COMMIE NOSTALGIA: IT'S THE MAYDAY AGITPROP THREAD!

[sighyoung]

[Radbird]

Okay, it's not nostalgia yet.....

[sighyoung]

[doe_boy]

[CardsofSTL]

Mayday bump to all you commie bastards that celebrate.

[GeddyWrox]

17 year old bump. Nice.

[heyzeus]

Did we achieve the glorious proletariat overthrow of the decadent capitalist pigs yet, bros?

[Radbird]

17 year old bump. Nice.

Yep but all the broken links make me a bit sad

[pioneer98]

My dad does genealogy and he dug up this old peom that my great-great grandpa on my mom's side wrote. It was published in Miner's Magazine on May 1, 1918. He was a union printer and worked at many newspapers. He retired to the Union Printer's Home in Colorado Springs, so he wrote this as an old man. The Union Printer's Home was in use as a retirement home basically up until the pandemic in 2020. It was vacant when I visited it last summer. Anyway, this poem is like my favorite thing ever:

Mother Jones
by Oscar Langford

They’ve put an injunction on old Mother Jones
The language so stung
From the brave woman’s tongue,
And her truth-telling words were so noisy in tones
They’ve tried the suppression of old Mother Jones

The Court has imprisoned old Mother Jones.
She raised such rage
About starvation wage,
The coal baron’s greed and the coal miner’s groans.
That they tried to get rid of old Mother Jones

To thus make a martyr of old Mother Jones
Will encourage the strife
And will quicken the life
Of the struggling workers fighting the drones
Who put an injunction on old Mother Jones.

Do they think an injunction will gag Mother Jones?
It will certainly fail--
Though they’ve put her in jail
Or keep her surrounded by prison wall stones,
There are thousands to speak for old Mother Jones

For the words and the works of old Mother Jones
For downtrodden men
Will be eulogized then
The earth has enshrouded the weary old bones
And a monument built for old Mother Jones.

Then the wonderful spirit of old Mother Jones
May march up and down
Like the soul of John Brown,
Till justice shall vanquish our burdens and groans,
And oppression is buried like old Mother Jones.

[sighyoung]

My dad does genealogy and he dug up this old peom that my great-great grandpa on my mom's side wrote. It was published in Miner's Magazine on May 1, 1918. He was a union printer and worked at many newspapers. He retired to the Union Printer's Home in Colorado Springs, so he wrote this as an old man. The Union Printer's Home was in use as a retirement home basically up until the pandemic in 2020. It was vacant when I visited it last summer. Anyway, this poem is like my favorite thing ever:

Mother Jones
by Oscar Langford

They’ve put an injunction on old Mother Jones
The language so stung
From the brave woman’s tongue,
And her truth-telling words were so noisy in tones
They’ve tried the suppression of old Mother Jones

The Court has imprisoned old Mother Jones.
She raised such rage
About starvation wage,
The coal baron’s greed and the coal miner’s groans.
That they tried to get rid of old Mother Jones

To thus make a martyr of old Mother Jones
Will encourage the strife
And will quicken the life
Of the struggling workers fighting the drones
Who put an injunction on old Mother Jones.

Do they think an injunction will gag Mother Jones?
It will certainly fail--
Though they’ve put her in jail
Or keep her surrounded by prison wall stones,
There are thousands to speak for old Mother Jones

For the words and the works of old Mother Jones
For downtrodden men
Will be eulogized then
The earth has enshrouded the weary old bones
And a monument built for old Mother Jones.

Then the wonderful spirit of old Mother Jones
May march up and down
Like the soul of John Brown,
Till justice shall vanquish our burdens and groans,
And oppression is buried like old Mother Jones.

That's a terrific poem. I love labor and protest poems of that period--they have so much bite. I'd also love to find a scan of that on Google Books, which scans tons of these old magazines, and share it on social media.