At around midnight on Saturday, June 18, music broke out in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Rosemont, Illinois. Sitting at the piano near the hotel’s main entrance was Otis Price, a member of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689. Between classics — “Lean on Me” was especially popular with union militants who began gathering around the piano — Price played a song he had written in 2019, when he and 120 of his fellow workers went on strike at the Cinder Bed Bus Garage in Washington, DC.

As Price played “Don’t Play With My Money,” his infectiously catchy strike anthem, passersby stopped to join in the spontaneous celebration. John Deere strikers, General Motors strikers, and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members belted out Price’s chorus. At one point, an Amazon worker from Bessemer, Alabama, freestyled over the music. Later, members of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) from Staten Island stopped by, with ALU president Chris Smalls leading a chant timed to Price’s song (“Who shuts shit down? / We shut shit down / Who runs this town? / We run this town”).

It was a scene that could only have taken place at this year’s Labor Notes conference.