"Hold Fast" Wins Strike Song of the Year

In a contest being put on by Labor Notes and the Pittsburgh Labor Choir, my song Hold Fast has won Strike Song of the Year 2025. The contest was a call for songs about a general strike, with the aim of findings songs that can be picked up and learned by crowds of people. This song is meant to be sung by masses in the streets, not as a solo piece. 

There will be a teach-in for this and other songs at 11 AM Central Time on April 26th 2025. Details and link below. 

I relied heavily on the tradition of call and response spirituals in the labor and civil rights movement, especially the the musical tradition of Black struggle, as a starting point. I intentionally recycle some lines and motifs from other union songs of mine, to feed those pieces into this general strike anthem. This includes the "Hold the Line" motif that now has appeared in two versions of "Holding the Line", and in Jessica Garraway's environmental justice song of the same name which I helped her compose. "Put your tools down and walk out" is from the Big 3 Auto Strike song, and "fire in your belly and iron in your spine" is from the Marathon Strike Song. Several other lines reference revolutionary quotes from Durruti's "New world in our hearts" to Connolly's "We demand only the earth". I intentionally took lines from my existing body of work in order to roll those struggles up together into the general strike call. 

Lyrics and chords
​Am Dm E
People rise up, people shout- put your tools down and walk out
E Am
Hold fast! All together, hold the line!
Am Dm E
Every worker in this land, strike together hand in hand
G Dm E
Hold fast! All together, hold the line!
Chorus
Am
Hold the line! Hold the line!
Dm E
Hold it for the future, yours and mine-
Am Dm E
With a fire in your belly, and iron in your spine!
E Am
Hold fast! All together, hold the line!
Cross our arms and plant our feet, and we’ve got the system beat
Not a single wheel will turn, ‘til we’ve taken what we’ve earned
King Don can build his wall, but the curtain always falls
Soon the first will be the last, and we’ll march out of the past
This old world has come apart, there’s a new one in our hearts
Workers know what we are worth- we demand only the earth


General Strike Song Contest 2025 Online Teach-In
Song share, chant share, and teach-in
Saturday, April 26, from 12:00-1:30pm US Eastern time
11:00am Central
10:00am Mountain
9:00am Pacific

Registration Link Here

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