Profits Enslave the World: A Song Across Generations

Many know Philip Vera Cruz as a labor leader, a community activist, and icon of the Pilipino American experience whose name (along with Larry Itliong) is given to public schools and freeway bridges. His work helped create the United Farm Workers Union and shaped the modern union movement. But few know him as a poet.

After arriving in the United States in 1926, 22 year old Philip Vera Cruz encountered the hardships and struggles experienced by working people in America - long hours, little pay, no voice or power, and no opportunity to better improve your position in life. He saw workers facing abuse and exploitation at the hands of growing US post war industrialism, and witnessed the broken hopes and dreams of so many of his fellow workers and immigrants. He wrote his feelings into his poems. One of those poems, “Profits Enslave the World” became an eloquent testament of his experiences in America, expressing his feelings about the class stratification and class struggle he experienced as an immigrant and a farm worker in the United States.

In 1973, “Profits” was put to music by Chris Bautista, a young Bay Area musician and community activist. The song found a hungry audience amongst many Pilipinos of the time who were organizing around multiple community issues, including Ethnic Studies, Tenants Rights, the Anti-Martial Law movement, and the Farm Worker Movement. The frustration and anger Philip expressed in his poem was still present for those activists of the 70s, and when “Profits Enslave the World” was put to music it connected them to the and the spirit of resistance that spanned the decades.