Dropkick Murphys are on the side of the workers.
In order to support the unions in Wisconsin, last week the Celtic punks made a limited edition t-shirt (feast your eyes on it over to the left) that they are selling for $18.95, with the proceeds going to the Workers’ Rights Emergency Response Fund.
The band’s new song, “Take ‘Em Down,” was written last summer, and the band released it early to support the workers. You can hear it here, or listen to the whole album here. The song was written well before anything went down in Wisconsin, but suddenly it became timely again.
“That song was written in August and was written about our families’ dealings with organized labor,” singer/bassist Ken Casey said. “It’s the ’50s when the fight for collective barging was waging. All of that was ratified in the late ’50s for the first time in Wisconsin and here we are, someone’s trying to take it away. We found it to be very ironic. It’s a protest [song]. It really ties in because it was written very much in the spirit of the battle to have those rights in the first place.”
The t-shirt is for sale at the band’s merch page. A crafty fan created a video for the song using footage from the Wisconsin protests. Check it out.