My good pal Elliott over at Meerkat Media did an interesting post recently about unique songstress Joanna Newsom and the labor movement. In it, he looks at one of Newsom’s earlier songs “Yarn and Glue” and he points out what seems to be an awesome political message:

But it’s the song’s lyrics, not the production, that’ve got me stoked. Catch these selected lines from the track Yarn and Glue, which catalog the toasts of conspiratorial workers on their day of rest, amid a world of power, money and surveillance:

Do you know what this is son?
This is the panopticon
And all around us blink the brash
And shifty eyes of common cash

So gather twilight to your breast
And couch the rabble-rouser’s nest
And we will take a day of rest
And we will all be heaven-blessed

We toast the fallow furrows that we sow,
We toast the monies that we owe, owe, owe.
We toast the creditors we daily face
Who topple down with gruesome grace

And we toast the aristocrats with blood of blue
Because we know our collars are that color too

Speaking of workers, did you know that Federal minimum wage went up today? It went up 70 cents from $5.85 to $6.55 - although the raise only means something in 25 states as they other other 25 states already have a higher minimum wage…

takepart to learn more about the wage issue over at the AFL-CIO and watch an early vid of Joanna Newsom singing “Yarn and Glue” below

Read on:

• Surviving (or Not) on Minimum Wage
• Full-time workers deserve more than poverty-level income
• Minimum wage hike kicks in

*photo by ginthefer