AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Luis Santoyo sends us this report from the battleground state of Virginia.

People started lining up outside the nTelos Wireless Pavilion in Charlottesville, Va., three hours before the start of the rare concert Monday. By 1:30 p.m., the two lines leading up to the small outdoor concert venue stretched more than two blocks through the city’s historic downtown mall.

The local Obama for America office was giving away tickets for a live performance of Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen—whose band played at the much-larger John Paul Jones Arena later that day. 

Bruce Springsteen has chronicled a working-class world through the eyes of young dreamers full of hope and ambition and those beaten down by an economy that has shuttered factories and shattered dreams--a musical indictment of economic injustice. But to many young people, Bruce is their parents’ music. University of Wisconsin professor Craig Werner is opening up Springsteen’s world to a new generation.

Bruce Springsteen has chronicled a working-class world through the eyes of young dreamers full of hope and ambition and those beaten down by an economy that has shuttered factories and shattered dreams--a musical indictment of economic injustice. But to many young people, Bruce is their parents’ music. University of Wisconsin professor Craig Werner is opening up Springsteen’s world to a new generation.