Working Class Love Notes #1: Talkin' About a Revolution
Welcome to Working Class Love Notes
“Don’t you know? They’re talkin’ about a revolution?” – Tracy Chapman
Dear ones,
My Dad drove his white Iroc Z-28 Camaro way over the speed limit on our rural road, taking curves at high speed, with Tracy Chapman’s self-titled album blasting out the windows and me beside him in the passenger seat. It was 1988 and I was eight years old. He knew the roads by heart and how to handle his car so I wasn’t scared even if I should’ve been. We had the T-Tops open and my hair was blowing wild in the wind, my blonde curls getting more and more tangled by the second. I felt free.
My Dad loved music and many of the albums I still consider my favorites are ones I listened to with him, including Tracy Chapman’s debut album. Dad listened to all kinds of music from Talking Heads to Jimi Hendrix to the metal band Motörhead, but it was the working class songwriters that I liked best. The songs felt like stories to me. They described people like us, people trying to make it every day, people trying to hold on to love and joy in the midst of worrying about paying the bills. The stories sounded like my Dad and the men in my family, but also like my Mom who worked as a grocery store clerk for decades, or any one of my neighbors, many of them family farmers like us also trying to raise some tobacco to sell while working full-time at other jobs.
Tracy Chapman was my favorite of Dad’s albums. Like many others, I could write volumes about her song Fast Car, but it was the opening track of the album that sparked my curiosity the most, her gorgeous, earnest voice asking: Don’t you know, they’re talkin’ about a revolution? It sounds like a whisper.
While they're standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sittin around waitin for a promotion
Don't ya know
They’re talkin about a revolution?
It sounds like a whisper
It was the Reagan 80s and my Dad worked at a strip mine in Eastern Kentucky like most of the men in my family did. The work was hard and the workers breathed in toxic dust all day, but the money was good and he had two kids to take care of. My Dad passed away in 2011, but I wish I’d been able to ask him if he and his fellow workers were talking about a revolution like Tracy sang about. I like to imagine them after their shifts at the mine, sitting together on their truck tailgates, having a beer and whatever might be leftover in their dinner pails from lunch, listening to Tracy’s album. I like to imagine Dad asking his fellow workers “You know it doesn’t have to be like this, right? You know we deserve better, right?”
Even though I felt free in those moments with the T-Tops down and my hair whipping in the wind, I was far from it. In 1988 after six years of Reagan’s policies, the labor unions that once defined Appalachia were mostly busted up so my Dad didn’t have a union job, which meant he could be laid off at any time, he had few job safety protections, and our family had no health insurance. Mom was a low wage worker, a cashier standing on her feet for hours, also without health insurance or benefits.
What we saw at home played out on a national level, too. Poverty and homelessness in this country increased daily, and the ruling class cut income taxes and regulations so that they could hoard wealth under the guise that they, the “job creators,” would use their amassed wealth to bless the rest of us by letting it trickle down. To maintain that wealth, they used racism to divide white people from Black and Brown people so that workers couldn’t rise up en masse. If we were too busy fighting each other, we wouldn’t fight them. The dominant culture centered the rugged individual, the myth that if you worked hard enough you, too, could be rich. And in the midst of growing poverty, the government’s message to working class people was to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. In fact, it was these policies that led to the vast inequality we see today where the ultra rich build rockets to take joy rides to space while families and children go hungry. A 2024 Oxfam report shows the world’s five richest men have doubled their fortunes to $869 billion dollars since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, a rate of $14 million per hour, while five billion people worldwide have gotten poorer.
My Dad hated Ronald Reagan, and because he hated Reagan, I hated him, too. I still do. And I think it was living in the impact of Reagan’s policies that led my Dad, a white working class Eastern Kentucky man with a mullet, a small time tobacco farmer and Nascar fan driving a Z-28, to listen to Tracy Chapman, a Black woman who grew up in Cleveland who experienced racism and bullying in addition to economic injustice, and wrote songs about it. He saw his experience linked to hers, and through their connection, I felt connected to Tracy, too.
Don't ya know?
They're talking about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what's theirs
I’ve been a community organizer for 18 years and it's these revolutionary whispers, finding these sparks, these questions and conversations, these moments of human connection, that keep me going. It’s that first conversation on a door when I meet a tenant who is struggling to make the rent, or a one-on-one conversation with a single mom who is worried about her children’s school not having supplies or new textbooks, that opens up the possibility for something different for all of us.
Of course these conversations are heartbreaking and infuriating because none of it has to be this way. But it’s also an opportunity for me to look another person in the eyes, to offer a smile and genuine curiosity, to be a listening ear about what they’re going through, to share what I’m experiencing, and reflect back what I see in them – a beautiful, dignified person who deserves everything good in the world: safety, nourishing food, a supportive community, elected officials who give a damn about us, and a government that serves the people.
More often than not, it’s been awhile since anyone told them that, and even longer since they’ve believed it about themselves. But this is a key role of an organizer, and a key role of a working class person: to see each other, to create solidarity through our shared experience, and ultimately to build a powerful multiracial working class movement together. In other words, to talk about a revolution.
Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what's theirs
I’m a proud anti-racist white working class Appalachian woman, writer, and organizer. But I wasn’t always this way. I wasn’t always proud of who I was and wasn’t sure of my role in the world. I was born to people and a place where the culture at large told us we were trash, hillbillies, ignorant, and we should be ashamed of ourselves. Even though everyone I knew worked harder than a person ever should, we were told we were lazy and deserved whatever tragedies befell us. I wanted to be a writer and travel the world, and it was made very clear to me, stated directly and indirectly, that if I wanted to be successful and make anything of myself, I needed to get rid of my accent and move away from Kentucky as soon as possible. I internalized these messages and moved away. I tried to lose my accent, but thankfully, the Blaze, Kentucky girl in me was defiant and I couldn’t ever entirely get rid of it. But now, I’d never even consider it.
What happened? Readers, I promise I’ll share more details as we go on this newsletter journey together, but in short, some great people mentored me and helped me see my worth, they helped me imagine something more for myself and my community, and they taught me the skill of community organizing – a way to build on our shared interests as working class people so that we can fight together for something better. I started to see myself as more than the trash that’s ruining everything for everyone, but instead as a vital part of the solution, an important key to actual freedom for all of us.
Now, I’m a proud hillbilly, an anti-racist white redneck from Eastern Kentucky, and I want you to know it. I want you to see me and hear my accent. And I hope that in seeing me, you’ll see something in yourself, too, that spark of dignity and the feeling of solidarity between one working person to another. I hope you’ll know you’re not alone, that there’s so many of us who want something better. I hope that in reading this newsletter you’ll know that you belong with us, the working class, and we’re a damn fine group to be a part of.
And finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin' 'bout a revolution
Writing and reading are powerful tools. It’s a way we can share information, tell our own stories, and open our minds and hearts to new concepts and people. It’s a way we can connect and build relationships. And it can raise our consciousness so we see ourselves united with others opposed to feeling isolated or different. It can spark our imaginations so we can create the future we long for, a future we’re willing to fight for. Like Tracy Chapman writing working class music that touched the heart of my white working class Dad in Eastern Kentucky, I hope that my writing can play some small role in building class solidarity, of opening hearts and minds, and maybe most of all, to be an offering of love and dignity to all of us.
When we feel our dignity, when we stand in solidarity with each other, side by side in this struggle, we can build a movement big enough and bold enough to win.
Don't ya know you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run
Oh, I said you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run
'Cause finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin' 'bout a revolution
Yes, finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin' 'bout a revolution, oh no
Talkin' 'bout a revolution, oh no
Thank you for joining me for Working Class Love Notes, my best attempt at talking about a revolution. Let’s put the T-Tops down and enjoy the ride. We have a world to win.
Love, Beth
This article by friend and working class shero Kim Kelly about The Glorious Proletarian Theater of Pro Wrestling. “I refuse to entertain the notion that pro wrestling fans are any less discerning than anyone else when some of the dumbest motherfuckers alive hold political office and write opinion columns for The New York Times.”
Shared from Working Class History, a beautiful illustration of a traditional May Day garland by British socialist artist Walter Crane, blending the tradition of medieval May Day with the workers' movement.
A group of us collectively wrote Appalachians for Palestine and people across the region dropped it on our social media pages in solidarity on October 21st, 2023. Months later, Appalachians are still in solidarity for a free Palestine all across the region and beyond. Sending love, solidarity, and care to the powerful, beautiful students and faculty members facing violent state repression for rising up for a free Palestine on campuses across the country.
My friend John Russell at More Perfect Union reporting on the historic union win for Volkswagen workers and the United Auto Workers in Chattanooga TN, who won the first U.S. union at a non-union car company in decades. Check out John’s substack The Holler and subscribe!
This caring reminder from beloved Appalachian artist Little Bubby Child (turn the truck radio up for full effect):
What’s capturing your heart these days? When did you first listen to Tracy Chapman and how did you feel hearing her songs? Are you talkin’ about a revolution? Tell me about it.
What you can expect:
Working Class Love Notes is the monthly substack version of me passing you handwritten notes full of scribbled hearts and sweet words so that you know just how damn special you are.
Why? Because we deserve it.
The inspiration for this newsletter came from a conversation with my friend and mentor Jerome Scott, a leader in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and co-founder of Project South, who shared with me: “There’s nothing too good for the working class.”
That quote, the truth of it, took my breath away.
My friends, we deserve it all. We deserve all of the goodness this world has to offer. We deserve to be treated with dignity and to feel belonging. We deserve safe affordable housing, nourishing food, a kind community, and access to the care and healing we need. We deserve more hours in the day for creativity, rest, and joy, not more work and anxiety. And, maybe most of all, we deserve love.
Working Class Love Notes is my offering of tenderness to us, the working class.
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Great work, Beth. Not sure we see EVERYTHING exactly the same way (be a dull world if we did), but I've never doubted either your talent or your commitment. Keep it up! I'm starting in here as well FWIW. Check me out when you get the time (I'll have some Menifee, Morgan, and Bell stuff @ some point myself).
Love this, Beth! Your dad and mine would have had a lot in common.