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Workers, youth, eco-activists unite to save Blair Mountain

Published Jun 15, 2011 8:51 PM

On June 11 a multinational crowd of about 1,200 workers, students and environmental activists held a rally and march in Logan County, W. Va., to commemorate the largest armed conflict in U.S. labor history, the 1921 Battle at Blair Mountain. The rally and march wrapped up a week-long, 50-mile march. According to organizers, roughly 600 people marched throughout the week, while an additional 600 people showed up for Saturday events. A range of groups endorsed the march and rally, including Appalachia Rising, Sierra Club, Industrial Workers of the World, United Electrical Workers Local 170, and United Mine Workers Local 1440.

In late August 1921, miners were fed up with the miserable conditions in the mines, as well as with the violent harassment from the criminal coal companies and their hired goons, better known in miners’ terms as “gun thugs.” So they organized a march to liberate the coal fields throughout southern West Virginia. To repel the gun thugs, the miners marched with their own guns.

To identify themselves as pro-union, the marching miners wore red bandannas around their necks. When the miners reached Logan County, they were confronted by a vehemently anti-union and violently pro-company sheriff named Don Chafin. Chafin ordered his deputies to wear white scarves to distinguish themselves as the armed enemy of the miners.

A gunfight broke out that lasted five days. During that time, Chafin hired private planes to drop homemade bombs on the miners. In the midst of the battle, the federal government intervened. Many, if not most, of the miners were World War I veterans and refused to shoot at U.S. troops the way they did the company thugs and even the sheriff’s deputies. As a result, the miners surrendered; ultimately their fight ended in defeat.

Regardless of how the Battle of Blair Mountain ended, it is an important part of workers’ history that the U.S. bourgeoisie has always tried to hide. It is an uprising hardly ever mentioned in history books or textbooks.

Today, much of the land where the battle took place is privately owned by two, predominantly non-union coal companies, Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources.The latter recently bought Massey Energy, the murderous outfit responsible for the Upper Big Branch disaster in 2010. The two coal companies want to turn Blair Mountain into a mountain-top removal site. MTR is a procedure used to extract coal that is just as ecologically devastating as hydraulic fracturing. “Fracking” is currently being conducted by Big Oil in New York, Pennsylvania and now northern West Virginia.

The week-long march and rally united labor and eco-activists around one goal: to preserve Blair Mountain as a historical landmark, not to be blown to bits by MTR.

Ray Greenwood, UE Local 170, Department of Health and Human Resources chapter president, stated, “Ninety years after the Battle of Blair Mountain, we need to honor the sacrifices of the miners who fought for their rights then as we fight for our rights today, especially for the right to collectively bargain. We need to carry on their militant tradition if we want our class to win.”