May 1, 2024

Today we celebrate workers all over the world. The Green Party is pro-labor, pro-union and stands for working people. All GPUS staff are union members and all GPUS merchandise is made only by union labor.

Here are a few icons in labor history

(Click on their names to learn more):

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn:

Did you know that Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was the inspiration behind Joe Hill’s Song “Rebel Girl”?

Flynn was “an American labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women’s rights, birth control, and women’s suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral with processions in Red Square attended by over 25,000 people.”

(Above image attiribution: By Public Domain)

Joe Hill:

Hill was ” a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, familiarly called the “Wobblies”). Hill rose in the IWW organization and traveled widely, organizing workers under the IWW banner, writing political songs and satirical poems, and making speeches. He and Harry McClintock were Spellbinders for the IWW and would show up as they did at the Tucker Utah strike on June 14, 1913 (Salt Lake Tribune). His songs frequently appropriated familiar melodies from popular songs and hymns of the time. He coined the phrase “pie in the sky”, which appeared in his song “The Preacher and the Slave”.

As an itinerant worker, Hill moved around the west, hopping freight trains, going from job to job. By the end of 1913, he was working as a laborer at the Silver King Mine in Park City, Utah”.

Utah Phillips:

Utah Phillips was “an American labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller and poet. He described the struggles of labor unions and the power of direct action, self-identifying as an anarchist. He often promoted the Industrial Workers of the World in his music, actions, and words. A graduate of East High School in Salt Lake City, Phillips returned to Salt Lake City, while riding the rails and tramping around the west, where he met Ammon Hennacy from the Catholic Worker Movement. He gave credit to Hennacy for saving him from a life of drifting to one dedicated to using his gifts and talents toward activism and public service.Phillips assisted him in establishing a mission house of hospitality named after the activist Joe Hill. Phillips worked at the Joe Hill House for the next eight years, then ran for the U.S. Senate as a candidate of Utah’s Peace and Freedom Party in 1968. He also ran for president of the United States in 1976 for the Do-Nothing Party.

He adopted the name U. Utah Phillips in keeping with the hobo tradition of adopting a moniker that included an initial and the state of origin.”

Fact: Green Party of Utah member Brendan Phillips is the grandson of Utah Phillips!

Celebrate May Day by joining the Green Party of Utah today!