Damar Hamlin and the spirit of the times we are living in

I previously posted on what happened to Damar Hamlin and how his injuries and his determination to fully recover have brought forward some positive thinking and actions by people who may not have previously thought that the had much in common with one another. The two different items below are very much in the spirit of my previous post. I don't believe that we have the time or the luxury to put off praying for Mr. Hamlin or working for justice for all workers. The United Steelworkers union would likely not have been able to win the contract that they did with the United States Football League (see below) if there was not a strong spirit stirring among working people and in the labor movement at this point.

 

USW: Players Ratify First Contract with USFL--January 9, 2023

Contact: Tony Montana – (412) 562-2592 or tmontana@usw.org

PITTSBURGH — The United Steelworkers (USW) today said that union-represented players have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new agreement with the United States Football League (USFL) covering roughly 350 professional athletes.

USW International President Thomas M. Conway said that football players, like all workers, deserve fair treatment on the job and that the new agreement empowers individuals to speak up.

“Our union is committed to working with players to improve conditions and ensure that they are treated with dignity and respect by the league,” Conway said. “The contract provides a much-needed voice for players, whose jobs and earnings also will be more secure under the ratified agreement.”

USW International Secretary Treasurer John Shinn, who represents the union on the AFL-CIO Sports Council, said the new contract provides important improvements for players from last season.

“Through standing together in unity, players successfully bargained for enhanced economic and medical provisions, including a newly negotiated five-week injured reserve,” Shinn said. “Throughout the league, from training camp and through the season, players will receive better pay and have more security.”

Ryan Cave, an executive with the United Football Players Association, said that collectively bargaining for better treatment and working conditions is an important step toward raising standards of living in the future.

“From experience, we know that working together is the key to getting results,” Cave said. “Players throughout the USFL stood together, and we achieved a strong first contract as a direct result from that solidarity.”

The USW and the USFL announced tentative agreement on a first contract for players on December 15, 2022, about five months after their representation election in June, which was overseen by the National Labor Relations Board.

The USW represents 850,000 workers employed in manufacturing, metals, mining, pulp and paper, rubber, chemicals, glass, auto supply and the energy-producing industries, along with a growing number in tech, public sector and service occupations.

One woman who worked in the mines

This photograph was taken in 1979, and I believe that it appeared in the Mountain Life & Work magazine. That was a progressive or radical magazine at the time that did much to help build peoples' power and workers' power in Appalachia. Linda King had worked in a garment factory in Virginia for a time but then became a roof bolter's helper or a roof bolter at the Bullitt Mine in Big Stone Gap, Virginia.

Some commentary on what happened to Damar Hamlin and shared interests

In my world what happened to Damar Hamlin and the role of the players and the NFL Players Association in taking righteous on-the-spot action to end the game on January 2 has loomed extra-large. There have been many strong commentaries on what happened, and Damar Hamlin's gradual recovery is rightfully being cheered on. One of the better commentaries has come from Garrett Bush, who does the Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show. Mr. Bush speaks with prophetic energy.

If you are tracking the context for what happened to Damar Hamlin, please go here to hear Robin Young of National Public Radio speak with Mr. Bush and to catch a great clip of Mr. Bush on his show.

It is hard for me to tell what Mr. Bush thinks of the Players Association from these clips. I support the Association and all unions, and I hope that we all have the bandwidth to understand that the players and their union took direct action and closed down the game on January 2 and that that took courage on their part. It also sets a great example for all workers and for all unions. I don't hear fans faulting the platers, so it's a safe gamble that what did has mass support.

I think that Mr. Bush makes a strong point in his interview with Robin Young when he talks about coal miners, football players, and Black Lung (see here and here). We all have this tendency to think of sports figures as living and working in another universe, apart from the rest of the working-class. Mr. Bush goes in another direction and shows how the players need to understand the experiences of blue-collar workers, and especially coal miners, and how the work done by the players increasingly feels like blue-collar work to them. This opens a box full of possibilities. Shared experiences create shared interests and shared interests can create powerful movements for social change.

What Mr. Bush does not say---and he may not be aware of this---is that the numbers of people suffering with Black Lung are increasing and the average age for a mine worker with Black Lung is dropping. Why is this so? The nature of coal mining work and the methods used in mining are changing somewhat. The coal mining industry is doing relatively well, but workers are still near the end of the line when it comes to benefitting from this. The most important factor in this in my mind is the loss of union representation in many mining districts. And that loss of union representation in mining should concern everyone.

Mr. Bush makes strong points about the precedents set by miners getting Black Lung benefits and better safety conditions in the mines over time but his data is a little old and the benefits and safety conditions must improve. But both the NFL Players and coal miners have taken strong actions to protest their working conditions. Work safety conditions and coverage for injured nd disabled workers must improve  so all workers---all of us---can do better. He still has a strong argument, and he's going in the right direction, but we all need to lend a hand and build solidarity. 
 

The Sago Mine Disaster---January 2, 2006

When I started to write this post

I began to abbreviate,
as in "Jan. 2, 2006,"
but this is not a moment

to abbreviate anything.

Spell it out. Scream it. Cry it off.

On this day,
January 2,

in the Year of Our Lord 2006,
a blast in coal mine
in Sago,
near Buckhannon
in Upshur County,
in West Virginia,

in Appalachia,
not far from where I once hunted
and near where I once did flood relief

and a body search,
trapped thirteen miners underground
for two days.

Twelve perished in all

but our memories.
Twelve good men died.
Another good man made it out.

It's called a disaster

because we abbreviate.
If we had to say "murder"
we could not 
come to terms
with what that means.
It's called perishing

because we cannot say
that contracting out

and shell companies
and multinational corporations
make Appalachia a colony
and they will

and do

despoil the land

and crush the soul
and kill workers
if they have to.

We perform a ritual

with our wounding

and call it work.

We perform a ritual

with our trauma

and call it politics.

We perform a ritual

with our dispossession

and say we need

the jobs.

There were warnings enough.

Sago was not safe,
this was well-known.
That first shift went in

when it was dark,
just 6:30 in the morning,
when the kids are getting up for school,
when the coffee might be on,
when someone might be
whispering a prayer,
and then that mine blew up.
The shift never made it

to the face of the mine.

Don't abbreviate. Tell the story.
There were at least forty-seven dead
in the mines that year, or so
my memory tells me.

My conscience has

much more to say.

I was 2550 miles away,
give or take quite a few heartbreaks,
and could not tell anyone what I felt.
For once Oregon's gray cold matched
how my heart felt.

For once I was 

silent and began to understand

miles as heartbeats

and tears.   

Forty-seven killed in the mines that year.
I repeat that because my heart
breaks like ice, and there is anger
in my hands. There was me once telling
an Assistant Secretary of Labor
what death in the mines meant

in a room full of older mine workers.

They knew better than me.
My voice and heart cracking,

and I felt so stupid,
but the room took a breath,
the walls took a breath,
and then those with me
stood up and applauded
and he made a hasty exit.

But on January 2, 2006
I was silent.

Prayer after prayer,
but I knew
that all would not be well.

Why do we argue over how precious life is?
Why is it policy that someone must die
so that my lights go on?

Why is every light in the house on

and yet we're living in darkness?
And why did I feel stupid trying to ask

these questions, so afraid of crying

in front of others?

And why

and how

did those others

feel me?      

Our United Mine Workers of America held strong
and would not be bullied. Sago had been
a non-union mine, but at times like these
hearts can beat as one.

I say their last names:

Anderson
Bennett
Bennett
Groves
Hamner
Helms
Jones
Lewis
Toler
Ware
Weaver
Winans

I say their names again.

Mister...

And again.

Brother...

I do not abbreviate.

  

A memory of a cold morning

This was posted by by Keith Betsy Cain on the Appalachian Americans Facebook page. Readers of this blog know that often I post here about Slovak coal miners ands steel workers. In fact, this blog began with a quote from the book "Out Of This Furnace," a wonderful book that tells the story of several generations of Slovak and Slovak American steel workers. The account below is so well written that I could feel myself warming up on a cold morning when I first read it.

These cold days sparked a memory for me. Dad worked at the coal mine and was always the first one up. On really cold days, he would wake me up a little early for school. I knew the routine well. I would sit up and rub my eyes while the sleeves of Daddy's white t-shirt, that I wore as a nightgown, would be near my wrists. I would take the sheet off my bed and head to the living room. There, in front of the hot air register, I would lay on my stomach with my feet touching the warm metal. Daddy would completly cover me with the sheet. Then I got to work, pulling the sides of the sheet under my body and using my feet to hold the sheet to the wall sealing the register inside the sheet with me. All I had to do now was wait for the furnace to kick on. (Now, I think Daddy probably went over to the thermostat and bumped it up) When it came on, warm air inflated my sheet tent. I would lay there surrounded by perfect warmth in my little cocoon while Daddy made me coffee-milk and toast humming and singing in English/Slovak. When the furnace shut off, breakfast was ready, and I was ready to start my day.

Some thoughts on where we come from

 Waiting for the northbound train in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1921

during the Great Migration.

Youngsters from Washington D.C. in the early 1940s.

The following was written by Bobbie Rutledge and appeared on the Appalachian
Americans Facebook page:

I knew a man, he was a poor man but an honest and hardworking man. He pulled corn for $.25 cents a day. He graduated from high school in a time, where most young people did not. He wanted to go to University of Georgia to become a Soil Conservationist since he came from sharecroppers. He wanted to import their lives and see that they could own their own land. However he got a letter from Uncle Sam that he was needed. This man, who had never gone any further than 25 miles from Georgia went to Texas, California, Florida, France, and Germany. He drove a tank. When he got back he farmed along side his parents. He picked cotton from sun up till sundown with no complaints. He married a beautiful black haired lady. They had a child that was their world. The year the child was born his cotton crop made $50 and the hospital bill was $48. He finally decided that farming wasn’t gonna get since child any future. So he went to work driving he’s y equipment for the county he lived in grading roads thru the farm land he used to farm. That broke his heart. But life goes on. One day he was driving with his son in law , in the SIL new trick when they turned wrong and the SIL got on ONSTAR to find their way back. The man listened to the directions given and when they were back home, he turned to my hubby and said that was nice of that man to stay in the phone with us. Hubby laughed and said it was a computer. Daddy said well I swear, this came from a man, who walked to school, did his homework by lamplight and saw electric light come into his house. Saw TV come into it’s on. Finally got a telephone at the age of 40. This man who went without dinner so his child could eat. This man. Is who Americans have to thanks for being what we are today. This man is my Daddy, thanks Daddy, I sure miss you.

A Victorian street scene

From Journey of a Mountain Woman:

When I was growing up when a person was near death, the Drs would say 'call the family in' and in most cases no matter where they were they would go back to the old home place in the mountains. It was a duty and a thankfulness, and A loving grateful opportunity to say goodbye. we all dreaded to hear those words...call the family in. Things have changed but us old folks remember...we remember the goodbyes, the casket set up in the living room, us sitting up all night, drinking strong coffee, that last time. The house smelled of flowers and fried chicken and the table was laden with food brought in by neighbors. Many of us will grieve this Christmas for those who have left us. Many of us are the only one left of a large family and we will smile through the tears as we remember those sad words...call the family in. Have a good night and God bless.

Class struggle and the revolutionary hope of Christmas by Tim Yeager

This post offers a view of the Christmas story that will surprise many readers and, I hope, provoke some study and discussion. The author of this piece is Tim Yeager, who is described at the end of the article as " Long-time labor organizer, civil rights and peace activist in the U.S., Rev. Tim Yeager is now Associate Priest at St Albans Cathedral and Volunteer priest at Waltham Abbey Church, U.K." This article first appeared in the December 20, 2017 edition of the People's World. Please go here in order to read the entire article.

A mural imitating the religious painting "The Last Supper" covers a wall of a popular housing complex in Caracas, showing from left to right: Fidel Castro, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Mao Zedong, V.I. Lenin, Karl Marx, Jesus Christ, Simon Bolivar, Venezuelan rebel fighters Alexis Gonzalez and Fabricio Ojeda, and Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez. | Fernando Llano / AP

Christmas time can be so depressing. It brings out some of the worst features of capitalism and rubs them in our faces. You can’t escape, whatever your philosophical or religious belief.

Advertisements spur on feelings of guilt if you don’t buy enough of the right kinds of consumer products for people you love. Creative financing is offered so that lenders can make even more profit. And it is an environmental disaster … more plastic, cardboard, and packaging is produced, carted about, and dumped into landfills, vacant lots, and incinerators at Christmas time than at any other time of the year.

And yet… Nearly smothered beneath piles of gift catalogs and sale circulars, nearly drowned in a sea of synthesized elevator-music Christmas carols, in a locked theological vault guarded down through the centuries by legions of preachers, priests and pontiffs, there burns a persistent secret flame. It is the flame of a revolutionary hope—hope for a better world, a more just society, where the social order is turned upside down so that the poor are fed and the rich are relieved of their ill-gotten gains. And it is something that working people of any culture, any religious or philosophical background can relate to.

What does Christmas have to do with the class struggle? In a word—everything. The story goes like this:

Once upon a time, in a land far away on the edge of a great empire, there was a people with an ancient culture, a storied past, and a great literature, who had been conquered by a technologically advanced imperial power. They were occupied by foreign soldiers and ruled by corrupt local despots who collaborated with the foreign oppressors. There were periodic revolts of local peasants and slaves that were put down mercilessly.

In the midst of all that, a young unmarried girl becomes pregnant out of wedlock. You might think she would regret this development, but on the contrary, she finds in the anticipated birth of a child a reason to rejoice and to hope for a better world. In her joy and determination, she sings an ancient song of liberation:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me: He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. (Luke 1:46-53)

She and her fiancé are then forced to make a difficult journey while she is in the last weeks of her pregnancy, ostensibly to comply with the demands of their imperial rulers to register for a census. They are denied lodging in local inns. Homeless, the young family takes shelter in a stable, where the mother goes into labor and gives birth to a baby boy among barnyard animals.

Hardly an auspicious beginning for a child in whom his mother had placed such hope. And then things get worse. The local ruler, a collaborator who is kept in power through an occupation army, decides on an act of terror. Convinced that a revolt is brewing in the village where the young couple has just had their baby, he sends in death squads to kill all the male children under a certain age.

Follow the rest of the article here.

Season reminders from Shannon Nelson at the V. & V. Restaurant in Richlands, VA. Please read!

All I really know about Shannon Nelson is that she runs the great V. & V. Restaurant in Richlands, Virginia (374 Front St, Richlands, VA.) and that she's really busy and has a great heart and is pretty smart. If I ever disappear and you need to find me, check the V. & V. Restaurant first. It is the kind of place that would be a second home to me if I lived round Richlands. Shannon posted the following reminders for the season that need to get around. Please pass them on.

Before you start bragging that you’ve done your Christmas shopping and post a picture of 175 wrapped gifts under the tree, or posting pics of your matching pajama family portraits, please remember :

Some parents have lost their jobs and don’t know how they’re going to feed their kids, never mind buying presents for them.
Some families are on 80% pay and only just managing to pay bills.
Some people have lost family members and Christmas won’t be the same now or ever again. Some are missing family that acts like they don’t exist
Some people don’t go online and now have no idea when or how they’ll be able to shop.
Some people are completely isolated and alone, and won’t be receiving any gifts from anyone at all.
Some people have had their entire world turned upside down!
Some people are fighting for their lives!!! Christmas shopping is the last thing on their minds.
So remember, nobody likes a show off!!!
For me this year, more than ever before, it's more important who is around your tree rather than what’s under it.
It’s Christ’s Birthday!!!
Be humble. Be thoughtful. Be kind. That’s what the holiday season is really about.
#CopyAndPasteIfYouAgree ... I Do

***

We will be closed December 24, 25, and 26 so that we can give our extremely short and over worked staff some time to just enjoy their family's. We are thankful for the ones that we have that keep showing up and helping us every day and honestly wouldn't be able to do it without them. So if you see them out take a second to tell them what a great job they are doing. And if you come in and your order is messed up or you have to wait longer than you would like on your food, please keep in mind the person you are about to yell at showed up that day and probably countless days before and they are trying their best. I'm not just talking about at v&v no matter where you are or what your mad about take 2 seconds to think about what you are about to say to the tired overworked and stressed out worker that showed up that day to help you. Life is hard and sometimes a little patience and understanding go a long way. We love you all and hope everyone has the best Christmas.

When faith meets labor, it fuels a fight for the common good---An article on Rev. David Wheeler by Rebecca Jacobson

We have mentioned David Wheeler on our blog before. Now The Northwest Labor Press has a great article about him.

A ‘GOOD TROUBLE’ BAPTIST: For Portland minister David Wheeler, solidarity is a virtue with a Biblical foundation. | PHOTO BY CELINA FLORES

When faith meets labor, it fuels a fight for the common good--By REBECCA JACOBSON

On a September afternoon in 2006, a couple thousand people took to the west end of Los Angeles’s Century Boulevard. Blocking rush-hour traffic on one of the city’s major thoroughfares, they marched toward the passenger terminals at Los Angeles International Airport. Many carried signs or wore t-shirts reading “I Am a Human” in English and Spanish, a reference to the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis.

The marchers were there to support low-wage workers at the many nearby hotels, and to put pressure on hotel management to respect their employees’ rights to organize. Outside the Hilton, more than 300 of the demonstrators sat down in the middle of the boulevard. When police showed up with plastic handcuffs, they offered no resistance to arrest. It was one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in LA history.

Reverend Dr. David Wheeler, then pastor of the First Baptist Church in Los Angeles, was there. But he wasn’t among those cuffed.

Read the entire article here.

The beauty around around us--A photograph and a meditation

I found this photograph on the Steel Mill Pictorial Facebook page. It was taken by Mr. Michael Jones. He had this caption with his photograph:

when i would explore the old wheeling pitt mill in steubenville i would park in mingo jct and walk the tracks that lead to the high line….this photo is on my walk back to mingo

Now, I know this spot and so Mr. Jones' photograph and caption resonates with me in a special way. But I think that this reaches beyond what we know and becomes a matter of the "ordinary beauty" around us that most of us can glimpse and want to hold close to our hearts. When I look at this photograph and think of walking those tracks I think of history and what is in the past and how that shapes our present. I think of smells and tastes and ways of living that I thought would go on long after I pass on---but they won't. A steel mill, railroad tracks, and the very grayness of our lives can be things of great beauty, and perhaps this is so in part because the occasional color and joys of our lives illuminate the grayness around us, if only for a little while, and because they are so much larger than we are but were built with human hands and human plans.

This is a good time of year to be thinking about joy and color illuminating life. Mr. Jones' photograph provides a great meditation for me.

This is true

 

Some things to study on

I shall shine my light

My inner loving light, so bright

Through the day and through the night

So that it might

Be seen, for alls delight

A little Poem by Athey Thompson

Art by Lennart Helji

Taken from Tales of the Old Forest Faeries

From Virginia Lee Photography and Hidden Bedside

From the past

I try to put up many historical photographs on this blog with the ideas that memory can be very subversive and that it helps to remember where we come from. It happens that much of what I put up comes from mining communities in the United States, but I will try to change that.

Coal miners and a flat bottom cutting machine as it undercuts 30 inch coal so that it can be popped down later with a small charge of explosives. This photograph was taken at the Reels Cove mine at Marion County, TN. on the Cumberland Plateau, near Whitwell.

Child of a squatter family moving out of the Camp Croft area near Whitestone, South Carolina, March 1941 in a photograph by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress and Ward Weems.

Grandmother from a farm in Oklahoma; eighty years old. Now living in camp on the outskirts of Bakersfield, California. "If you lose your pluck you lose the most there is in you - all you've got to live with" November 1936 in a photograph by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress and Ward Weems.

A coal camp in West Virginia

‘Aunt' Samantha Bumgarner of from Dillsboro, North Carolina, fiddler, banjoist, and guitarist, Asheville, North Carolina, 1937 in photographs by Ben Shahn for the United States Resettlement Administration, Library of Congress and Ward Weems.

Pauline Clyburn's garden, Manning, Clarendon County, South Carolina, June 1939 in a

photograph by Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress and Ward Weems.

Logan, West Virginia in 1974

The Homestead Steel Mill in 1970

Today marks the 114th anniversary of the Monongah Mine Disaster, the worst mining disaster in American history.

From the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum;

Today marks the 114th anniversary of the Monongah Mine Disaster, the worst mining disaster in American history. 362 people lost their lives, many of whom were immigrants.

This was just one of a string of disasters that struck coal mines across the United States within the next 30 days. 4 more coal mine explosions happened in December of 1907, marking it the most deadly month in coal mining history.

On December 1st of 1907, 35 miners died at the Naomi Mines in Fayette City, Pennsylvania. On December 16th, 35 more passed away at the Yolande Mine in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. 239 miners were killed on December 19th at the Darr Mine in Van Meter, Pennsylvania. And lastly, 11 were killed on New Years Eve at the Bernal Mine in Carthage, New Mexico.

Sadly, the mistreatment of workers and their appalling labor conditions continued on, leading to the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, where 10,000 mine workers–immigrant and native-born, Black and white–banded together to fight for their rights as laborers and as humans during the West Virginia Mine Wars.

Today, we remember the lives taken in this string of devastating events on National Miners Day. We thank and honor the skilled, hardworking, and inspiring coal miners–both past and present–who have powered the American Labor Movement and our country with their backbreaking labor. #NationalMinersDay

(Photo from WV Public Broadcasting)

For the sake of memory and hope for the future

Two families with 11 children in all living in one house that is very inadequate but all that is available in Quincy, Massachusetts, December 1940 in a photograph by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress.

Coal miner, Colp, Illinois, January 1939 from an acetate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration, Library of the Congress.

Among the few remaining inhabitants of Zinc, Arkansas, a deserted mining town, October 1935 from a 35mm nitrate negative by Ben Shahn for the Resettlement Administration, Library of Congress.

The Ponderosa in West Virginia by Howard Horenstein

Maxwell Street, early 1950’s, Chicago by Marvin Newman

Salvaging coal from the slag heaps, Nanty Glo, Pennsylvania, 1937. 10 cents for

each hundred-pound sack. A photograph by Ben Shahn for the Resettlement

Administration, Library of Congress

Red House, West Virginia school truck, October 1935 from a 35mm 

nitrate negative by Ben Shahn, Farm Security Administration,

 Library of Congress

Greene County Fair, Greensboro, Georgia, October 1941 in a photograph by

 Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress