JP Covers “Which Side Are You On?” and Dedicates a Song to Bill Moyer and Bill McKibben

By: Mike Elk August 4, 2016

This episode of the Folk Labor Desk is a special episode made while JP laid over at his away-from-home terminal in Nashville, TN. It features poetry about contemporary life on the railroad from a fellow locomotive engineer, Cary Depew, as well as the classic union song “Which Side Are You On?” written by Florence Reece. It also includes an original song, “You Ain’t Gonna Ride This Train,” to frame a commentary about the bust economy affecting workers and communities in the Appalachian coal-producing regions of Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

About the Author

Mike Elk
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter who covered everything from Lula & the Brazilian labor movement to major league baseball. He spent years covering union organizing in the South for The Guardian and was labeled by the New York Times as an "abrasive gadfly" for exposing within the labor movement. Raised in a UE union family in Pittsburgh, Elk was illegally for union organizing at Politico in 2015 and used his NLRB settlement to start the crowd-funded Payday Report. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and is fluent in both Pittsburghese and Portuguese, which he learned when attending journalism school at PUC-Rio de Janerio. Email: [email protected]ydayReport.com

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