Drywallers Strike 1992

Soundcloud. Featured on Rust Belt Ballads. Written in commemoration of the strike of mostly Hispanic immigrant drywall workers in 1992, organized by rank and file workers, to win recognition and entry into the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, my union. 


Em D C B7
The sun beats like a hammer in the south of California
4 cents a sheet at piece work, for the sixty hour week
The subs pushed out the unions, to build the little boxes, 
And hired from the border men to hang the drywall sheets
The border’s not a place; it’s a weight that you carry
It’s a way to keep you quiet, so you don’t get put away
It’s an agent of the boss, with his rifle, always watching
Oversees you when you’re working, comes for you on pay day

Chorus
C D Em
When the workers said Ya basta! Enough is enough,
Am B
There was a power there between them that was more than any man
C D Em
You can’t beat it down or gas it, you can’t hold it in your cuffs
Am B
It’s power of people knowing that they can,
Em B7 Em 
Si se puede, si se puede, yes we can

Sixty bucks were short on a check for Jesus Gomez
His sweat and body not enough, they even stole his pay
And the foreman laughed and said, we can always find another
Someone else to take your place, so let’s do it the easy way
But he told all his paisanos, his friends from Guanajuato,
How much of our dignity can cheated wages buy?
We’ll gather up our brothers, and we’ll go down to the Carpenters-
Say let us into the union- we’ll organize or die.

Chorus

The cops at Mission Viejo attacked us on the picket
And would hand you to La Migra if you wouldn’t scab
But we knew that we would win, one way or the other-
And if violence is what they want, then violence they will have
we marched on La Migra, and on the police stations 
And put our bodies on the line, to force their freeways closed
Like a dandelion spreads its seeds whenever you will kick it- 
The harder that they knocked us down, the stronger that we rose

Chorus

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