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The New Solidarity Forever

Franklin Rosemont's introduction: "An IWW since 1937, John Gibbons Langan also carried a card in the Newspaper Guild, and was for many years a regular at Slim Brundage's Chicago free-speech forum, the College of Complexes, widely regarded as the successor to the old Dil Pickle (club). By 1955, Langan had resettled in San Francisco, where he ran a similar joint called, The Place, described in some detail in Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. As this sixties-style version of Solidarity Forever suggests, Langan was, like Brundage, a living link between the old Wobbly hobohemia and the newer youth counterculutre."


The New Solidarity Forever - lyrics by Jack Langan, 1968
Tune: Solidarity Forever / John Brown's Body (aka Battle Hymn of the Republic)
Transcribed from: The Big Red Songbook, Archie Green, et. al., Charles Kerr 2007

There are places in this country where the folks refuse to see
That What's happening in the ghettos happens next to you and me
That the bloody red that Panthers shed is shed to make us free
And our Union makes us strong

Chorus:
Solidarity Forever
Solidarity Forever
Solidarity Forever
For the union makes us strong

In Chicago Daley's troopers club our youth into the ground
While television cameras sent their shame the world around Them from the former liberals arose this mighty sound: "let our Union make us strong"

(Chorus)

From Berkeley to Columbia we saw our numbers grow
In washington our ranks were swelled against the common foe
Now black and white and brown and red we're rising row on row
While our union makes us strong

(Chorus)

No longer merely liberal but radical are we
As we roll our wave of freedom onward like the might see We will break the System's shackles and we'll fight to make men free
While our union makes us strong

(Chorus)

They can bind us but not gag us in the mockery of trial
For when one is stilled his message grows yet stronger all the while
More millions are revolting 'gainst the fascist tyrant's style
And our union makes us strong

(Chorus)

Shall we let the system spoil our Earth and smother it 'til dead?
Shall we let the greedy parasites our children fill with dread?
Let's all rise up against them and bury them instead
For our union makes us strong

(Chorus)

As the workers and the students see their freedom slip away
Let them join us in our battle to create a better day
When the fascist system crumbles as we charge on it and say
That our union makes us strong

(Chorus)

If we all united for Freedom and we all stand fast for peace
We can show the System that we want to see the killing cease
And we won't be stopped by taunts and jeers nor clubs of the police
For our union makes us strong

(Chorus)

Note: this page opened up in a separate browser window so that the reader can compare the lyrics of The New Solidarity Forever to (the original) Solidarity Forever if desired.