Imagine how cool it would be to see some person yelling about Lenin and Marx, waving their arms around like crazy, newspaper in hand. Wearing one of those old caps, like the one Lenin had.
I know we kind of have a version of it online, but it’s much more atomising and lame. Yelling on internet forums will never compare.
The only people who do soapboxing these days are ultra religious nutters, screaming about the apocalypse or whatever. How the great have fallen, truly.
okay adhd side note coming in
the history of soap box speeches comes from the early days of the industrial workers of the world who would stand on soap boxes and try to radicalize and unionize workers. in america some of the first anti-free speech laws were passed to try and repress these comrades.
soap box speeches in america have a rich history among anarchists, socialists, and communists.
Well, you know. Nothing’s stopping you.
The religious ones were always prominent and you can’t let it put you off.
See for example Joe Hill’s 1911 song The Preacher and the Slave. It’s a song that addresses the conflict between union soapboxers and religious ones.
Lyrics from Mudcat:
Preacher and the Slave
Long-haired preachers come out every night, Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right; But when asked how 'bout something to eat They will answer with voices so sweet: Main Chorus: You will eat, bye and bye, In that glorious land above the sky; Work and Pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die. And the starvation army they play, And they sing and they clap and they pray. Till they get all your coin on the drum, Then they tell you when you are on the bum: If you fight hard for children and wife Try to get something good in this life You're a sinner and bad man, they tell, When you die you will sure go to hell. Workingmen of all countries unite, Side by side we for freedom will fight; When the world and its wealth we have gained To the grafters we'll sing this refrain: Last Chorus: You will eat, bye and bye, When you've learned how to cook and to fry Chop some wood, 'twill do you good And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye.
Utah Phillips has a good version from “We Have Fed You all For A Thousand Years” includes a bit of chit chat with historical context. (I can’t get this to play on any invidious instance for some reason, only youtube.com but it’s worth it if you’ve never heard it.) He’s got some other recordings talking about the larger historical situations of “the free speech fights” in early 20th c califorrnia. It was about worker power and suppression of union organizing.
Here is a different live version also from Utah Phillips Live at the Rose Wagner Theater, Salt Lake City, Utah, February 2005 (currently working invidious)
And a recording of Harry McClintock singing it (working invidious) which is like reaching back to the early 20th century.
Utah’s great. Really wish we had more folks like him and the other old musical folk singers
Pete Seeger croaked some time ago, but the tradition is still going. Much of it seems confined to folk punk, admittedly.
Do you think there isn’t?
I think this sort of stuff is just unpopular (“because folk music is boring” as he quotes someone else as saying). It doesn’t really translate too well to the current online media. But lots of people are inspired to take it up for at least a little while. But how could anyone live off it?
David Rovics is one example I know of who is still at work after many years. But I don’t follow closely enough to know of the many other more compelling artists that surely exist.
Especially if you do not limit yourself to the “white guy with acoustic guitar” definition/aesthetics of folk music.
I’m more wishing the people that do would have more of an online presence. I’ve met and have gotten to know a handful of them during my travels across the U.S, including Rovics funny enough, but besides Rovics they’re usually struggling to make ends meet with life being life in america and the music is a weekend or special event hobby for them which means doing and learning the online tech wizardry really isn’t in the books for them as much.
I wonder if tik tok would be a good place to find such people? I have heard you can “train the algorithm” to find what you are interested in.
couldn’t be bothered to get tik-tok. I’m happy enough being a techno-barbarian
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3:
hell do you live, we still got those. they’re trots though lol
Same, but most of the time these are Trade Unionists (some are trots) and Student Unions.
Got to bring back soap boxes first
How much does a big box of soap cost these days?
eBay is telling me $300 USD.
We’re going to have to swap to using Walmart TV boxes.
Getting talked down to by a guy on the street standing on a bigger TV box (98").
Trying to get the other people on the street to listen to my rant and read my marxist pamphlets that I’m tossing in their air at them but this new guy’s deftly teetering on his TV box long-side-up and I’m being shunned as they laugh and cheer and jeer at his display of showmanship.
Now he’s periodically throwing at me the included bracket mount screws that he’s also juggling. Real mature, guy.
Like $5?
Where is there enough for traffic for people to listen in America? Outside of NYC it’s just shopping districts which are usually private property or heavily policed enough to get you thrown out either way.
In my experience it’s always the same religious group hogging one particular stoplight to yell at all the people stuck in traffic. Maybe we could get up early, take their spot, and start yelling about the labor theory of value.
today’s version of that demo are either posting here (and its right wing equivalents) or dead
when I was 9 my family visited London and we went to Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. most people were gathered around a guy standing on a box talking about how women are to blame for all sexual assaults
i think we’re better off this way
I mean it is London you’re talking about. I don’t think it should be used as an example of what human society is capable of…
within each american is a particle of england
You should be the change you want to see in the world. Or maybe I should
I’m gonna be honest I have sometimes thought of soapboxing IRL, probably won’t ever do it just cause it seems like a really easy way to get targeted by the Black Hundreds
Sent from Mdewakanton Dakota lands / Sept. 29 1837
Treaty with the Sioux of September 29th, 1837
“We Will Talk of Nothing Else”: Dakota Interpretations of the Treaty of 1837
Holy shit I did not realize I need a Lenin hat
yes I think we should
Need higher quality boxes.
They still exist. There was some weird christian preacher that just monologued at my college when students were walking between classes. Though he used a ladder instead of a soap box.
