Dedication of labor Monument in Philadelphia

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.midatlanticlabor.com/index.php

by John O. Mason

The Labor Monument: Philadelphia’s Tribute of the American Worker was formally dedicated in Elmwood Park, 71st Street and Buist Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, on Friday, October 1, 2010.

A number of elected officials and union activists attended the event, including State Senators Tina Tartaglione and Vincent Hughes.
The monument is a circle of seven bronze tables, designed like old union buttons by the artist John Kindness, from Belfast, Northern Ireland. The bronze tables honored:

Eugene V. Debs, organizer for the American Railway Union and longtime activist for social justice;
Child Labor, with the quote by William D. Haywood: “The worst thief is he who steals the playtime of children.”;
The Industrial workers of the World (IWW), organized in 1905, who left a legacy of songs. The table had the quote by the IWW singer and martyr Joe Hill: “”Don’t waste time mourning, organize.”;

Bread and Roses, commemorating the 1912 strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, honoring the work of women in the Labor movement;

The organizing of the United Farm Workers in 1966, with their slogan, “Si, se puede!” (Yes, we can!);

The Memphis sanitation workers strike in 1968, which Martin Luther King Jr. supported and where he was assassinated, which strikers holding sign saying “I am a man”;

Karen Silkwood, who was killed under suspicious circumstances while trying to report unsafe working conditions at a nuclear plant.

Charles E. Mather III, President of the Board of Trustees of the Fairmount Park Art Association (FPAA), opened the program, saying, “Years ago, I studied a guy named Joseph Hilstom, (also) known as Joe Hill,” and he read the lyrics of the IWW song, “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill”:
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you or me
Says I, “But Joe, you’re ten years dead,”
“I never died,” says he
“I never died,” says he
“In Salt Lake, Joe,” says I to him,
Him standing by my bed,
“They framed you on a murder charge,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”
“The copper bosses killed you, Joe,
They shot you, Joe,” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man,”
Says Joe, “I didn’t die,”
Says Joe, “I didn’t die…”

FULL story at link.