West Virginia Teachers Strike

Soundcloud.
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Written shortly after the successful, three-union wildcat strike by West Virginia teachers which touched off a nationwide chain reaction of educator strikes and organizing. After they heard this song, some of the organizers of the WV wildcat invited us to play the Blair Mountain 100th anniversary show in Charleston. 


G C
These hollers carry echoes from the ghosts of Matewan
G D
And the graves of the coal miners, who rolled the union on-
G C
You can clear away a hillside with a dozer and a blast
G D
But these hills still bear those bodies, and the shadow that they cast
Em C
Now so many of these towns are like a husk dried in the wind,
G D
The machine’s replaced the man, then gas fracking’s done them in
Em C
But you built your empires on the coal you pulled out of these hills-
G D
But to educate the kids you say it’s just too high a bill?

Chorus:
C G
And you say that it’s illegal to walk a picket line,
D Em
Just like they used to tell our grandparents at the mine
C G
We’ll do it as a wildcat if that’s how it’s got to be-
D Em
As long as we can strike, mountaineers are always free

Where librarians on horseback used to bring the written word,
Now we can’t attract more teachers, and isn’t it absurd
How you gambled on our health care and burned away our trust,
Like you gambled on our futures, always courting the boom and bust,
The power in these hills isn’t in water, gas, or coal-
It’s in all of us together, all the unions with one goal
Jim Justice called rednecks, dumb bunnies, and some more-
But we’re proud of that bandana, union rebels always wore-

Chorus

In every holler in West Virginia, you could hear the people shout
As every county in the state declared that school was out
And before the week was done, the whole state had hit the skids
this system doesn’t work without us raising up the kids
The unions made a compromise, but we had a solid crew
The working teacher started this; we were gonna see it through
Until our songs of victory had shook the capitol dome,
And rising in the red states, country roads brought it home

Chorus