International Women's Day Harvest: Bread, Wine and Roses

Amy L. Dalton
Published 08 March 2026

Happy International Women’s Day! John August Swanson’s “Madonna of the Harvest” provides a beautiful midrash on the spiritual aspect of the work women do to sustain life. Swanson has placed the Madonna nurturing the Child of Humanity “into a backdrop of life within a larger community of people working together and helping one another.” [1] Just as in the margins of the labor movement from which the International Women’s Day tradition grew, these peripheral images are made up of women with deep knowledge not only of the labor of farming, but of the labor of weaving alongside it the beloved community.

Historically, when women have been uprooted from land-based work and found themselves participating in economic activity focused on production, they have brought the knowledge and memory of this communal caretaking work, and built movements that struggle to preserve and extend it. It was out of such a revolutionary social movement space that over 15,000 garment workers, almost all of whom were young immigrant women, gathered in 1908 to demand an end to sweatshop working conditions, a march which many cite as the root of the International Women’s Day (IWD) tradition. As the song that would become the unofficial IWD anthem proclaims, their vision was not just for a redistribution of wealth based on need, but a redistribution of the ability to experience the joys of this life: “No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes — but a sharing of life’s glories; bread and roses, bread and roses!” [2] [3]

In Swanson’s piece, the Madonna presides over and protects this spiritual-material harvest — not unlike the role the earth-bound Mary played at the Wedding at Cana (John 2:1–11). Though Jesus performed the miraculous transformation of the water into wine, Mary was the one who pointed out the need and instructed him to attend to it – which he then did grudgingly! Mary embodies the spiritual force that is proactively concerned that all sojourners in this life not only do not go hungry, not only are not cut down by senseless wars, not only are not worked to death for other’s profit — but also have the ability to deeply enjoy this life, and together to drink from it’s fullness.

“They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.”
~ Isaiah 65:21 (NIV)

1- “Madonna of the Harvest” by John August Swanson: johnaugustswanson.com/catalog/madonna

2- “Bread and Roses” Lyrics: www.protestsonglyrics.net/Inspirational_Songs/Bread-and-Roses.phtml

2- Watch a recent performance of “Bread and Roses” at Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s innauguration, sung by Lucy Dacus.