By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
J.P. Wright, railroad union man and modern labor troubadour, has rewritten the words to "Solidarity Forever," that grand old union song, in honor of Kentucky's public school teachers. He calls it "Schoolidarity Forever!" Click here to listen.
Sing along, too:
When the union's inspiration through the worker's blood shall run.
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun.
For what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one?
For the union makes us strong!
We are public educators and we're here to take a stand!
This is not the lesson we asked for, this is a fight the politicians planned!
And we'll stand up for our pensions and we'll do it hand in hand!
For the union makes us strong!
Every school the board's sabotage is ours and ours alone!
Every student, parent, worker every brick and every stone!
They are ours, not to languish in, but to thrive in and to own.
For the union makes us strong!
The politicians stole our pensions, and now they want our schools!
They tell us, “it's just how things are,” and they play us for fools.
But we know that they rigged the game and we won't obey their rules!
The union makes us strong!
They say “there's no alternative,” they say it but they’re wrong!
There stealing from our children and they've done it for too long!
So join us in our picket lines and join us in our song,
For union makes us strong!
They have taken untold billions, that never toiled to earn!
But without our brains and muscles not a single kid can learn!
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn!
That the union makes us strong!
In our homes and in our classrooms, in the banks and in the street,
our united people's movement is a force that they can't beat!
We are here to take back every Board of Education Seat!
And the union makes us strong!
In our hands is placed a power greater than their horded gold.
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold!
We can bring to birth a new world, from the ashes of the old!
For the union makes us strong.
Solidarity Forever!
Schoolidarity Forever!
Solidarity Forever!
For the union makes us strong!
Re-write 2018 – John Paul Wright – www.railroadmusic.org
Chicago Teachers – 2016 - Ralph Chaplin 1915 – I.W.W