LABOR DAY: A TRIBUTE TO HARDWORKING PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

January 1, 2025

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Si Kahn and George Mann

(AFM National Recording Agreement)

Musicians and veteran activists Si Kahn and George Mann, both of Local 1000 (Nongeographic), released this collection of labor movement songs in celebration of Kahn’s 80th birthday. The newly recorded tracks feature special guests Local 1000 members John McCutcheon, Joe Jencks, and Tom Chapin; Kathy Mattea of Local 257 (Nashville, TN); and British activist Billy Bragg.

Kahn and Mann have long advocated for the working class. Kahn’s songs, in particular, “Go to Work on Monday” and “Aragon Mill,” have become labor union anthems. Kahn and Mann collaborate on “Solidarity Day,” the folk duo Magpie of Local 1000 sing “Spinning Mills of Home.” With some engineering finesse, Michael Johnathon (Local 1000) and Odetta blend voices on “Gone Gonna Rise Again.” Bragg’s contribution is an amped-up version of the previously unreleased “We’re the Ones.”

Mann cites two guiding principles for the album: to put out Kahn’s unreleased songs and recordings and to focus on songs of workers and the trade union movement. As a young community organizer, Kahn entered two historic labor struggles in the 1970s: the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) during the Brookside Strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, and the J.P. Stevens Campaign for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU).

“Great union songs connect us across time,” Kahn writes in his liner notes. “If it were not for Florence Reece’s unforgettable, ‘Which Side Are You On?’ who would ever remember Bloody Harlan’s Sheriff Blair? Yet as our singing voices build, we swear again that we will not thug for J. H. Blair, in Kentucky or anywhere else, because we are for the union, we know which side we are on.”

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