Funeral for a friend

I got some sad news this week. A friend of mine I hadn't seen for years died after a long illness. We met over 20 years ago in the midst of a huge struggle between the Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation (RAC) and the 1,700 union members and their families who were locked out of the plant.

RAC used to be owned by Kaiser Aluminum but its ownership had been kicked around over the years. The management at the time was eager to get rid of the union, even though the workers agreed to continue working under the terms and conditions of the old contract.

At midnight Oct. 31,1990 they were informed that they would be locked out of their jobs and permanently replaced.

The average age of a union worker was over 50 with over 20 years of service at the company.

What followed was a fight that lasted nearly two years and bitterly divided the community.

I visited the area with a union  miner friend shortly after it started. We had some experience in that kind of thing and offered solidarity, but nobody seemed interest. It was around a year later that I got a call from inviting me to come and meet with some steelworkers and members of the women's support group.

We met above a place called Ike's and it was there that I met my friend Sue. She was active in the support group but was the most unlikely labor militant you'd ever meet. She was a devoted homemaker and mother of three, active in her church and community. Neither she nor any of the other people impacted by the lockout ever imagined they'd be in this kind of situation.

We met regularly with folks for several months, trying to think of things to keep morale up while events took their course. I worked a lot with the women's group. This may not be a surprise to anybody, but I found they were more concerned with how everyone was doing and were more likely to follow through. No one seemed to look out for others as much as Sue. She was part of the glue that held people together at a critical time.

Eventually and against all odds, they won the lockout, thanks to unsung heroes like Sue. After two years of living dangerously, folks readjusted to a "normal" life.

No victory is permanent, but the plant stayed open and stayed union for until 2009. It's now closed.

It was a good fight, and the best part for me was meeting and standing together with people like Sue.

When you're in a struggle like that, people often swear to stay in touch. Sometimes you do, but often the tides of life cause us to drift apart.

I had lost contact with Sue until I got the news and it  hit me pretty hard. I guess a lot of the people I knew from that fight have passed. And I'm not getting any younger.

I guess the main thing is to do what we can with the time we have. She did anyway.

Three for the road

It's late and it's been a long day, but here are three links in case you missed them.

FIRST, here's a call for the US to do right by WV coal miners in this difficult time.

SECOND, if I was Don Blankenship, I wouldn't want UBB to be discussed at my trial either. But it should be.

THIRD, here's a profile of a guitar playing friend of mine who offered me shelter from the storm years ago.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Double dipping

Lots of people have been talking about the disappointing job numbers released late last week. The private sector added only around 54,000 jobs, even while governments at various levels are laying people off.

Deficit mania, which has taken precedence over job creation, could well lead us back to a double dip recession. As many people have noted, something similar happened in 1937, when FDR cut back on public spending and wound up prolonging the Depression by several years.

THIS IS SWEET. Ayn Rand groupie Paul Ryan, would be executioner of Medicare, is getting some pushback from religious groups.

DESTROYING MEDICARE in order to "save" it.

MASSEYLAND. Ken Ward takes a hard look at Massey Energy's board of directors here.

MARCHING TO BLAIR. I hope nobody gets hurt this week.

WAXING ROMANTIC. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

THE MAGIC NUMBER for friends may be 150.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What escapism?

El Cabrero admitted in yesterday's post to being a Tolkien dork. I've read the trilogy several times since discovering it in jr. high and of course have seen the movies.

As such things go, I have a fairly minor case of Tolkiendorkitis. A friend of mine who is an occasional reader of this blog is a member of a Tolkien society and has read The Silmarillion multiple times. (I'd recommend getting help after reading it more than once.) I made the mistake of listening to it on a long trip while I thought the Spousal Unit was asleep and never heard the end of it.

But I digress...

Anyhow, I most recently re-read the trilogy in late 2003/early 2004, a time when it seemed that the forces of evil were taking over the world and were going to keep it for a very long time.

It is a popular criticism of such books to view them as mere escapism. I beg to differ on several fronts. First, the proper measure of escapism can be a great aid in dealing with the realities of the world. More to the point, however, was that The Fellowship of the Ring seemed to be more a description of the world as it was than a break from it.

In that book, dark forces are sweeping over Middle Earth, even to places like the Shire that had often been spared from world events. The powers of evil were arrogant and insolent and there seemed to be no stopping them. The good guys were divided and mistrustful of each other and things seemed to be hopeless.

It was like the line from Yeats' poem "The Second Coming" about the best lacking all conviction and the worst being filled with passionate intensity.

In other words, the book was pretty much exactly like 2003/2004. And it even offered suggestions about how to get past it. More tomorrow.

INCOME INEQUALITY hit record levels in the Bush years, according to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

HARD TIMES. Here's a look at the human side of the recession.

CLIMATE CHANGE, COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS and the Clean Air Act are discussed in this post from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo.

JAR JAR BUSH? This New Yorker blog post ponders Star Wars, torture and the ex-prez.

FRIENDSHIP is good for your health.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED