Jones to replace Jackson on $20 bill

(Denver) Labor organizer and “miner’s angel” Mary Harris “Mother” Jones will replace former President Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill in January. According to sources at the Denver Mint, the decision came down after reviewing the lives and times of both celebrities.

Andrew Jackson was a major voice in the forced removal of more than ten Native American tribes from ancestral homelands, was strong proponent of slavery and a frontline warrior for Manifest Destiny, a philosophy saying white America had the divine right to govern most of North America.

He was a real estate broker with a pistol and canon. One major accomplishment, the “Trail of Tears” in which 40,000 Cherokee perished, set in motion a system of ethnic cleansing extending to Creeks, Choctaw and Seminole. It was simple: he would drive the tribes from their land and buy it for the expanding United States, taking his lucrative commission along the way. He appeared briefly on the Confederate $1000 bill.

Mother Jones, largely affiliated with the United Mine Workers Union, was born in Cork County Ireland. She spent the best part of her life combating child labor practices and raising hell for the rights of workers in Colorado and other Western states.

She was often denounced on the floor of the Senate by anti-labor sentiment as “the grandmother of all agitators”, a title she heartily enjoyed.

In the American Songbook Carl Sandburg suggests that “She’ll be comin’ ‘round the mountain when she comes” refers to Jones and her travels in the Appalachian coal camps to promote the unionization of miners.

Noted critics of the move, still stinging from a decision to change the name of Ronald Regan Washington National Airport to Bob Marley International Airport in April, say it is just a blatant liberal housecleaning and one more example of creeping socialism in this country.

Proponents argue that Jones symbolizes the principles of freedom and democracy by defending the rights of workers while Jackson distorts these truths, displaying the greed and racism that swaggered and sashayed along the Frontier in the 1800s.

The new bills are set for release in early 2011. More on this after we milk the cows, feed the chickens, stable the horses and paint the barn. – H. L. Menoken