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I began to watch this tonight and will continue watching tomorrow. A first-rate
program. I kept a drawing of Mother Jones that my brother drew on my office
wall for many year. Her life story is inspirational, and she surely is in
labor's hall of fame. An astonishing woman, whose life was worth a thousand of
my own. Every time I see films or read books about miners, I am overcome with
emotions. My great uncle went to work in the mines at nine, same age as one of
the main organizers in the film. His brother, my grandfather, worked with him.
My mother's brother was a miner, and my mom worked in the company store in the
mining village in which I was born. At the high school I attended, a teacher
called one of my cousins a dumb coal miner, and my cousin picked him up and
hung him out of a third story window. When I was a teacher, a friend of mine,
myself, and our students interviewed scores of old miners, the tapes of which
have provided a valuable resource to a historian friend of mine.
I had students serve as poll watchers for the UMW election that brought Arnold
Miller to the union presidency and broke the back of the murderous Tony Boyle
machine. So much of my life was shaped by the lives my relatives lived in the
mining towns. When I listen to Merle Travis sing Dark as a Dungeon, the words
resonate, and I can't help but cry. So much pain and sorrow, so much brave
struggle, so much sickness. I once went to hear a famous black lung doctor
speak to miners about their rights. His words were sometimes hard to hear
because nearly every man kept coughing and wheezing, all sick with lung
disease. Not that many years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the memorial to
the murdered miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado. How do you go to
such a place and not want to see all of the wretched capitalists, all of the
complicit politicians, brought low, their wealth confiscated, and their power
eradicated. Ship them off to penal colonies and execute the worst of them.
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