New Song About the Employee Free Choice Act

This is our first new song in ages. Thanks for sticking with us. We hope the mandolin part was worth the wait.

We wrote “My Heart Belongs to Cleveland” as a response to Republicans in Congress who pledge support for working people but oppose the Employee Free Choice Act.

If card check is good enough to decertify a union, it should be good enough to certify one. When union employees are more likely to have healthcare, pensions and better wages, how anyone can claim to be a friend to the worker while insisting on making the process of joining a union more difficult than breaking away from one is beyond us.

This song is sung from the perspective of one of those opponents telling residents of a hardscrabble town (in this case, Cleveland) that he supports them, while undermining their ability to better their station in life at every turn. Enjoy.

My Heart Belongs to Cleveland
(Mouseover the link, player appears. You know how it goes.)

A tourist’s welcome echoes off the promenade
The well-hid statistics padded down
So as you watch your shrinking ledger
I can try to explain to you
Why it has to be hard to get a union together
When breaking up is so easy to do

But tonight my heart belongs to Cleveland
Never mind the cobwebs and dust
‘Cause I never stopped believing
When your stainless steel turned to rust
And I’ll sell your hopes down to hell
We’ve made this a shell of the beautiful place it once was
My heart belongs to Cleveland
I swear, I swear that it does
I swear, I swear that it does

I’m not much for number, don’t draw me no diagrams
I’m a skyline believer, the rest is detail
So as I stand here at this lectern
I can rave and rhapsodize
As long as I can cast my ballot in secret I can drain your piss filled river dry
And why should I rob you of that right?

So tonight, my heart belongs to Cleveland
Never mind the cobwebs and dust
‘Cause I never stopped believing
When your stainless steel turned to rust
And I’ll sell your dreams down to hell
We’ve made this a shell of the beautiful place that it was
My heart belongs to Cleveland
I swear, I swear that it does
I swear, I swear that it does

Sure fine to meet you, what is it you did again?
I know the last thing you need is to take another hit again
And I’m only pretending like I give a shit again, my friend
So Cleveland if you ever get wise, that’s the end

Tonight my heart belongs to Cleveland
or Pittsburgh or wherever else
I can talk you into believing that you’re better off by yourself
With lies for the unorganized
So pull up hard on your bootstraps and tighten your belts
My heart belongs to Cleveland
So long suckers, I wish you well
I wish you well

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