Tell us about your favorite book, movie, or song and why it resonates with you. (250 words)
Tell us about your favorite book, movie or song and why it resonates with you
“We Are Family,” a pop song that became an anthem in the American Labor movement, is my favorite song. I first remember hearing the song when I was ten: the Tropicana Hotel strike in Atlantic City had just ended after six years, and my father was a union organizer with Local 54, which represented the striking employees. At our victory rally in the hotel parking lot, I remember linking arms with my parents and thousands of other union supporters, singing “We Are Family” in celebration of our victory.
I grew up in the Atlantic City “union” world; my dad had been a union shop steward in Florida before the national union sent him to New Jersey to help organize Local 54. My mother works for the union’s health plan, which covers over 60,000 workers and their families. Local 54 was my community, my extended family. “We Are Family” celebrates the principles I was raised with: mutual support and collective action.
Today, “We Are Family” continues to resonate in my life as an anthem of regular people in challenging circumstances. On my first day with the Peace Corps in Sierra Gorda, Mexico, years later during the long drive from Mexico to my new career at the Albuquerque Traffic Authority, when a dear friend died young, Sister Sledge’s classic recording was always the first song on my playlist, and it always will be: whatever I hope to do in the future, my colleagues, friends and family will be right alongside me.