Labor Movement and Joe Hill

     The American Labor Movement was a pivotal time in American history. This time period in our history changed the way a worker/laborer worked and how their salaries would be paid. Before this change came along, there were no rules in which how the workers worked, what conditions they worked in. And also there was no correlation between the working hours and the wages. The owners of the factories would make the workers work in unbearable conditions; workers who worked in those factories would pick up diseases that were so severe that it caused death after working there for a certain time. One of the most active people who contributed in the American Labor Movement was Joe Hill. He worked in the factories all over the country. Therefore, he could understand how the people/workers were feeling about those injustices. Joe Hill spoke in the name of all of workers. Joe Hill, through his music, was letting these workers know that if they all came together and united against the owners of the factories something could be done for them and a positive result would be possible. The video of the song “I thought I saw Joe Hill last night” by Paul Robeson shows the idea that Joe’s contributions to the early labor movement was so big that his presence continues to be felt in his absence. Although, Joe is dead the laborers feel him in their hearts as they go on to organize. Here is the link of Paul Robeson’s song “I thought I saw Joe Hill last night”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Kxq9uFDes
     In the video “Joe Glazer discusses music in the American Labor Movement”, Joe Glazer says that songs are important to build the spirit. In this case he is talking about the solidary spirit. In a general sense, he is saying that for the workers to be able to make a change they have to be united. And music helps unite them. Joe Glazer understood that singing the words gave them strength and passion. He adds that in order to make an impact on people one has to keep the lyrics simple; and it also has to be repetitive. This is the link of the video “Joe Glazer discusses music in the American Labor Movement”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaQ7qWo6120&playnext=1&list=PL076301DD41D78985
     In both, the stories of Joe Glazer and in “Industrialization and the Rise of the Labor Music” the idea of music makes people want to act on their ideas. First, music brought the workers together, united them. And then it gave this united group strength and courage to be able to take action to change what was bothering them.
I chose the song "There is power in the Union" by Billy Brag. Billy Bragg understand the same idea that Joe Hill had that people have the same problems and if they come together they can get these problems fixed. They understand music moves people and can make people get things done, music can move there emotions to make them want to fix the problems of the world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CkFPyH8v1c

Diversity in Staten Island

The tragic events that occurred on September 11, 2001 affected not only New York but our country as a whole. This was an attack on our country, something that Americans never thought would happen.  The terrorist attack on the Unites States made us as Americans feel vulnerable to the world. That feeling of vulnerability hasn’t crossed our minds since Pearl Harbor and at that it was off into the pacific, but to my generation we had never experienced something like that before in our lives. After the attack on the United States you saw people from all different ethnic backgrounds and skin colors come together to try and fix our country. During that time period of recovery we as people of the United States came together and there was no difference in people, we came together as Americans to fix our country. Some examples of this in Staten Island was when they came together and had there intercultural interactive pot-luck dinner.

Staten Island was hit hard in this attack because a lot of the people in those buildings and also the hero’s who came to rescue their fellow Americans who died in the buildings falling were from Staten Island. If you know of Staten Island then you may know that it is a melting pot of people from everywhere, so the people who were in the attack on America where people with all different kinds of backgrounds. Instead of Staten Island sitting back excepting what happened to them and feeling sad for themselves, they excepted this negative tragic event and turned it into a positive for their community. September 11 could have easily brought this community down but it did the opposite, it brought the community together and made them stronger. The first step that the people of Staten Island did to bring their diverse community together is by having a lot of them sit down at a table and grieve together. They let each other know how they were feeling and found that they all were feeling the same emotions. This help break the boundaries between one another, after their grieving period was over the people of Staten Island came together to break more barriers between there people. Once they all came together and found they were different and accepted that there differences wasn’t a bad thing but yet a good thing they created a lot of new ideas and a lot of new opportunities for thir city. Once everyone came together they began to create different events to show their diversity in their city.

           

Here at Westminster College we are diversity; we represent it from all over the world.  Diversity has to be appreciated on our campus for the fact we have people from all over the world interacting with people from different places every day. It makes you appreciate some of the different things in the world when you can see it and interact with the different people of the world every day.  Even though diversity is promoted a lot here at Westminster College there are ways we can make it better here on our campus. We first need the faculty and staffs to come together and try and make situations were students from different places come together and work with each other on a regular basis. Lets break the kids of Westminster College  out of the comfort zones. Once the faculty and staff make the steps in the right direction to make our campus better with interacting with our diverse group of people here, then the students will come together naturally because of the new relationships which will be made from the interacting of students