Friday, January 20, 2017

"Fieldworker" - Graham Nash (live)

Joe Hill has been the symbol of union bashing in America and he has been for almost a hundred years since he was executed without cause.  (WIKI:  Joe Hill)

Yevette is a lifetime union worker and she doesn't just talk since she has walked strike lines to defend it.  She did not know the details of Joe Hill despite her staunch support for unions so, herewith, the rest of the story.

Note:  Joe Hill was from Sweden and worked all manner of menial jobs but he was a highly-intelligent man in whom the intelligence was not recognized.  Instead of being a resource, they saw him as a threat.  He was a hard-working man.





I only worked in the tomato fields in California for a couple of days before I was fired because I was a kid with no sense but I couldn't keep up with the braceros (i.e. Spanish for laborer).  The fieldworkers get on the truck in the dark and work in the fields without respite until the truck comes back late in the day.  This was some time in the late Sixties.

Digging in your fields
Pulling up your food
No matter how I feel, don't do me no good
"Treat me like a human," is all I got to say
The man that I am working for won't let me get away
I came across your border just to work for you
I give you all I've got to give
What more can I do?

Don't give me law and order
Tell me to stick around
While standing in the picket line
you try and shoot me down down
I came to your country to work on the land
Watching the seeds as they die in the sand
Fighting for your freedom with a hoe in your hand

Fieldworker, fieldworker
Digging in your fields
Pulling up your food
No matter how I feel, don't do me no good.
"Treat me like a human," is all I got to say
The man that I am working for won't let me get away

- Graham Nash


Here's the original recording with Crosby.



This one has been a theme song all my life and all the more so now when so many forget and we saw the Calais camp in France where they all but burned it because Britain wouldn't admit them.

Digging in your fields
Pulling up your food
No matter how I feel, don't do me no good.
"Treat me like a human," is all I got to say

When I'm frustrated that some didn't get it, I don't recall them ever listening to it.

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