Which side are you on, boys
Note: I kind of buried the recording of me singing this song into my phone toward the bottom of this post. If you just want to hear it, go ahead and click here.
I’m angry. I’m so angry that I find it hard to find words. I walk my days filled with a rage incandescent and excruciating, a fury that sometimes robs me of breath.
Every day — every day every day every day — we learn of new, more, greater, deeper, worse dehumanization of the world’s women, of me my daughter my sister my mom my aunts my cousins my friends all the women you know all of us all of us ALL OF US. Every day. More rape, more degradation, more controlling hands, more refusal to hear us and believe us and acknowledge our humanity. Every day.
We have recently had it re-confirmed that the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States was done on the backs of the women he abused and the women of this country. Which was no surprise, because the election of the man who appointed him was done on the backs of the women he abused and the women of this country.
But that’s just one story, one in an endless flood of stories about women whose bodies are forfeit, whose careers are forfeit, whose futures are forfeit, whose lives are forfeit because men’s freedom to access and control us is more important than our bodies, careers, futures, and lives.
There was a time when I was patient with men who didn’t know what we live with every day — but no more. If nothing else, my rage has been clarifying, and now I’m clear: You’re either on the side of my humanity, or you’re not.
You either listen to women, hear our truths, acknowledge our inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — or you don’t. You either know that our bodies and our lives belong to us — or you don’t.
Which side are you on?
I started to sing “Which Side Are You On,” the old union song, and found myself wishing for a version for this time, for now, for the #MeToo era, the Kavanaugh era, the Trump era, the Weinstein-Epstein-Cosby-Kelly-Nassar-Moore era. The question of the dehumanization of women is far greater and more foundational to human society than even labor rights (which are, of course, women’s rights) and starker than any other social justice question, because it is at the heart of every social justice question. Which side are you on?
So, in the spirit of folk music, in which the old songs are borrowed and new songs made, I took “Which Side Are You On” — itself based on an earlier song (or two) and produced in several incarnations since 1931 — and wrote new words. I tried to stay firmly within the style and framework of the original, and here and there was able to maintain a phrase or an entire line exactly as it was first written. I did this in the hope that it might become a spark or a source for others. I’m not a songwriter, and I’m not a musician, but I have words, and I have a voice. The original is here, my lyrics are below (quick note for my mother’s sake: The second verse is not autobiographical), and you can click here to hear me singing them. It’s a little more than a minute and a half long.
If you’re a singer or a musician or know someone who is and would like to do anything with this, or if you have a better idea or better words — please let me know: emilylhauser @ yahoo [dot] com
One last note: Most people know “Which Side Are You On” as a Pete Seeger song, and so it was — but Pete was singing the words of Florence Reece, a striking coal-miner’s wife who had sent her husband to safety and was hiding their children from the bullets of the Harlan County Sheriff and his hired guns when she wrote the words on the back of a calendar page. I’m on Florence’s side. And I am more angry than I have ever been.
Which side are you on?
PS If you’d like to learn more about why these lyrics came out as they did, I actually annotated them here.
