Crucial Track for June 7, 2025

"The Most Dangerous Woman" by Ani DiFranco & Utah Phillips

Listen on Apple Music

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Share a song that represents rebellion or freedom to you. There are so many musicians that have created important songs of resistance: Guthrie, Dylan, Baez, Seeger, Simone, Billie Holiday, to name a few. One of the first exposures I had to rebellion and the struggle for rights in our country was my undergraduate environmental law class and when I first heard an album made by Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco, Fellow Workers, around the same time. Utah Phillips was labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller and poet. His songs include poetic interludes and clever lyrics that spill out the history of labor unions and a call to direct action, and cover a lot of other human rights and environmental issues too. His songs and words are still a fundamentally important listening to anyone involved in labor organizing. I started out an environmentalist, became a public school teacher and then fell in love with labor organizing about 2 years ago but the seed for a lot of it was planted decades ago with exposure to Utah Phillips. It’s all connected. Workers rights are environmental rights are human rights. I chose an important song about Mother Jones, an Irish-born American labor organizer, schoolteacher, union organizer who’s work was fundamental in several mining strikes and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World trade Union.