Working People

Working People Deserve Bread and Roses—and Musicals (w/ Gene Bruskin)

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Gene Bruskin was born to a Jewish working-class family in South Philadelphia and has been a life-long social justice activist, union organizer, poet, and playwright. Since retiring from the labor movement, Gene wrote his first play in 2016, a musical comedy for and about work and workers called Pray For the Dead: A Musical Tale of Morgues, Moguls and Mutiny. In this mini-cast we talk to Bruskin about his life in the the labor movement, the role of art and imagination in revolutionary politics, and about Bruskin's new musical, The Return of John Brown, which is premiering this month in Baltimore, Washington, DC, and the John Brown Raid Headquarters in Maryland. "In a staged reading of this new musical, John Brown, who in 1859 became the first person in the nation executed for treason, climbs out of his grave where he was hanged, into the present, only to be rearrested and threatened with another hanging."

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  • Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

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