LUCY DACUS: BREAD AND ROSES

SINGER-SONGWRITER Lucy Dacus delivered a stirring performance of 'Bread and Roses' during the inauguration of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani.

'Bread and Roses' began as a line in a 1910 speech by suffrage activist Helen Todd, which inspired James Oppenheim’s 1911 poem of the same name. The phrase captured the idea that workers—especially women—deserve not only fair wages ('bread') but dignity, beauty, and a full human life ('roses').

 It became linked to a 1912 textile strike in the United States, led largely by immigrant women and the Industrial Workers of the World. Although historians debate whether strikers actually used the slogan, the association endured because the poem so perfectly expressed the strike’s spirit. 

Set to music several times—most influentially by Mimi Farina (the younger sister of Joan Baez) in the 1970s—it evolved into a global labour and feminist anthem. In recent decades, it has also become closely associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, who use it to signal a politics rooted in both material justice and human flourishing. Zohran Mamdani, of course, is a member of the DSA.