On Monday, September 29, all 440 miners in Blackville, West Virginia engaged in a political strike to protest coercive attempts to get them to turn against Barack Obama.
Union officials say they took the day to protest after a film crew from the National Rifle Association showed up at the Consol mine last week to interview union workers.
They say the crew tried to get union coal miners to speak out against Barak Obama.
The United Mine Workers of America has endorsed the democratic presidential nominee.
"This was a surprise visit," explained VP Local 1702, Safety Chairman Eric Greathouse, "and a lot of the miners felt this was a direct slap in the face of the union because they were trying to coerce our people into saying things against Barck Obama."
The story is linked.
This strike is an extremely hopeful sign that Barack Obama has connected with the deeply-felt concerns of working people in West Virginia.
ReplyDeleteAlthough West Virginia was one of the very most unionized states and had an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, Al Gore (who very visibly supported NAFTA) and John Kerry (who abandoned his line about "Benedict Arnold CEOs" after his Wall St.-based advisors corrected him) lost West Virginia by substantial margins.
Given the pervasive, deep poverty in the state and the dependence of its citizens on government programs, West Virginia should been easy pickings for the Democrats. But the Dems' repudiation of class-conscious economic issues, in deference to party donors, meant that Gore and Kerry could not connect with voters in West Virginia.
The strike in support of Obama is a sign that he is on the right path and needs to push even more strongly on falling wages and astronomical Wall Street bonuses, the outsourcing of US jobs, and the need for national healthcare.
Roger Bybee, Milwaukee.
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