The legacy of the UMWA

 In happier times, my home state of West Virginia was known as a union stronghold. This tradition of labor action and struggle goes back to at least 1877, when railroad workers in Martinsburg set off something close to a nationwide general strike. 

It continued as coal miners faced company and government repression, including brutal private mine guards, military intervention, airstrikes, legal injunctions, arrests, and imprisonments.  

On my watch with AFSC, I’ve tried to support the struggles of unions on picket lines and at the policy level, ranging from metal workers to building trades to retail workers to teachers and school service workers. Sometimes things got a little wild.  

I’ve made it an informal but unbreakable rule that whenever a good labor dustup happens within my range to drop everything and show up. I’m probably at least as loyal to unions as to the church I belong to … but if I had to choose between them, all bets are off. 

For people unfamiliar with the labor movement, there are three main kinds of unions: craft unions representing primarily skilled trades; industrial unions representing workers at all skill levels in a sector; and public employee unions such as those representing education workers or government employees. The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. federation of unions, comprises around 60 unions of different types and industries. 

Where I come from, you’ll hear people talk about this or that union, but when they say the union, there’s one they have in mind: the United Mine Workers of America. Coincidentally or not, AFSC has a long history of supporting this union and the workers and communities it represents. Over a century ago, AFSC began providing food assistance and supporting economic alternatives for unemployed miners and their families. More recently, it has supported UMWA members in strikes, legislative struggles, mine safety, and corporate bankruptcies that threaten retirees and surviving family members. 

People outside Appalachia may think of the UMWA, if at all, as a relic of an earlier age and a dying and dirty industry. In fact, even though its membership has dramatically declined over the last decades, it has arguably had the greatest impact on economic justice of any single organization. To the extent there’s still a middle class in this country, much of that is due to its direct and indirect influence.  

The UMWA was founded in 1890 by the merger of the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union. At a time when most unions represented skilled craft workers—mostly white, U.S. born, and male—the new union’s first goal was “to unite in one organization, regardless of creed, color or nationality, all workmen eligible for membership, employed in and around coal mines, coal washers, and coke ovens on the American Continent.” It was thus an early example of an industrial union, one that tried to represent all workers in a sector. 

The union’s progress in West Virginia was slow and sometimes bloody. It was long known that the state was rich in coal and other minerals, but it required the coming of the railroads to make large-scale extraction economically feasible. Outside investors began gobbling up land and mineral rights and displacing mountain families, generally with the support of state politicians.  

Let’s just say the good guys lost that one.  

After wiping out most of the state’s old-growth forests, corporations began building coal camps in isolated mountain communities and instituting a system of total control, including company towns, company stores, company doctors, armed company mine “guards” to enforce obedience up to and including the use of violence, and company-controlled schools and churches. In many cases, workers were paid with company scrip or currency. Those with the temerity to organize or strike faced eviction from company housing, at the very least. 

Companies actively recruited African Americans from the deep South, mostly white locals, and recent European immigrants to the camps. They hoped a “judicious mix” of different ethnicities would prevent union organization. 

They were wrong. 

From Colorado to West Virginia miners struggled, sometimes physically, for the right to organize, with something like guerilla warfare breaking out in my state during the Paint and Cabin Creek areas in 1912-1913. The struggle inspired writer Ralph Chaplin to pen the song “Solidarity Forever,” an international anthem of the working class. More militant struggles followed, including the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest workers’ uprising in American history. So far. 

It wasn’t until the New Deal era that the right of miners to organize was firmly established. For a generation or two… 

And in the 1930s, the UMWA, under the leadership of the theatrical and sometimes confrontational John L. Lewis, launched the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which initiated vast organizing drives in steel, auto, rubber, and other industries. Unafraid to confront the highest levels of authority, he once said “you can’t mine coal with bayonets.” 

During the CIO organizing drive, he proclaimed with characteristic flourish, “Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.” 

These organizing drives eventually won union recognition along with higher wages, better benefits, and improved working conditions for millions of American men and women. These new industrial unions, such as the United Auto Workers (UAW), would become strong financial and political supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. 

This was not lost on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an ardent supporter of the labor movement. In his words, “During the ’30s, wages were a secondary issue; to have a job at all was the difference between the agony of starvation and a flicker of life. The nation, now so vigorous, reeled and tottered almost to total collapse. The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.  

“Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival, but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the ’30s the wave of union organization crested over our nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.” 

The wave that Dr. King spoke of has unfortunately receded over the last 40 years, with devastating consequences. But it remains an example of what can be done when working people act in solidarity. 

So year-round, but especially on May Day and Labor Day, I celebrate the victories and mourn the defeats of the world’s diverse labor unions. However, one union has pride of place. In more ways than one, it lit the way in many dark places. 

(I wrote this piece for Labor Day on AFSC's website.)

Good for the soul

 These really are hard times. I don't know many people from any end of any spectrum who aren't a bit stressed out nowadays. But one recent dose of soul medicine for me came in the form of the United Mine Workers union Labor Day rally in Racine, WV. I've been going to those off and on for 30 years. 

It was really weird and sad to be there without seeing, talking with, and listening to my dear friend Elaine Purkey, a labor singer and songwriter who performed there pretty much every time until she died of COVID last year at around this time. Here's what I wrote about her when she passed. I took that hard.

This year was different and special in that Labor Day coincided with the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest workers' insurrection in American history (so far...), when 10,000 miners marched across southern West Virginian to gain the right to organize. Some UMWA members and supporters retraced that march this year. 

It was great to be around working class people committed to fighting for a working class agenda. I hope that all the efforts to commemorate past struggles help people commit to those of today. Things were rally bad here 100 years ago. Progress was made--and lost.

I'm so old-fashioned that I believe the only hope for the world is the solidarity of the diverse, multi-racial and international working class, even if part of it has lost its way for the time being. I know that without it, we aren't going anywhere.

I think we are at a pivotal point in history and it's going to be a close one.

Labor Day: Remembering a giant

Labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph

 Two recent events made me think of A. Philip Randolph, an underappreciated hero of the labor movement and the African American struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.

The first was close to home. In West Virginia, Aug. 26 is officially Katherine Johnson Day in honor of the brilliant African American mathematician whose story is featured in Margot Lee Shetterly’s 2016 book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race.” The book was made into a film of the same title that was nominated for Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards.

Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1918. A mathematical prodigy, she attended what is now West Virginia State University, a historically Black college, at age 15, graduating at 18 with majors in math and French. She was one of a handful of students to integrate West Virginia University’s graduate school. 

In 1952 she joined the all Black Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA’s forerunner, which was headed by Dorothy Vaughan, a fellow West Virginian. She would eventually play a major role in doing the math that made the lunar landing and other space advances possible.

At age of 97, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. She died earlier this year at the age of 101. Her obituary in the New York Times began with these words: “They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them.”

The second event that reminded me of A. Philip Randolph was more somber. It was the Aug. 28 “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” March on Washington for racial justice and an end to police brutality. The march was held on the 57th anniversary of the original march best known for Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Neither of these events might have happened if not for the life and work of Randolph (1889-1979), an African American writer, editor, democratic socialist, union leader, and civil rights pioneer who made a huge mark on American history over several decades.

Born in Crescent City Florida, his father was an African Methodist Episcopal minister and tailor and his mother was a homemaker and skilled seamstress. Both were fearless advocates for racial justice.

Randolph headed to New York as a young man, working and attending college classes. He loved theater, and founded a Shakespearean society in Harlem, where he played many of the leading roles. Always concerned with the rights of Black workers, he edited radical monthly periodical The Messenger beginning in 1917, which the Department of Justice referred to as "the most able and the most dangerous of all the Negro publications." Randolph himself was called “the most dangerous Negro in America.”

In 1925, Randolph became the founding president of The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union representing Black workers on the luxury rail cars manufactured by the union-busting Pullman Company. The Brotherhood was the first Black-led union to be affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Despite the name, the union also represented women who worked as maids on the rails.

It took a dozen years—and the help of New Deal labor legislation—but in 1937, the Brotherhood won major concessions from the company in what was probably the first major contract a white employer signed with a Black labor leader. 

The Brotherhood was instrumental in opening the path to a decent livelihood for tens of thousands of Black workers. It’s no accident that one of the leaders of the 1950s Montgomery bus boycott that propelled Dr. King to national prominence was Brotherhood member E.D. Nixon.

Randolph also opposed segregation in labor unions and eventually helped end it, serving as a vice president of the AFL-CIO.

He was as comfortable playing hardball with presidents as with corporations. As the nation ramped up production during World War II, Randolph threatened a march on Washington to protest discrimination in federal employment and companies receiving government contracts—a move that pushed the Roosevelt administration into issuing Executive Order 8802 in 1941, which barred hiring discrimination in defense industries and federal agencies and created the Fair Employment Practices Commission. 

This would eventually help open the doors of federal employment for Dorothy Vaughn, Katherine Johnson, and other brilliant “hidden figures” in the aeronautics and space industries.

After the war, Randolph founded the League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation that went head to head against the Truman administration. The result was Executive Order 9981, which ended official discrimination in the U.S. military.

He was assisted in these efforts by Bayard Rustin, a brilliant Black organizer (and Quaker who worked with AFSC). When Rustin, a gay man, was attacked for his sexual orientation by U.S. senator and segregationist Strom Thurmond and others, Randolph responded by expressing complete confidence in Rustin, saying “I am dismayed that there are in this country men who, wrapping themselves in the mantle of Christian morality, would mutilate the most elementary conceptions of human decency, privacy and humility in order to attack other men.”

Rustin would later say of him that “no one has stood beside me in times of trial the way Mr. Randolph has. He is the only man I know who has never said an unkind word about anyone, or who refuses to listen to an unkind word about anyone, even though it may be true.”

Randolph and Rustin’s greatest effort was organizing the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which featured speeches and performances by Dr. King, the late Congressman John Lewis, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, West Virginia-born labor leader Walter Reuther, James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, singers Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and many others.

Randolph himself spoke as well, saying that “we know that we have no future in a society in which 6 million black and white people are unemployed and millions more live in poverty.”

That march inspired generations of Americans, including those who marched this summer.

This is only a partial list of the accomplishments of an amazing life. This Labor Day, I’ll remember many of those who fought for workers’ rights, but Randolph holds a special place for me. 

In the words of his beloved Hamlet, “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”

(This ran as a post in the AFSC blog and ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail in a slightly different form.)

Thoughts for Labor Day

The labor movement has frequently been written off as dead in recent decades. I’ve never believed it, although there have been times when I felt like checking for a pulse.

Over the last few years, however, I’ve been thrilled to see a glorious revival, beginning with the 2018 strike by West Virginia teachers and school support workers, a statewide victorious and nonviolent uprising that:

*brought substantial pay increases to as many as 78,000 teachers, school support workers and public employees;

*resulted in at least temporary improvements in coverage by Public Employees Insurance Agency;

*killed several bad potential pieces of legislation;showed the world what’s best in West Virginia; and

*set an inspiring example for teachers and workers around the country, which helped spark a nationwide wave of mostly successful strikes.

Both AFSC programs in West Virginia (the Appalachian Center for Equality and the WV Economic Justice Project) tried to be supportive of the movement, as well as ongoing struggles to oppose efforts to privatize public education.

My favorite image from that period was a photo of a Kentucky teacher holding a sign that said, “Don’t make us go West Virginia on you.”

To celebrate this Labor Day, here are some quotes to ponder from diverse voices about a movement that has frequently been the subject of premature obituaries:

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” —Abraham Lincoln

“The American people have this to learn: that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property is safe.” —Frederick Douglass

"Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thralldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.” —Eugene Victor Debs, labor leader and socialist

“When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run/there can be no greater power anywhere beneath the sun/yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one/but the union makes us strong,” —Ralph Chaplin, Industrial Workers of the World organizer and author of “Solidarity Forever,” the international anthem of the labor movement, which was inspired by a 1912-13 West Virginia coal miners’ strike

“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.” —Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor

“’The first thing is to raise hell,’ says I. ‘That’s always the first thing to do when you’re faced with an injustice and you feel powerless. That’s what I do in my fight for the working class.’” —Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, an Irish-born American labor organizer and hell raiser

“Justice is never given; it is exacted, and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.” —A. Philip Randolph, African-American socialist and leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union

 “The labor movement was the principal force that transforme­d misery and despair into hope and progress.” —Martin Luther King Jr.

“What we would like to do is change the world ... by crying unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that it’s ever widening circle will reach around the world.” —Dorothy Day, cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement

From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength.” —Cesar Chavez, leader of the United Farm Workers union

“The freedom of association means that people can come together in organization to fight for solutions to the problems they confront in their communities. The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized, and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the women’s movement, and the equality movement for our LGBT brothers and sisters are all manifestations of these rights.” —Dolores Huerta, leader of the United Farm Workers union

“Yes, I think it’s really important to acknowledge that Dr. King, precisely at the moment of his assassination, was re-conceptualizing the civil rights movement and moving toward a sort of coalitional relationship with the trade union movement.” —Angela Davis, African-American scholar and freedom fighter

I’ll give the last word to West Virginia native Walter Reuther, leader of the United Auto Workers union:

"The labor movement is about changing society. What good is a dollar an hour more in wages if your neighborhood is burning down? What good is another week's vacation if the lake you used to go to is polluted and you can't swim in it and your kids can't play in it? And what good is another hundred-dollar pension if the world goes up in atomic smoke in a war?"

Happy Labor Day!

(This first appeared as an AFSC Labor Day blog post.)

Labor Day...for real

"My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: we must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing." Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, union organizer and hell raiser, 1830?-1930.

Ten thousand times

Here's a fiery labor day quote:

"Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun."-Eugene V. Debs, 1904

I wish I was as confident of emancipation today as he was then. And more correct about it.

Room for hope?

Here's a semi-optimistic Labor Day assessment of the outlook for working people, or at least of changing attitudes about it.

And here's an all too realistic assessment of racial disparities in the US today.

Social studies project

Just in time for Labor Day, here's the latest edition of The State of Working West Virginia. This report is the sixth in so many years and the theme this time is From Weirton Steel to Wal-Mart, the former having once been WV's largest employer while the latter, sadly, now holds that distinction. I worked in this with friends from the WV Center on Budget and Policy. The musical soundtrack as got to be Springsteen.

AND ON THAT NOTE, here's Robert Reich on how workers can get a fair shake in today's economy. Yeah, it'll take a lot of work.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What it's all about

I can think of no better way it lead into Labor Day weekend than by sharing this great op-ed about the labor movement yesterday and today by my friend Larry Matheney, secretary-treasurer of the WV AFLCIO. Larry also gives a shout out to one of my heroes, WV native, UAW, labor, civil rights, and human rights leader Walter Reuther.

HONESTLY? Here's a reality-based look at Paul Ryan's speech. And here are a bunch more.

RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE. Just do it.

WASTEFUL MILITARY SPENDING. Some days are better than others with WV's junior senator Joe Manchin, but he's right on target this time.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Who knew?

Image by way of wikipedia.

We interrupt Goat Rope's regularly scheduled programming due to a major news development reported this weekend on NPR which has forced El Cabrero to remake his cognitive map of the world.

According to someone who should probably know,

"Alligator wrestling is not a thinking man's sport."

And to think that all these years I was convinced you had to be really good at math to do it...

One other point to ponder about that statement...it was made to people who paid $100 to learn how to wrestle alligators. Could there be some intended or unintended irony or something there?

MASS DISTRACTION. Here's Krugman talking sense on jobs and deficits. Again.

TWO FROM LABOR. Here are two good Labor Day op-eds from the Charleston Gazette. The first is by Teamster leader Ken Hall and the second by state AFLCIO secretary treasurer Larry Matheney.

SPEAKING OF WORKERS, a new report (the easiest part of which was written by yours truly) looks at the state of working West Virginians. Here's a link to press coverage from the Gazette and the West Virginia News Service and here's a link to the report itself.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Labor Day

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Solidarity forever (and today)

It's a little known fact that Ralph Chaplin's song "Solidarity Forever," an internationally famous labor anthem, was inspired by events in West Virginia. Chaplin, writer and long time labor activist with the Industrial Workers of the World, lived for a time in the Mountain State and edited the Huntington Socialist and Labor Star, one of several labor newspapers then published in the state.

During that time, he was inspired by the solidarity of coal miners during long and bitter strikes that raged in Kanawha County in the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek areas around 1912-1913. It took him a while to finish the song, which is sung to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Today most people familiar with the song only know the chorus. In celebration of Labor Day, here's the whole thing:

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong.

CHORUS:
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong.

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong.

Chorus

It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;
But the union makes us strong.

Chorus

All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
While the union makes us strong.

Chorus

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong.

Chorus

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong.

Chorus

Labor daze

United Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts speaks at the union labor day celebration in Racine, WV.

Labor Day in southern West Virginia traditionally means the United Mine Workers District 17 celebration in Racine in Boone County, which has traditionally drawn hundreds of workers, family and community members and any number of current or aspiring politicians.

This year's event had some competition, as anyone paying attention to what's going on in this state knows. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who has probably done more than anyone else in this state to damage the labor movement--and the UMWA in particular--spent God knows how much money on a "Friends of America" concert/propaganda event that featured Ted Nugent, Hank Williams Jr. and Fox "News" celebrity Sean Hannity.

The bushes were beaten to draw thousands of people to attend this free event on an old strip mine site in Holden in Logan County.

The aim of the event was to oppose any kind of proposed actions aimed at addressing climate change, which after all couldn't possibly be true because that might inconvenience the coal industry. Also targeted were any measures that might regulate or tax the industry. All things progressive came under attack as well.

Nugent is reported to have once invited President Obama to "suck on my machine gun."

Nice...

By the way, the WV Chamber of Commerce, International Coal Group, the WV Coal Association and other such groups also co-sponsored the event. The extent to which Nugent speaks for them is unclear.

The irony of union busters pretending to protect American workers would make a cat laugh. On the other hand, Blankenship has suffered some setbacks lately in his attempts to influence state elections and court decisions so this may be the latest strategy. Here's hoping this one works as well as the last few.

Anyway, I attended the UMWA event as usual. Even without the bells and whistles, it was a good crowd. I had to walk about half a mile to get there. It was also nice to see that a large number of state elected officials, including Gov. Manchin, Congressman Nick Rahall, Treasurer John Perdue, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, House Speaker Rick Thompson and many delegates and senators not only attended but stayed all day.

UMWA president Cecil Roberts have his usual barn burning speech. My favorite part was when he said he received a call earlier in the week from Gov. Manchin asking if he was going to the Blankenship event. When Roberts said no, Manchin said that in that case he didn't have a ride and wouldn't be able to go either.

I don't know if that conversation really happened, but I'd like to think it did.

WHACKADOODLES. In keeping with last week's series on political paranoia, here are some of the odder conspiracy theories involving the president.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's the text of Obama's communist discourse for America's school children. I just scanned it and I'm already indoctrinated. The workers really do have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win! Arrgghh!!!!

PETS OR MEAT? Here's an unsavory look at the origins of dog domestication.

SPEAKING OF FOOD (SORT OF), a new study suggests it's not just what you eat that matters when you eat it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What does labor want?

“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”--Samuel Gompers, 1850-1924

FRIENDLY SUGGESTION FOR WEST VIRGINIANS: if you go to a Labor Day event this weekend, make it a real one. Here are some:

Marion County Labor Day Weekend Celebration
Sunday September 6, 2009
Hough Park, Mannington, WV
12 Noon- 4:00 pm
Everyone Welcome! Open to the public.Bring your lawn chair
FREE Food, Ice Cream and Soft Drinks
Live music by Don Hayes and the Country Raiders
Inflatable Fun Houses for children ages 2-12
Over $1,500 in Door Prizes
(Must be present to win)
Program Begins at 2:00 pm
Special Guest Speaker Governor Joe Manchin as well as other elected officials and labor leaders
For additional information contact Marion County Labor Council President,
Vern Swisher at 304-367-0316 or vswisher@ma.rr.com

*************************************

Paden City Labor Day Parade
Monday September 7th - Line up begins at Noon
Parade begins at 1 PM
For additional information contact Marshall-Wetzel-Tyler Labor Council President,
Shelva Smith at 304 845-6002 or gongolfin@netzero.com

**************************************

UMWA Friends of Coal Miners Labor Day Celebration
Featured Speaker
UMWA President, Cecil Roberts
Everyone is invited to show their support of West Virginia working families by attending this fun filled day of entertainment, speakers and drawings for door prizes.
John Slack Memorial Park – Racine WV
Activities begin at Noon - Monday, September 7th
For additional information contact: UMWA District 17 Office at 304-346-0341
Proud UMWA Coal Miner & South Central Labor Council President -Clyde McKnight

As my friends at the WV AFLCIO put it, "Labor day is about workers, not corporations."

Have a great Labor Day weekend--and remember the folks who gave us the weekend!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

EYE WIDE OPEN

The Goat Rope series on the Odyssey of Homer resumes today. You will also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, check back on earlier weekday posts.

If people remember any episode in the Odyssey, it's generally the one where Odysseus visits the island of the cyclopes and has a run-in with the one-eyed giant Polphemus. It is pretty memorable.

To briefly recap, after the end of the Trojan War, Odysseus and his men (around 600 to start with in several ships) make a gratuitous raid on the Circoneans, which ends badly. Then they land at home of the Lotus Eaters, who are blissed-out stoners who offer his men the addictive drug that makes them forget all about going home. He forces them, "with streaming tears," back to their ships.

From there we sailed on, our spirits now at a low ebb,
and reached the land of the high and might Cyclops,
lawless brutes, who trust so to the everlasting gods
they never plant with their own hands or plow the soil.
Unsown, unplowed, the earth teems with all they need,
wheat, barley and vines, swelled by the rains of Zeus
to yield a big full-bodied wine from clustered grapes.
They have no meeting place for council, no laws either,
no, up on the mountain peaks they live in arching caverns--
each a law to himself, ruling his wives and children,
not a care for any neighbor.

They land first at a nearby island, teeming incidentally with wild goats. They could easily stock up on game and head on home to Ithaca. Odysseus, however, can't leave things well enough alone. Gazing across to the island, he says,

'The rest of you stay here, my friends-in-arms.
I'll go across with my own ship and crew
and probe the natives living over there.
What are they--violent, savage, lawless?
or friendly to strangers, god-fearing men?'

It might be rational to do a rapid recon and get the hell out, but our boy is addicted to adventure--or terrified of boredom. Oddly, he decides to take along a large skin of super strong wine. As John Prine might say, he's "wishin' for bad luck and knockin' on wood."

In the end, his curiosity will mean a gruesome death for six of his men. About which more tomorrow.

THE NEXT BIG THING. Here's an op-ed by Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research about the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier and safer for workers to join unions. In El Cabrero's humble opinion, this would be the most significant legislation in decades and could help reduce poverty and rebuild the nation's battered middle class.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, here are Labor Day reflections from Larry Matheney of the WV AFLCIO.

SICK KIDS. West Virginia ranks second in the nation in the percentage of children with chronic illnesses. From the Charleston Gazette,

About 18 percent of West Virginia children - 69,500 kids - have special health needs or chronic illnesses, such as asthma and diabetes. Only Kentucky has a higher percentage - 18.5 percent.

WEALTH, WORK AND INEQUALITY is the subject of this interesting op-ed.

BEACHFRONT PROPERTY? Climate change-induced increases in sea level over the next century could be higher than predicted, according to some scientists.

ANIMALS AND DEATH. How do they deal with it?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

LABOR DAY

The Farmington Mine Disaster in Marion County, West Virginia, November 1968. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

We have fed you all for a thousand years
And you hail us still unfed,
Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth
But marks the workers' dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest
And you lie on crimson wool.
Then if blood be the price of all your wealth,
Good God! We have paid it in full!

There is never a mine blown skyward now
But we're buried alive for you.
There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now
But we are its ghastly crew.
Go reckon our dead by the forges red
And the factories where we spin.
If blood be the price of your cursed wealth,
Good God! We have paid it in!

We have fed you all a thousand years-
For that was our doom, you know,
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike a week ago.
You have taken our lives, and our babies and wives,
And we're told it's your legal share,
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
Good God! We bought it fair!

Written by "an unknown proletarian" in 1908.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED