Community, i didnt have any family here. I didnt have any friends here. But i had heard about samuel which i had never heard about before in 2009 when i was looking for a setting for one of the stories i did not recession effect for the washington post. And somebody mentioned to me there was a community in wisconsin just had lost a big old General Motors plant. And i thought that was interesting but i didnt come here at the time because this is just happened. And eyes you know a lot of people were still getting subsidence today. So the economic pain for some people had really begun to see ben. So i didnt, but gainesville lingered in my mind and as i was getting close to Getting Started after i did this kind of scary thing is taking some time off from my job, i kept thinking about variousplaces i could go , something inside me kept telling me that Jake Gainesville might be the place. So why was that. One reason was that i need to find a place that had lost a lot of jobs and you definitely qualify. No, i dont have to tell you thousands of jobs lost from around here, there are different figures that you can see but looking at the bureau of labor statistics figures, in 2008 and 2009, about 9000 jobs left the county. A lot of jobs. And if you look at what happened to the Unemployment Rate here at that time, in june 2008 when the announcement was made that lotus was going to shut down production here , the Unemployment Rate was 5. 4 percent. In march 2009, a few months after the last of these jobs disappeared, unemployment shot up to over 13 percent. On the job loss fronts, you are a winner. Or a loser. Beyond that, i have the sense that i wanted to tell the story of what this big recession had done. So it was important to me that i find a place that is not previously been part of the rust. X i didnt want to find myself writing about accumulation of economic decay. I wanted to show what one bad time did. So flint michigan was an old story and i wanted to find a place where economic trouble was new. And obviously the General Motors Assembly Plant here had been shrinking a little bit and a little bit more and a little bit more over a couple decades. But it always got a new promise. So just in closing, this was really a very different thing that nobody in town experience. And that was very appealing to me, not that i was happy for you but very appealing to me as a place to potentially do this writing, do this talking to people about what was happening in the community. And i had the sense that no place is exactly like everyplace. As much as possible i thought it would be interesting to find a community to write about where the pattern of job losses match pretty well the National Pattern of jobs that went away in this great recession. So if you think about what happened nationally, the largest portion of job that disappeared were the manufacturing sector. A lot of the jobs that were lost paid pretty well but had not required a lot of heavy education to get. That was in gainesville. For men and women lost jobs in this recession. That was sort of janesville. So i thought that this was the community that had a number of the qualities in the lost jobs that other people around the country would understand and could identify with. I also have a sense that things that might fit nicely into the sweep of history, i remember the first time i found a Youtube Video for a speech that then senator barack obama gave in december plant in february 2008. I dont know if anybody remembers them coming. And i remember the first time i listened to the video saying the promise of janesville is the promise of america. And that line gave me goosebumps because i heard that Youtube Video couple years after the Assembly Plant closed so there was i ready by then to what this president ial candidate who became president was saying. And of course gainesville had been part of the strike of the 1930s and the Assembly Plant became part of the domestic war effort in world war ii and the plant stop making vehicles and started turning out artillery shells. And of course tucker and had been from here had his own big moments in 20thcentury history so i just like that sweep of history. And of course before i knew anything about this community, or had met anybody here, i have a sense that i might find an interesting politics. I just thought there might be Something Interesting about old uaw town was represented by scott walker and the State Government were represented in congress by paul ryan in a statement by scott walker. Book tv back alive inside joes Prep High School in chicago for more of the 33rd annual printers through a fifth. Starting now author daniel wolf tells the story of 1913 massacre in michigan. [applause] daniel wolff is an awardwinning author, poet and agree any nominee from the hudson river his new book which will officially be published on tuesday is grownup anger the connected mysteries of bob dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the calumet massacre of 1913. As the title suggests, it gives three tales the biographies of bob dylan, Woody Guthrie and the back story of the tragedy in michigan, the tragedy he puts in the context of the Early Labor Movement in this country. The review calls this book a dazzling richly researched story, impeccably told. Karen lewis says if you are not true with unions consider daniel wolff blank grownup anger a must read. Music is a main character and ive told people youtube is an essential companion to the buck. You want to hear the songs he writes about so the Founding Member is joining us and will perform a few of the songs that are particularly important in this fascinating book. So, for a thought provoking entertaining hour please welcome daniel wolff and emily kane. Its not mentioned in the title but its the first sentence of the book i was 13 and angry and it leads into the discovery of bob dylan and threw him the discovery of Woody Guthrie. Can you tell the back story that will introduce the first song we are going to hear . Its great to be here. I was 13 and angry is a redundancy. That isnt useful. Its just true. I cant help but i am. When i was 13, like a Rolling Stone tea came over the radio ai heard that and said he understands. He knows why im angry. Hes telling the truth. I could barely understand the words that are often the case the words of mr. Dillane. This guy is truly pissed off. I went back three or four records by them to go back to find out who he was and when i got to the first record, there was a song called a song to woody which was a song to Woody Guthrie. I thought there is some connection and a new kind of who he was. I knew that he had written this land is your land that i had no idea if he was alive or dead. So it seemed to me to be revealing the man that would dep me understand among other things by anger. I im going to accompany her on the mandolin. Im out here a thousand miles from my home walking the road other men have gone down the im seeing a new world of people and things here poppers peasants and princes and kings Woody Guthrie i wrote you a song about a funny old world thats coming along the seems sick and its hungry, its tired and its it looks like its dying and its hardly been born im sending you a song but i cant sing enough cause theres not many men that ive done the things that youve done heres to cisco and sunny and leadbelly to and to all the good people that traveled with you heres to the hearts and at the hands of the men the. Com with the dust and are gone with the wind spee im leaving tomorrow that i could leave today somewhere down the road someday the the very last thing that i want to do is to say ive been hitting some hard traveling too [applause] you discovered this to bob dylan had used had been swiped from a song that Woody Guthrie had written, which is an incredible turning point for this narrative for your exploration of the topic. Explain that. Explain how digging into the canon of bob dylan, you discovered what the guthrie and how that changed. This is, for you young people, when you have to go through the record bins to find music. I tried to find out more about what he guthrie and there wasnt much. They didnt have very many records imprint. The best i could do was arlo guthrie, his son, who was famous at the time. He put out a record that had some nice songs and bob dylan covers on it. I am now sort of getting the college. This Research Takes a while. And i you can tell the song that is beautifully done is haunting. Its both admiration for Woody Guthrie and the past, and the kind of sad is that its gone. I wouldnt like to say ive been doing the hard traveling myself, but the greatest days are over with this kind of the feeling of the song. So im listening to this and there is a song called 1913 massacre. I listened to the 1913 massacre and its about a strike in michigan and some people that die in the process of it somehow. I didnt quite understand. I thought that song is really familiar to me somehow. And i played it again, picking up the needle, taking it all back and putting it on the track again. I thought wait a second, its the same melody as a song to woody. I thought this is a clue, this is the mystery. Im heading down the track now. This is interesting because Woody Guthrie was known for taking other peoples melodies and putting his own words in. I believe you said in the book come in this melody he swiped or adapted from an old english channel. Let me briefly see how this happened. Its called the folk process. It means you steal things. [laughter] but there was a theory about it. Joe hill was an early writer of songs and the organizers of this sort of turnofthecentury and early part of the 20th century started writing songs to hymnal melodies because when they had a rally, the Salvation Army would show up and start singing hymns and they would be drowned out. The solution was to write new words to the same melodies so they could drown out the Salvation Army. So come it became a sort of technique, which is if you had a melody people were already halfway into the song they cared about. So, in this case, i think bob dylan said im going to do a tribute by taking a melody. Let me just add he knew the song was amazing because it was on a record that sold probably seven copies and was out of print by the time he was found. Dot dylan does this in other songs. Woody guthrie does this, but it also gets to one of the things that is fascinating to both of these guys in particular is that i believe you call of self invention. Neither one is what they wanted people to think they were. Bob dylan grew up they both grew up in comfortable surroundings. Both of them have this image of someone who is, you know, just barely scraping by. Woody guthrie writing on the top of the train and so on, but both grew up in comfort; correct . Real quickly, bob dylan is Robert Zimmerman from a middleclass jewish family in minnesota. Just before he wrote that song, he went to the university of minnesota where he discovered Woody Guthrie and turned himself into the man. The pictures of him posed the same way with his cigarette held in the same way. He just wanted to be Woody Guthrie. Woody guthrie wasnt actually Woody Guthrie. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born in oklahoma to someone that had quite a lot of money. How do i say this politely, trading with the indians is the very nicest way to say it. Stealing a lovely and in the oklahoma territory before it became a state and then after it became a state. But they had a bunch of money, then the family fell apart which is a longer story i wont go into. But when guthrie went west into california and discovered the old oakies we discovered from grapes of wrath, he said im going to be the biggest of them all. He created a persona of this sort of ultimate oakie and people said youve really lived the life. He said nope, but i studied the life and i can give a good impersonation. People want our heroes to be authentic, so he ended up the oakie. It seemed he may have said that, but there was a sort of impression that he was this authentic oakie. And then bob dylan comes along and basically doubles down on it. In some ways, it seems like bob dylan in his early days was almost more of a phony is the wrong word, but more of an impersonator than even guthrie. I start a chapter in the book saying he is a liar, bob dylan, because he says that. He says i make things up. It helps me. Part of what the book is about as it helps him get to the truth by creating these personas they can figure out a way to say the things they need to say which they couldnt if they were the son of a store owner in having minnesota. So you find this song coming into this leads into the third part of this book, which is a very deep history. Michigan is about 300 miles from here. Its way out i up in the Upper Peninsula of michigan. And your story goes back. At one point you can say its a prehistoric times but you take a very deep dive at what made you an author and researcher and journalist certainly that made you decide youre going to do that deep of a dive into the story behind this. They believed they were telling the truth and they were motivated in the kind of sequence. Dublin got inspired and Woody Guthrie told the truth. Thats the truth ive got to figure out their story. So it is following this line of anger. At the instigation was the early part of the 20th century and the Progressive Movement when there was going to be a Labor Movement to counter capitalism and industrialism and one of the key evidence of that for him was the strike of Northern Michigan because it was a moment when workers looked like they were going to take over and share the wealth. It didnt happen. This song he wrote about was a lot about its failure and he wrote it in about 1944. It has the same sad melody. The regret of this one is 1913 when it happened in about 1944. Woody guthrie thought he was fighting world war ii to get rid of all fascists and capitalism in general. He got to the end of it and was in the merchant marines and he said, you know, yeah we beat the nazis but the system hasnt changed and he was a very optimistic guy. This is not his most optimistic song. It is the back story to the massacre but if you gave us a thumbnail. I know it is asking a lot. So, this was a very paternalistic operation in michigan. Michigan. This northern wilderness and so people from boston invested money and turned it into a place where you live in a company house, and your kids went to the company school, you get buried in the company cemetery. It was a close circle essentially. And they came out and tried to organize into consideration came to try to organize because people were not getting paid very well and it was very dangerous. They were about to introduce new machinery which meant new jobs. So the strength was essentially lost. The owners held out the winner of Northern Michigan you will make it through if you have a job, you certainly wont make it through if you dont. So they knew the workers would back down. On christmas eve, as the strike was essentially wearing down and dying out, they had a party for the kids of the strikers to try to encourage them, many of which were immigrants, finnish, italian. They had do you want me to tell the story . I think the song is more powerful when you are straining to understand it. So, they have this party and they are up there about to hand out presents and somebody walks in, never identified through, and yells fire. People panic and start going down a stairwell and cant get out and they crushed each other and then there are 74 people dead. Sixtysomething of those under the age of 12. Depending upon how you read this, it is either a mans murder when they yell fire and there is no finer as a deliberate act or its a terrible accident. I will go on after the song about the debate on that if you want. But that is the lead up to it and it didnt end the strike totally because money started coming in. But its a story that i think is a major part of American History that people dont know about. And part of my interest was i often hear the stories about strikes and things and i think this is the last making up the history. Do we really believe the haymarket i guess we do so they answered the question is i wanted to dig down to see what the facts were as far as i could tell. If i got there maybe i could see why guthrie wanted to write a song about it. I could see why bob dylan got inspired and white like a Rolling Stone got through to me so well on the radio. Those of you from the chicago area that have been around for a while will have a memory of the nightclub disaster does that ring a bell and that was an incident not too far from here where a secondstory nightclub there was a fight that broke out and 21 people were killed on the stairwell, people were rushing to get out of the nightclub so the story has a little bit of extra resonance for people around chicago. Listen to the words. This is a very sad song and you will recognize the melody. Take a trip with me to 1913 to kalamazoo michigan. I was taken where the miners are having their Big Christmas ball. Singing and dancing everywhere with the people you see and watch the kids dance around a Big Christmas tree you ask about work and ask about pay they will tell you they make less than a dollar a day working and risking their lives so its fun to spend christmas with children and wives is talking and laughing and phones in the air a bit of christmas is there everywhere before you know it youre dancing around and around in the whole to play the piano youve got to keep quiet they stuck their head in the door and one of them yelled and screamed at the fire they hollered theres no such thing, keep on with your party there is no such thing there were only a few and just scaring you a man grabbed his daughter and carried her down but he could not get out others followed and then hundreds more but most everybody remained on the floor while the children were smothered on the stairs by the doris such a terrible sight i never did see week. Our children back up to the tree and the children that died there, there were 73 the piano played a slow funeral tune and the town was lit up by a cold christmas minimum the parents they cried and the miners they moaned see what your greed for money has done [applause] youre going to go on talking after that. I know. Some people feel in part of the book you actually went up to calumet and talk to people and i think there is a quote that what do they call it, they didnt like it. Lousy miserable song. Why is that, what was the truth that you discovered behind the 1913 massacre . In that song, he says the copper boss held the door at the bottom of the stairs and there was a long debate about this at the time, whether the bottom of the Christmas Hall doors opened al gore in. Were opened in. If the crowd was coming down it wasnt the people outside have told them. If someone was leaning on the doors and kept them closed, then that meant conceivably these people have been murdere had bet was not just an accident. Guthrie read a book about it and believes they were actually holding the door. I dont know if they were holding the door or not, but with a set of leader plaque to honor or commemorate this event, they said the doors opened in which meant that no one had killed them. If you look at the blueprints and talk to anybody that lived there, Everybody Knows the doors opened out. It meant opening in was a way of saying dont worry this is nobodys fault, we can all heal together. And it was a way if i think covering over the incident. As i say, the strike was lost. People had to go back to work there. It was i think 1940 something before they got a union up there. And this sort of centered in the town and the region and the plaque was a way to make peace. When they heard Woody Guthries song, they think hes trying to make trouble again by saying this is the way the doors open. In fact he was probably closer to the truth than the official plaque that has changed to not mention the doors at all. The song commemorates a failure in the Labor Movement. And as you look back on this part of labor history and the promise that it never materialized and this is the source of guthries anger and then it becomes a source of bob dylan tinker. Dylans anger is a little di york to meet Woody Guthrie in 61 and hes incapacitated by a nerve disease, cant play the guitar but even larger than that, there is no Union Movement and bob dylan thought im going to go to new york not only to meet Woody Guthrie but we are going to have a big union and there were not any in 1961. He couldnt find the movement he thought he was going to be part of, so for him to borrow that melody it didnt work until 1913 and that is the tone of the song. Hes going i guess its not going to work in 1961 either. Van dylan turns away from the folk tradition. He rejects a lot of that. A lot of his lyrical movements go away from that as well. Is this a turning point . Shes going to write the times are changing. Thats all in the future so hes going to keep pursuing that for a while but if its the idea that they are these superhuman people and movements at 19 he said that isnt going to be the case i dont believe it. Take me through the story a little bit more. He didnt go out and become the icon right of way. He bounced around from coast to coast and was trying to find his identity. He was going to be a commercial singer at the time of the epiphany that was to go to la and become gene off trade and that is what jean did. Hes being kind of ragged pan and says this machine kills fascists, kind of a leftwing hero. Hes got such curly hair he cant get it parted on the ones i do very well. The situation of a lot of people what he called the starvation army, people without work and he also ran into the communist party that made a lot of sense to him there were people in the fielfield over organizing better than anybody else. He apparently never joined the party that he came pretty close and as the other people that were researching at the time, john steinbeck, Carey Mcwilliams that wrote a book called the factory in the fields or Something Like that were all interested in communism because it looked like the present system didnt work at all. So guthrie started doing that and eventually he got thrown off the Radio Station and started doing cowboy songs because he was such a partyline communist. If we have Bernie Sanders i guess i could say socialist and we would all feel more comfortable if he came to new york not long afterwards where he was greeted by the communist party. There was a quote in one of the papers that said one ended and now guthrie is going to sing it. He didnt think it was going to work. He Still Believes it but he doesnt think they are going to get there in 1944. Hes taken this version of events and put his own spin on it. It was for propaganda. It sort of works but as i discussed in the book it depends on who you think it is. Hes talking about the owners of the mine saying you busted the strike and therefore youve told these people but theres also the sense that hes talking to us. I want to throw my hands in the air like i did and do it. But we do it a little bit and it made his movement impossible to succeed. Is it your sense that gwendolyn at guthrie gets changed his view and trajectory of his career . He said i cant follow this guide is nothing to follow anymore. Thats what he called the first substantial song. He was going to write about joe hill but then he started writing songs and they swerve. Here we have bob dylan as a Nobel Laureate in a strange sort of events but what happened wasnt so much the folk music that was rejected as the whole value system. There were these are dreams people were talking about that dont exist anymore. Got very involved in the civil rights and then he turned his back on that and said you know, this i can to be an advocate this way. Ive got to write my music. Im very mixed about that. The individual, go your own way. Woody guthrie would argue that was part of the problem that people were being individualist. They were not getting together to organize. His career takes a turn from folk to rock to the acoustic to electric. This is part of this evolution and they were going to close the program. Its a rejection of the song that it borrows the melody from. I dont think that it was as big as it is made out to be. I think what he was saying when he was writing even masters of the war is ive got to tell it my way. I cant be Woody Guthrie. I cant be joe hill. Its going to be different every time. He kept reporting and trying to tell the truth and fighting the fight but it was a whole different way and a whole different sound to go with it. When you look at what happened in calumet and other situations and how it was the private sector and you look back and see where they made a mistake and undermined to take the actions that they should have. Im not going to walk into that trap, good try though. [laughter] what did happen is in the 60s i was never sure that it was such a revolutionary as some people claimed that part of what happened if america was incredibly prosperous. Unions made deals with business to keep its prosperous and its totally understandable. We look back now with some nostalgia, car manufacturing jobs that guaranteed major gains for the union but it wasnt changing the system. He would have argued that as a bandaid on the situation. From the 70s on the wages had not increased in real value if yowithyou to the corresponding s and i think there was an illusion that somehow we could work out a prosperity for everyone by the Union Management compromising. Was at dylans version at one point did you feel that was connected to the philosophy with that kind of a specificity . You wrote the song Union Sundown that was a good idea once we got in the way. I think he kind of believed it. I dont think that he was interested in the Popular Movement at the end of the day. He was interested in writing good songs, but the politics were always a little theres an amazing interview i found on the march of salamat that had been very close to all the organizers in the civil rights. He doesnt go to the march on selma. He goes to finish a record and do some promotion of his own career and then he gets interviewed and they say what do you think about selma. Its not going to change anything. If they vote it will be the same politicians we have now. Theres something more fundamental we have to do here and that rings a bell with me but the way that we pursued it was to go to try to tell the truth as much as we could choose what got me started on this. That is the truth. So, it works in a way but its a different approach. It seems like tellin has morn his role in the 60s like hes not going to that event. He does this amazing transformative thing with the black Panther Party is putting their news together this is what, late 60s could they put on the stereo as bob dylan that is the sound of what we want to do. Im going to get this right and told the truth. Lets organize. Its a different approach to these things. Has he ever been playing a song as a political rally that introduced the candidate. He wanted to be a singer and songwriter sophie stayed away from the tough. I think that hes written songs certainly the crusading songs but i dont think hes ever wanted to organize even like someone is springsteen. Guthrie spent most of his time playing for communist gatherings. He died in 67. We never know what would have happened in his career had he lived long enough. What do you think he might have done . He couldnt play guitar essentially he was in a hospit hospital. He had jobs, radio jobs, National Radio jobs and said i dont like the feel of this. He was kind of a star but always was getting everybody to same. We are all in this together and i suspect he would have gone that route. Can you give a quick introduction to joe hill, it is a song that is important to the story and then we will go right into Saint Augustine. I dreamed i saw joe hill last night and it was this idea what trimmer the heroes of the past to go forward. He claimed he never heard the song. Maybe, maybe not. Then what amounts to an answer song called i dreamed i saw Saint Augustine meaning joe hill and it speaks to what we have been discussing which is dylan saying a i dreamed i saw joe hill last night alive as you and me. They shot you just as high, it took more than guns to kill a man says joe, i didnt die standing there as big as life and smiling with his eyes joe says what they forgot to go went on to organize the went on to organize from san diego in every mind and kno nine ane workers strike in organize you will find joe hill i dreamed i saw Saint Augustine alive as you and me tearing through these quarters with a blanket underneath and a code of solid gold searching for the very souls arise arise a voice without restraint of kings and queens hear my complaints the none are among me now that you can call your own go on your way accordingly know youre not alone i dreamed i saw Saint Augustine alive with fiery breath and i dreamed i was amon on te ones that put him out of todays i awoke in anger, so alone and terrified i put my fingers against the glass of and i bowed my head and cried i dreamed i saw joe hill tonight alive as you and me you are ten years dead the book is grownup anger the connected mysteries of bob dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the calumet massacre of 1913 he will be around to find this book. A round of applause. [applause] thank you. Thank you for attending todays event. Books can be purchased and assigned outside of the auditorium. Thank you for coming. Youve been listening to offer daniel wolff discuss his book grownup anger. Booktv will be back live in a few minutes with more from the printers row lit fest. In audible conversations [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] its great stuff. Thanks a lot. In [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] lets trade. That is a third of all human and we still have not oversold. [inaudible conversations] i would like folks in the audience to shout out the name of a famous bill of rights case in American History that pop into your head whether you agree with the outcomes or not in the bill of rights cases shout out their names. Gideon, brown, roe v. Wade, madison, griswold v. Connecticut, brown v. Board of education, New York Times, citizens united. I cant fool this crowd. With that said, half of the cases that you shouted out are not bill of rights cases. So, before the constitution, madison is original and isnt any great principle of liberty. I will add a few more. Gideon versus wainwright, griswold versus connecticut, New York Times versus sullivan, brown v. Board of education, roe v. Wade, lawrence v. Texas, none of them is a bill of rights case. Why not tax be
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