Take Back Labor Day: Hip hop meets folk by the RNC riverside « Minnesota Independent: News. Politics. Media.

Mos Def at Take Back Labor Day (photo: Tony Nelson)

Atmosphere at Take Back Labor Day (photo: Tony Nelson)

“They look like Ninja Turtles,” said one bystander as St. Paul police in full riot gear advanced toward protesters Monday in the early afternoon. But as conflict ensued on 7th Street, the novelty wore off, and rumors of tear gas and violence spread across the river to a scene on Harriet Island that couldn’t have been more different. Thousands attended the overwhelmingly peaceful Take Back Labor Day festival headlined by the Pharcyde, Mos Def, Atmosphere, Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), Allison Moorer, Steve Earle, and Billy Bragg, the audience quadrupling as protesters arrived. Sponsored by the Service Employees International Union, the fest was explicitly pro-labor and implicitly anti-RNC. “I find it insulting that Republicans would convene their convention on Labor Day given their long history of union busting practices and supporting corporations with sweatshop labor at home and abroad,” said Morello at a press conference before the show.

Allison Moorer and Steve Earle at Take Back Labord Day (photo: Tony Nelson)

Allison Moorer and Steve Earle at Take Back Labor Day (photo: Tony Nelson)

Billy Bragg at Take Back Labor Day (photo: Tony Nelson)

Onstage performers invoked the names of Woody Guthrie, the Clash, and James Brown, among others, with Morello embodying the lineup’s unusual nexus of hip-hop and folk leftism as he took the stage with an acoustic guitar scrawled with the words “Whatever it takes” (a nod to Guthrie, who wrote “This machine kills fascists” on his). Covering Rage and bringing members of Iraq Veterans Against the War to the stage behind him, he somehow persuaded a sea of tattooed under-30-year-olds to sing and clap along to Guthrie’s clunky national anthem “This Land Is Your Land.” Bragg (who could later be seen head-bobbing to Atmosphere) had already told the crowd that the event reminded him of London’s Rock Against Racism show in 1978, where he first saw the Clash.

“Labor doesn’t belong to any country, any party,” he said.

Tom Morello at Take Back Labor Day with Iraq Veterans against the War (photo by Tony Nelson)

Tom Morello at Take Back Labor Day with Iraq Veterans against the War (photo: Tony Nelson)

The Pharcyde at Take Back Labor Day (photo: Tony Nelson)

Crowd at Take Back Labor Day (photo: Tony Nelson)

Showtime and Myth, two b-boys on the grass near the stage, had never heard of Bragg or Steve Earle–they were here for Mos Def–but popped and locked to Earle’s DJ-accompanied rendition of the theme from HBO’s The Wire. (On that show, Earle plays the most iconic AA sponsor this side of Morgan Freeman in Clean and Sober.) Allison Moorer sang Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” And Mos Def (with his acting mentor Giancarlo Esposito in the wings) covered Brigadier Jerry’s “Jamaica Jamaica.” Atmosphere’s Slug dedicated “Yesterday,” a song for his late father, to George Carlin. Like the guitar says, whatever it takes.

Postscript: Not so peaceful. Most of us there didn’t know that arrests were taking place near the Wabasha Bridge down by the river within earshot of Atmosphere’s set–it was all over by the time I biked over. The irony is that the song, “Always Coming Back Home to You,” is partly about how relatively peaceful this city is. Watch the footage from theuptake above.

Here are some more photos from the show by Tony Nelson: