood
D A G D, D G A
Through all of the years of our bodies abused, our voices cut down and petition refused
D A G D, D A Bm 
Now condemned by the virtue that we were accused- that to murder, we did conspire
But murder is the operator’s law, there’s blood on his money and blood in his craw 
And all that I did was for liberty’s cause, a proud son of Molly Maguire, 

Molly was raised in the old country, to fright off the landlord and Orange yeomanry
When the Hunger forced us to come over sea, she crossed with us over the water
From the sun of the New World down into the hole, they sent Paddy down to cut out the coal
The flesh off your shank is the company’s toll, to be feeding your sons and your daughters
From the cradle to grave you’re picking the shale, your back bent in two and your face ever pale
But the smoke from the accident at Avondale, raised Siney’s voice like a fire
For the company’s stock will we go to Old Nick? They value our lives no more than a pick-
So we joined in the union and under the picket, awakened our Molly Maguire

The market fell into a crash and a grind, the companies got their scabs from the breadlines 
And in alliance against us combined, the season was ripe for the killing 
The gun thugs, the Modocs, the coal police bands gunned down Ed Coyle and tortured the land
with Mrs McAllister’s blood on their hands, their coffins were crying for filling
Through the strike we were living on water and bread; Molly cries out revenge for our dead
We gave them our lives, now we’ll give them our lead, or set their fine manors a-fire, 
We’ve heard our children with hunger pains moan,these anthracite valleys now carry their bones
Denied the law’s justice, we carved out our own- the justice of Molly Maguire

The Pinkerton stool to the screws did report, the Iron Police locked us up in the fort, 
And the company man sat as judge on the court, to hand down the operator’s laws
And Kelly, that Judas, to slip from the noose, to point to the union’s leaders was induced
But the crimes they’re accused of is just an excuse, to strangle the life from their cause 
Our confession could never exonerate them, what use is the word of a killer condemned, 
cut off in your bloom with a rope on your stem, for all the crowd to admire
The miners and wives and families stand, in silent salute for the death of each man 
Picked by the snitch and the coal boss’s hand, to die as a Molly Maguire

Molly Maguire

Lyrics by Eugene Lerner (additional verses by Emmett Doyle)- this recording does not yet include the additional verses, and will be updated in time. 

Image is of unarmed Ukrainian civilians turning back a Russian tank

D G D
She’s not even thirty, she’s scared and she’s dirty
D A
But she’s staying where she’s been assigned
Bm G
This war isn’t pretty, but she loves her city
D A D
And that’s why she’s holding the line.

He’s sixty years old and he’s feeling the cold
But his granddad marched West towards the Rhine
To protect the Black Earth, this land of his birth
And that’s why he’s holding the line.

G D
He’s seen it before, knows they’ll do it once more
G A
As they did to his country last time
D G D
With tanks, lies, and mortars, they remade the borders
D A D
And that’s why he’s holding the line.

She came to this war from a far foreign shore
Her helmet says: “No Passaran!”
She’s read of back then, and said: “never again!”
And that’s why she’s holding the line.

He opposed at great risk, Putin’s lackey in Minsk
And one night had to flee through the pines
But he’s found some new friends, and he’ll be back again
And that’s why he’s holding the line

Chorus

The old woman sits packing medical kits
While the shelter lights flicker and shine
Though her fingers are sore, through the night she makes more
And that’s how she’s holding the line 

When this war is won, there’ll be things to be done
Friends to bury and ports to unmine
As they’re brave, they are skilled, and Ukraine shall rebuild
But first we must help hold the line!

Chorus:
We've seen it before, knows they’ll do it once more
As they did to the country last time
With tanks, lies, and mortars, they remake the borders
And that’s why we’re holding the line.

Holding the Line (Ukrainian Resistance)

Reggae/oi! work in progress for the Stepping Razors, posted here for sharing with bandmates. 

Ivan Khutorskoy

Em 
Ivan was a good, good man 
Am Em 
He was the one to make a stand
Am Em 
But Ivan only raised his hand 
G B7
When he was defendin’
B7 Em 
Ivan wore the boots and braces 
Am Em 
He rumbled and he earned his laces 
Am Em 
Busting in the fascists’ faces 
G B7
He was the one to send in 

(Latinized: Vanya zaplital za svobodu, s'voyu krovyu. Druzhya, po-poem smert fashizmu, svobodu narodu)

(Trans.: Vanya paid for freedom with his blood. Friends, let's sing, death to fascism, freedom to the people!)

Chorus:
G Am 
Ваня заплатил за свободу 
Em B7
своей кровью
G Am 
Друзя, попоем: смерть фашизму, 
Em B7
Свободу народу

Ivan when they shot you down, 
That snowy night in Moscow town 
Who held the gun that fired the round? 
And who gave the order?
They couldn’t take you in a fight
With a boot or with a knife 
So they killed you in the night 
The bonehead’s a murderer. 

Chorus:
Ваня заплатил за 
свободу своей кровью
Друзя, попоем: смерть фашизму, 
Свободу народу

A couple of boot boys can beat 
The Nazi punk out in the streets,
But the men who fill the balance sheets
Are the suit-and-tie fascists
Oligarchs and siloviki
Mining bosses and the military
The Cosmonauts and FSB
Just boneheads with badges

Chorus

Ivan Khotorskoy Demo 1

A tribute to the Belarusians who are fighting against the invasion by cutting rail transport for the Russian army.

https://libcom.org/article/russia-and-belarus-successes-rail-war-and-not-only-part-3

Belarus Railroad War

Em Am B7 Em 
Night after night, the light through the forest marks out the trains on the track
D G Am B7
Bringing the soldiers off to the war, bringing the bodies back
C Em C Em
And the smoke rises up from the border, like the engine blows out its steam 
G Am D G
And the whistle that blows through the forest, the whistle that blows through the forest
C Em B7 Em 
The whistle that blows through the forest, cuts through the night like a scream

Out past the forest, out on the steppe, out where the Dnieper rolls on
Families, lovers, comrades, and friends caught in the rain of the bombs 
And the stars fall like clusters of thunder, and the ash turns to mud in the rain
And the trains roll on to the border, the trains roll on to the border
The trains roll on to the border, with missiles to drop in Ukraine

Deep in the forest, grandfather fought when the fascists burned through the land
And choked off the rails where the murderers moved- he and the partisan band
So light up the signaling cabinets, let the stock roll through no more 
There’s many bombs made for killing, there’s many bombs made for killing, 
There’s many bombs made for killing, but this one’s for stopping the war

And when they find you, when they arrest you, if they should take you alive
Go to the jail with a stride in your step, go with your head held up high
There’s many who live as a coward, and many who die still in chains
But you face your fate as a hero, you face your fate as a hero
You face your fate as a hero, Belarusian who struck for Ukraine!

The Rail War Partisan

The Golden Grain

D G D G D
The Black Sea waters bear us far from Constanta to Tunisia
D G D C G D
And the northern sky’s full of falling stars above the steps of Zaporizhia 
D G D G D
The falling stars and fires of war, where docks are still and fields are barren 
D G D C G D
No harvest’s waiting for us ashore; to other ports our ship is farin’

G D G A 
I wish were docked in Ukraine along the berth in old Odesa
D G D C G D
Drafting deep with the golden grain, charting for the horn of Africa

In other days, in times before, we’d black earth wheat in every hold 
To haul away to the Somali shore, more worthy haul than any gold 
But now again in the eastern lands, across the Horn and out in Yemen
There’s sinkin’ eyes and a pleadin’ hand for the grain ships are not comin’

Chorus

Now trenches cut through like a scar, and shelling sows the iron harvest
There’s many bombs that kill afar, but strangled fields that kill the farthest
The child dead in his mother’s arms and the soldier on his mission
Both pay the price, a sacrifice to the conqueror’s ambition

Chorus

We’ll steer beyond the Turkish straits; farewell Black Sea and the black earth burning
There’s scarce grain on the ocean trade to keep a freighter on her journey
when rich men march their boys to war, to burn the fields with rollin’ thunder 
You’ll find the dead among the poor, by gun and bomb or else by hunger.

The Golden Grain

"Holding the Line, (Revolutionary)" is a rewrite, requested and commissioned by an organizer at the Red Pine collective in Northfield, of the song that Eugene Lerner and I co-wrote at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. While that song celebrated the resistance of ordinary people to the invasion, this song is a celebration of different revolutionary struggles around the world throughout the last century and the struggles of workers on the picket lines. The first verse celebrates the Makhnovshchina of revolutionary Ukraine and the CNT militias of revolutionary Spain, particularly the women of Mujeres Libre. The second verse is for the Zapatistas and the revolutionaries of Rojava and the rest of Kurdistan. The final verse is for all of us, reminding of us of the deadly daily consequences of allowing capitalism to continue, and of the world we hope to win and to build. 

D G D
Where the cavalry’s riding there’s partisans hiding 
D A
the  waiting in sends ice down their spine 
Bm G
but they’ve finally held land of their own in their hands 
D A D
And that’s why they’re holding the line 
Before she seized her gun, she got up ‘fore the Sun 
To sweat on the factory line 
Now She faces each dawn and vows no pasaran 
And that’s why she’s holding the line 

Chorus 
G D
We’ve seen it before, know they’d do it once more, 
G A
As they did to the people last time
Bm G
With guns, jails, and borders they impose their order
D A D
And that’s why we’re holding the line

Ever since the conquista the latifundista
Ruled over these lands and our kind
But we’ve broken their greed and weve won land and freedom 
And that’s why we’re holding the line 
The village is bright in the dead of the night
Where the flares and the rocket trails shine 
But her sisters and she in the mountains are free 
And that’s why they’re holding the line 

Chorus

Their wealth and their thrones are built over our bones 
Eating pheasant and drinking their wine 
While hunger takes toll of the kids on the dole 
And that’s why we’re holding the line 
When the struggle is won and the futures begun 
And we’ll leave not a worker behind 
We’ll share our new land and we’ll work hand in hand 
But first we must help hold the line 

Chorus 
Chorus

Holding The Line (Revolutionary)

Afrin
D G Bm 
The hills were green around afrin 
G A
The olive trees stretched to the sun
D G Bm 
And laugh of love like cooing doves 
A D
Rang from the groves when day was done 

The women and men on the land 
With steady hand and ready heart 
With hook and plow, sweat on their brow, 
The fields to plow and homes to guard 

Chorus:
G 
The soldiers seek to bow these peaks
D Bm
To see us weak, and chain us all- 
G 
Someday we’ll see the people free
D A (Bm)
The valleys green the mountains tall 

The hills were red, as overhead 
The rockets sped in shrieking flight 
To arms, to arms- raise the alarm 
There’s fire on the farms tonight 

They faced them down, even surrounded 
To final round and final breath 
Stone by stone with blood and bone 
For freedom’s toll is paid in death 

Chorus 

The hills were black with fire racked 
 the Turks attacked the very earth 
A hateful toil with torch and oil 
Our mother soil that gave man birth 

Sisters brothers, struggle on 
It won’t be long the day will come 
That liberty will rise supreme 
And make Afrin grow green again


Chorus

Afrin

In Bakhmut Town
To the tune of Roddy McCorley

Oh come you who love freedom and a tale I’ll have you hear
Of comrades who came to Ukraine, as foreign volunteers
From Russia and America, Ireland and all around-
And side by side, they fought and died, on the streets of Bakhmut town 

I’ll sing of Finbar Cafferkey, from the island of Achill
Who’d worked to save his native land from a pipeline built by Shell
Who’d worked to rescue refugees who elsewise might be drowned
And who fought out in Rojava but who fell in Bakhmut town 

There was Cooper Andrews, who had come from Cleveland’s rusty shores
Who’d gone out west to fight the fires , after fighting in the wars
He worked build the people up and tear the powers down, 
And gave his life as freedom’s price that night in Bakhmut town

Dmitry was scholar, soldier, anarchist, and friend
Born in the belly of the beast, he went where struggle went 
From Bolotnaya to Belarus, he faced the tyrants down
And died a Russian rebel on the streets of Bakhmut town

When they last stepped up the street, a rifle in each hand
beside them marched in grim array a stalwart, earnest band
They held the line, to leave none behind, as shells fell all around
And side by side they fought and died that night in Bakhmut town

Oh how the thunder of their guns shook the foeman’s heart 
Through furious fire and heavy odds, they played the hero’s part
And many from Wagner bit the dust, and fed the hungry ground
But before night passed, they’d breathed their last, and fell in Bakhmut town

They fought not for a nation, and they fought not for a state
It was for people’s freedom that our friends went to their fate
And for the day, long on the way, that all empires come down
Those heroes came in freedom’s name and fell in Bakhmut town

Cooper Andrews Memorial Fund:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/317qi30ti0

Bakhmut Town; a tribute to Finbar, Cooper, and Dmitry

Belarus has been ruled by Aleksandr Lukashenko as a dictator since he took power in 1994. The fraudulent 2020 elections saw him once again (to nobody's surprise) confirmed as the overwhelming victor despite the massive public support for the united opposition candidate. Protests broke out across Belarus, which were brutally suppressed with riot police, extrajudicial killings, and torture. Anarchists in Belarus were very active on the front lines of these protests. This song is for our imprisoned comrades in Belarus, as well as the anti-war and anti-dictatorship resistance in Russia.

The song is to the tune of, and draws on themes in, the traditional Belarusian song Kupalinka.
lyrics
Am E Am
Mother in your shawl of black,
G C
The moon shines on the water
Am G Em
But tonight where does the moonlight
C E Am
Fall upon your daughters?

My eldest’s gone into the city
The gardens there she’s weeding
Her hands are torn from rocks and thorns,
And her white fingers bleeding

My second listens from the prison
To the wailing siren
Hands in chains, her hands in chains,
She wears a wreath of iron

My youngest’s gone into the forest
Where wildflowers are growing
Black and red, their petals shed
And on the night winds blowing

On the winds the seeds are searching,
And rooting where they fall
Soon they’ll climb as wild vines,
Over the prison walls
credits

Prisoners Of Belarus

The Teamsters strike of 1934 was the months-long struggle in which the truckers and their allies- from the building trades to the unemployed councils- faced down the union-busting Citizens Alliance vigilantes and the murderous Minneapolis Police Department, and won the right to organize unions. After winning a strategic strike in the winter for the truckers at coal yards, the Teamsters launched a second strike in the spring which demanded recognition of the union across a broad swath of the industry, centered on Minneapolis's Warehouse District. The strike saw pitched battles between the strikers and police/Citizens Alliance forces, such as the Battle of Deputy's Run, as well as cowardly and murderous gun-wielding ambushes of strikers by the MPD, such as at Bloody Friday. It also saw the Farmer-Labor Party under Olson call in the National Guard against both labor and the strikebreakers. In the end, the union overcame opposition by the bosses, the police, the fair-weather "friends of labor" in office, and the bureaucrats of their own union's International.

It was one of several large strikes that summer which forced the hand of the Federal Government, causing the Roosevelt administration to pass the National Labor Relations Act to bring strikes into a...  more
lyrics
Em G D
This summer’s been a hard one, Out on the picket line
Em G D
In the kitchen and infirmary they’ve also served the time
Em G D
Four months now we’ve been striking, the Teamsters and the rest
Em G D Em
Four months now we’ve been striking and they haven’t beat us yet

Chorus:
G D Em
So rise up for the union, don’t give away to gloom
Em G D
Can’t you hear the marching feet, they’re beating out their doom
Em G D
Hear the young ones crying, neither sigh nor pine
Em G D Em
We’ll see that times get better when we hold that picket line

When first that I moved out here after serving in the war
They said there’s work for every hand you never need be poor
But the winter found us standing asking work beside the wall
There’s scarce enough to go around to keep a home at all

Remember how last winter the coal yards won their share
And on that day back in May we won the market square
Now they’ve got us in the holding pens to try to keep us down
They can hold us in the stockade but they’ll never hold the town

Those Citizens Alliance boys, God damn them all to hell
Likewise to Olson’s guardsmen and the city cops as well
Who shot down Ness and Belor out on the market way
I wish I had a rifle, I would give them all the same

The winter’s coming fast now, the stores are getting thin
Each passing dawn that’s coming on we’re closer to the win
No Legion vigilantes, no knobsticks anymore
We’ll win ourselves a union town this year of ‘34

1934 Strike/Cooleys Reel/Congress Reel

The P9 Strike completes the first three songs of the album, telling the story of how, while the Farm Crisis and Rust Belting processes were going on, corporate attacks by labor- enabled and abetted by entrenched bureaucracies in many of our unions- defeated workers' attempts to fight back and save some of post-WW2 social contract that had been struck between management and labor. The 1980s were a time of capitalist counter-attack against workers' gains; the end of the era of labor peace. Since then, capitalists have been advancing a steady class war against us.

The workers at Local P9 of the UFCW in Austin MN worked at the slaughterhouses of Hormel. The town had a history of radical unionism, stretching back to the Independent Union of All Workers, a local remnant/breakaway of the IWW that had organized towns in southern Minnesota wall-to-wall, until the intervention of the Farmer-Labor Party in a major strike in Albert Lea broke up the IUAW and divided their members among different AFL unions.

By the 1980s, the workers in Austin were ready to strike against a two-tier system that screwed over newer workers by imposing most of the concessions in bargaining onto them. They were also rebelling against unsafe line speeds that left workers maimed. When...  more
lyrics
Bm D
Came back to Austin after the war, been on the line since ‘74,
A Bm
working on the killing floor, to make Hormel its spam
Every year the line gets quicker, dollar’s cheaper, talk gets slicker
Some guys numb themselves with liquor, or learn not to give a damn
Hormel always says they’re squeezed, and the contract’s not a charity
They’re paying half your wage at IBD, and we’re steady losing ground
They wants cuts, so the bureaucrats dump it on the new hire’s backs
Sign or we’ll give your plant the sack, and gut this company town

Chorus
G D
Hard knocks on the killing floor taught us how to swing
A Bm
We ain’t beat even when we’re beaten down
And you best not pull your punches when you’re comin’ for the king
and you’re fighting for your life in a company town

The new plant was a slaughterhouse, for the pigs and workers both,
Contract gave us no way out, but hit them in the papers
and put their dirty flows of cash, in the magnifying glass,
Til the contract day was passed, and we took back our labor
On the day we stopped their line, they moved the slaughter and assigned
The other locals overtime, to scab against their brothers
If we let them do it, then they’ve won- we have to shut it down as one
But national said we’d go alone, no calling in the others

Chorus

When they brought the scabs, that winter day, we blocked them at the factory gate
And it took more cops to clear the way, then they had in the whole station
So Perpich played his favorite card, calling in the National Guard
and you have to fight back twice as hard, when you’re under occupation
We hit the road to spread the strain, up and down the Hormel chain
And other towns joined the campaign, even if it meant the black list
A strike’s a race to see who’ll last, between your belly and the boss’s cash
But the checks came in for food and gas, to get the kids their breakfast

Chorus

March stormed in with the picket clash, and the Austin streets were choked in gas
But cops and soldiers couldn’t smash, the spirit of P-9
But the national union bent the knee, to get peace with the company
Put the local into trusteeship, to bust our picket line
They put the scabs in the union hall, even stripped our mural off the wall,
And when the end of the strike was called, sold out a generation
Now old King Pork still wears the crown, to beat the packing worker down
It’s hard times in a company town, hard times in a boss’s nation

Chorus

Experimental arrangement with clawhammer banjo, low G pennywhistle, shruti box, bodhran, and jaw harp. Classic coal union song against scabs, dating to mid-19th century Britain.

Blackleg Miner

A translation of Il Galeone by Belgrado Pedrini, anarchist, antifascist, and poet. 

Am 
Our backs are sore, bent over the oar
E Am 
Down in the guts of the galley
Dm Am 
With shrinking thighs and sinking eyes, 
E Am 
While death ticks away at his tally

Up on the deck, the sun reflects 
The waves like a painter’s dreaming
But down below, the lanter’s glow-
The whip and the driver screaming

Salt fish and mold, this reeking hold 
No song but the oars we’re swinging
Faces gaunt, we moan and haunt
The ship with our shackles clinging 

The moonlight over the ocean 
Like a prow through the night is cleaving
But night with its tired devotion
Our burying shrouds is weaving

Let every slave be awoken, 
Asleep at the ore they’re bound to
And pull ‘till our chains are broken
Those chains that in sorrow drowned you

Is this all you’ll have, you galley slave, 
Condemned to rowing, rowing
Better to sink ourselves under the waves
And rest in the waters flowing 

Take up your oars and steer a course
To the rocks where the gale is smashing 
And charging we’ll fly the red and black high
To dance in the storm winds laughing 

Then over the side, we’ll drift in the tide
Free of our pains and longings
But someday there may break over the waves
anarchy’s jubilant dawning

To arms, fellow workers, to battle- 
The seas are clinging and rising
The thunder of guns, flashing bright as the sun 
Lights the world with each uprising
 
To arms fellow workers, to battle!
Cast down the kings from their station
We swear we will not live as chattel-
Death or our liberation!

The Galley

Rough demo; home recording. Clawhammer banjo and voice. 

First draft and demo of a song in solidarity with the workers at Nechville Banjos, who have just been locked out by the company's owner, Tom Nechville, in an illegal retaliation for unionizing. Tom is shutting down the company to close and re-open it out west, as a direct response to the workers going public with their union. While he and his apologists frame this as a long-time plan of his, the truth is that such a move was never announced in the past and is being rolled out as a retaliatory response to the workers organizing. That is a flagrant violation of labor law and, more importantly, of the rights of the workers.

As a union carpenter and musician, I'm proud to call the Nechville Six my new union brothers. We will fight this union busting and we will win. 

Lyrics: 

Tom Nechville is a union-busting man, 
Does a ULP most every day, 
Closin’ down his shop to bust the union was his plan
But Tom will never get away, no, no, the union won’t let him get away

Tom Nechville went to Oregon- spent all his time away
He was not there to oversee
dumped his work onto the luthiers, but didn’t raise their pay
So his workers joined the UBC, they went and joined the UBC

Chorus
The workers make the banjos and the banjos make the song
And those workers have organized
Voice on voice together, rise up and sing along, 
No banjos ‘less you recognize, bargain square and recognize

Tom dreamed of a monument worthy of his name-
A tower in a banjo’s form, 
But his workers all said, “We’d like health care instead”
And a handful of other reforms, very simple and easy reforms

Six workers in the shop, and all six went through with it
To put all his reprisals to a stop
But the day that they went public, Tom Nechville threw a fit 
And he swore he would close the shop, pack up and close the shop

Chorus


Before the workers united, Tom’s plans looked so bright
And he dreamed of his banjo tower
Now he says that he’s broke and his money’s up in smoke
With lawyers at 500/hr, union-busting at 500/hr

Up in heaven, in the hall of Angels Local 23, 
Pete Seeger can’t get no rest, 
He’s looking down on earth, and sick at what he sees
He might come back and picket Banjos West, he might come back just to picket Banjos West

Chorus 

A banjo’s a loom that spins power out of pain, 
Growing strength in a world long mad 
Songs that hold the picket line and songs that break the chains 
Can never come from the hands of scabs, never come from the hands of scabs 

When carpenters or luthiers are under an attack
when the boss is back to his tricks 
The UBC has sworn that we will stand and fight them back
and we’ll stand with the Nechville Six- stand with the Nechville six 

Chorus

The Nechville Six (Demo 1)

A short, experimental piece thrown together late at night, exploring in a more jazzy direction using all my folk instruments. This is a brush-played bodhran, an acoustic bass guitar, an Irish bouzouki, and a low G pennywhistle. May expand on this concept in future months.

Folk Jazz Jam in Gmajor

A ballad from my writing file, "Solarpunk Songs", which is split into two categories: Songs about the ecological and social general crisis, and songs about an eco-syndicalist, communalist, social anarchist future.

I was inspired to write this song by reading an article on the threats facing the Irish Hare, and the fact that the hare lived in Ireland before the retreat of the glaciers in the last ice age- longer, then, even than the mythical peoples of the Book of Invasions and earlier than the first known humans on the island. 

Information on the Irish Hare's preservation can be found here- 
https://hare-preservation-trust.com/

lyrics and chords (this rendition was played down a whole step, in Dm, on a DADGAD tuned guitar, a bodhran, and a C whistle, recorded on the Soundtrap website with a Yeti mic)

Em  D G D
We’ve been run to ground by hawk or by hound, and paid the reward in our blood
Em D Em D Em 
In valley or bog we’ve slipped from the dog, and made away into the wood
G D Em Bm
We’ve sheltered our den in the high mountain glen and traveled the valleys so wide
Em D Bm Em D Em 
No gun and no snare can turn back the hare that runs on the mountain side

We ran in the ice and we ran in the snow, and the winter that never saw spring
That lay on the moors, more lifetimes ago, than the bards had the language to sing
Along the salt sea we ran wild and free, the first that it turned on the tide
And slept in the roots of the first of the trees, that grew on the mountainside 

We were long before Balor of the one eye, long before Brigid and fire, 
And long before Oisin’s arrow let fly and hobbled the queen of the briar 
But now the old ways are passed for this ilk, now they would butcher your hide
They give us the blame for souring the milk, when they graze on the mountainside  

They’ve hewn the hazel and hewn the oak and carried them down the sea,  
The great iron wagons turn over the fields where once that we used to run free
And higher and higher up over the hills, the wagons breathe smoke as they ride, 
Until there’s nowhere that’s left for the hare to run on the mountainside

Complaint Of The Irish Hare (Demo 1)

Working my way through the 60+ unrecorded songs I have lying around, here's simple bluesy ditty about the changes in my neighborhood. The Ford Plant has closed down some years ago as part of the company's plan to offshore production to countries with cheap labor in order to reap bigger profits and to break the bargaining power of unions here. The process of globalization was enabled by the rise of technologies such as telecommunications and the intermodal shipping container, mentioned as the "box they buried the unions in". Back when the IWW/GDC was around, we once picketed a Ford dealership in solidarity with a fired CNT organizer in Spain and passed out literature explaining the whole shtick: They bust unions over there to bust them here! 

My own union brothers and sisters in the Trades are working to turn the old site into a new neighborhood, but like most neighborhoods coming up in the Twin Cities, "affordability" is a matter of class and perspective. Meanwhile, a large chunk of the construction work in the metro is done by non-union crews, many of them made up of workers who undocumented or even trafficked outright, in a system of exploitation that begins with colonialism, carries on to the border, and ends in contractor's wallets. It is yet another race to the bottom pitting workers against each other. Ironically, our own tax dollars fund much of the terror and repression of workers in Latin America, while America's drug habits help fund the cartels. The "respectable" capitalists and their state, and narco-capitalists, of course, are deeply intertwined. If cops are another gang, after all, the gangs are other cops. 

Also mentioned: The river's commercial barge traffic no longer extends to the Port of Minneapolis, due to the threat of invasive carp but also the long-term failure of the Port to attract much commerce that couldn't be done down in St Paul. The old port site is now the subject of re-development and community struggles against gentrification.
C F 
There’s no barges anymore on the Minneapolis run
C G
Hauling scrap up north for the Northern Metals yard 
C E7 F
They said it was the carp when they closed Lock Number 1
C G C
But the port never got busy, and times were already hard
Now there’s no more need for power over on the East Bank
Where the Ford plant kept on running since they built the model T
There’s nothing left but sand tunnels underneath the bluff
And the neighborhood that’s going up with the Ryan company

Chorus:
F C
Now the assembly lines are silent, and the rail tracks are rusting
F C G
And the river rolls on through the old lock and dam 
C E7 F
And the cars come and go, built in China or in Mexico
C G C
All along the Ford Parkway with the flag of Uncle Sam

The CP train rolls slow, cars say Maersk or Matson
And those boxes are the coffin they buried the union in 
reaping what we sewed, they build it down in Mexico
Race you to the bottom ‘til we’re both poor as sin
And the president’s rehearsed sayin’ put America first
and he says he’ll build a wall like the one in Berlin town
But money moves more free, than the likes of you and me
And money finds its level and then it drags you down 

Chorus

There’s a crew up on the roof, pounding on the shingles
And a crew whose picks and shovel must have moved a hundred tons
And they crossed the Rio Grande to find the Mississippi
Were they running from the soldiers? Did our taxes buy the guns? 
Or were they just lookin’ for some place to call a home
now we build these condos with the rooms already sold
And the families from the Ford plant are moving out of Highland
Cause the rent’s too high for living, and there’s nothing here to hold

Ford Parkway Blues

Am. 
Main vocals, bass, mandolin, and pennywhistle by Emmett Doyle
Feline vocals by Nestor Samovitch and Alfred Gremlinovitch, esq.

A song in tribute to the expropriator, Lucio Urtubia, who after an initial political career as a bank robber, forged hundreds of traveler checks to defraud the banks of funds. He and his comrades distributed these funds to the poor and to rebel and resistance groups throughout the world. When he was caught, he was able to ransom the remaining printing plates, with which his comrades could continue to financially ruin the bankers, for his freedom. He passed away in 2020, a free man. 

"Lucio is a Quijote that did not fight against wind mills, but against a true giant".- Albert Bodella
Am G Am E
Well I am a man of action, I could never find no rest
With El Quico in the stick up game, I learned it from the best
I found my cause breaking down the laws, flying the red and black 
The banks have robbed us all our lives, so we just rob them back

	Laying bricks and cement mix is honest work but good, 
But after hours at the vault I work like Robin Hood
We get a hit, and a three way split, to break up every score 
One for ourselves, one for our comrades, and one part for the poor

	But it’s step by step and breath by breath you keep loose from the cops
And the bandit runs a race with death, ‘til the day that he gets caught 
There’s other game than robbin’ banks, and living on the run
And you’ll make more cash with a printing press than you can with a mask and gun

	Any government can run a mint, but workers print the cash
Why not forge a deck full of traveler’s cheques and reap it in at last
It wasn’t for the riches, and damn sure not for the fame
But many’s the rebel owes their gun, to Lucio and his game

Bridge:
Dm Am
But the the lawmen’s noose was drawing tight and Lucio was revealed
Dm Am E
They had our comrades dead to rights, their fates were nearly sealed
But the printing plates were hid away, We could still go on a spree 
so we bartered back those printing plates to set our comrades free

Lucio Urtubia fought the giants and he won, 
He got away with all the cash, then lived life in the sun
Laying bricks and cement mix is honest work but good, 
But turn those hands to forgery, and be like Robin Hood

Lucio Urtubia

Brookwood Blues
E-A-B 12 bar blues, capo'd up to F. 

I started writing this song when the strike was a few days old, and kept revisiting it for two years as the strike unfolded. Ultimately, the workers lost this one. Why did we lose? We have to think critically about what it would take to win strikes and how to accomplish that. The way strikes work in the US right now, there's a contract expiration date that gives the boss plenty of time to stockpile products and funds to wait it out. Company-loyal local politicians and judges side with the companies. We as workers are encouraged to wait and endure rather than to escalate and expand the struggle. Functional, effective tactics for halting production are heavily regulated and even banned. How can we build a labor movement that can win a strike like Brookwood?

Lyrics and chords:

Out on strike in Brookwood, since April’s coming in (x2)
Been out on the picket, we been in it to win 

The aching from the mine, lord you carry it back home (x2)
Breaks down a family, like it breaks down your bones

There’s methane in the rocks- above your head a hundred tons (x2)
13 died in number 5, burned alive back in ‘01

Mills roll out the steel, get their coke from our supply (x2)
Brokers lining up behind ‘em, New York City to Shanghai

Back in ‘16 they called it bankrupt, gave our pay a six buck chop (x2)
The new name’s just a shell game,  It’s the same bosses on the top

Scab attacked the picket, drove their truck into the line (x2)
It’s a fight in Alabama, it’s a war back in the pines

They been stockpiling the coal, and they’ve got it by the stack (x2)
We could learn from those Kentucky boys, the ones who blocked the tracks  

No scabs came in the day we made our trucks into a wall (x2)
The cop said who’s in charge? We said you’d have to take us all

The judges gave the bosses every injunction that they asked (x2)
Made our picketing a crime, so all the scabs could pass

We leaned on one another, anything we had we shared (x2)
But bills kept on piling, seemed like the world didn’t care

You know the deck was stacked, spent two years out on the line (x2)
Workers had the power, but the bosses had the time

Back at work in Brookwood, and the struggle’s underground (x2) 				
If we want to win it next time, gotta break their system down

Brookwood Blues

I've always had two ways of dealing with the looming shadow of death in the workplace, as those who know me on towboats or scaffolding job sites know- gallows humor, and sincerity. When the Lac Megantic disaster happened with a derailing oil train, I wrote a very sincere song about it, which is on the Wooden Shoe Ramblers album and will probably have a solo version on some upcoming album. 

I also wrote this song, using the other way for dealing with death and work. 

Standard tuned guitar, G major, to the tune of "Railroad Bill"

Out of respect for the victims of oil train disasters, this picture is of a nonfatal oil train fire. I would not use an image of a deadly derailment in a song with lyrics this flippant.

Oil Train

A blues written a year or two after I left the towboat industry, seeing the extreme low water levels grinding Upper Mississippi river traffic to a halt. Low water strangles a key industrial transport mode for bulk commodities into and out of the Midwest, forcing trucks and trains to take up more of the load and disrupting the whole supply chain and the economies relying on it. Climate change threatens to severely further disrupt Mississippi maritime traffic in the coming decades.

Featuring guitar in standard tuning, D pennywhistle, mandolin, bass, and jaw harp. Blues in E.  

Low Water Blues

Water’s falling on river, never seen it get so low (x2)
Barges grounded on the bank, got nowhere for them to go

Two wraps around the kevel; channel’s almost past the wire (x2)
Got no rain to fill the river, got no rain to stop the fires

Up all last night, we were just pulling on the fleet (x2)
Broke another poly, third one broke this week 

There’s a tow run on ground, down the river from Pine Bend (x2)
And the water’s going down, don’t know when it’s up again

There’s a heat over the river, like a lid held on a pot (x2)
Decks are frying like a pan, even the pilot house is hot

River’s backed up under Pepin, tracks backed up with oil cars (x2)
Leave the barges six foot deep, hope they make it past the bars

Water’s falling on river, never seen it get so low (x2)
Barges grounded on the bank, got nowhere for them to go

Low Water Blues

Diving deeper into drone folk with this one. Em. Shruti Box, DADGAD tuned guitar, low D whistle, jaw harp, bodhran drum.

Em D Em 
They hang the man and flog the woman
Em D Bm
Who steals the goose from off the commons
Em D Em 
But let the greater villain loose 
G D Em
Who steals the commons from the goose

When Adam sowed and Eve span, Nobody then was a gentleman
Nobody then was held in thrall, In this green common home of all,

But soldiers came, with orders strict To turn us out and to evict 
And built their walls around the fields Walls of stone, enforced in steel

We’re thrown from our garden home And set upon this world to roam, 
To earn our bread by sweat and toil Working the robber baron’s soil

So year on year on century In chattel or wage slavery
Under the bureaucrat and cop We’re reaping in the money crop

They take the water and the land  They take our crafts out of our hands
The seeds we plant, the songs we play They steal the commons still today

The law demands that we atone  When we take things we do not own 
But leave the lords and ladies fine  Who take things that are yours and mine

The Goose And The Commons

Folk musician, carpenter, and anarchist. Former member of the Wooden Shoe Ramblers. 
Website: https://edoylemusic.weebly.com/
Bandcamp: https://emmettdoyle.bandcamp.com/album/rust-belt-ballads
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/emmettdoyle
WSR: https://woodenshoeramblers.bandcamp.com/releases

Emmett Doyle

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