Is there life after coal, what future for the collier?
The scab and the hardliner both, wear the blue scars of the miner
Rising up now from the earth, we’re branded and we’re blinded
The sunlight and the dole queue boast, the blue scars of the miner
Is there anything but drink, drugs and last reminders
A single tear drop rolling down, the blue scars of the miner
–Lyrics from the “Blue Scars of the Miner,” The Freakons, 2022.
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Please share these freely available articles with your colleagues and students.
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Bob Rossi is a long-time member of the Slovenska Narodna Podporna Jednota, (SNPJ) who has interviewed and corresponded with dozens of SNPJ members in writing a history of the 1920s coalfield culture and union battles. This post is derived from a presentation he gave to SNPJ Lodge #371 in Cle Elum, Washington in September.
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Since the 1980s, Bob Rossi has been working on a social history of Colorado coal mining communities and an account of the 1927–28 Colorado mine workers’ strike. A part of this work has entailed documenting the lives of Syrian and Lebanese families in the Colorado coalfields.
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Betrayal: When the Government Took Over the Teamsters Union, a recent (2019) documentary by George Bogdanich, asks critical questions about the decades long oversight of the Teamsters by the federal government. The documentary argues that the 1989 consent decree which put in place the Independent Review Board (IRB) until 2020 was a dramatic case of federal overreach, gutted strong locals, violated free speech and was a self-interested and self-perpetuating power and money machine for the law firms hired to run the board.
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Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird uses the events around John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry to weave a fictional tale incorporating some basic insights and arguments about the nature of race in America. It did its most impressive work in presenting the wide spectrum of diverse African American responses to slavery and, in the process, offering a better sense of their humanity.
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Mark Lause looks at the 1793 yellow fever pandemic in Philadelphia from a working class history perspective, and finds it informs us today.
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One of my favorite quotes from Mother Jones is “Sit Down and Read. Educate Yourself for the Coming Conflicts.” While she had a reputation as an agitator, much of her organizing stamina came from the soul-nourishing books she returned to again and again.
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Last week the Coronavirus forced Disney to announce that its American parks are now closed indefinitely, resulting in the longest interruptions of any kind since they opened in 1955 (Disneyland) and 1965 (Walt Disney World). Disney has been on my mind because I made my first ever visit to Walt Disney World in Orlando on January 25th of this year, just as the first COVID 19 cases were being identified in the US.
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