The March on Blair Mountain - A Must Read!

ATTENTION ACTIVISTS!!

We are going to reprint this blog in it's entirety from the Huffington Post blog by Robert Kennedy, Jr.

It's SUPER CRITICAL!!

This week an important protest is taking place in the coalfields of West Virginia. The March on Blair Mountain began on Monday as several hundred people embarked on a five-day journey retracing the steps of over 10,000 miners who 90 years ago staged the largest armed insurrection after the American Civil War. Today's march is a protest against both the attack of the union movement in America and the demolition of the Appalachian mountains.

For over 50 years, American unions have served to counterbalance the ascendancy of unsheathed corporate power that threatens now to overwhelm American Democracy. In the past year, the union movement's final redoubt -- the public service unions -- have been vilified and emasculated in traditional union states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa.

Now one of the biggest union busters in American history, Massey Energy, is launching a final assault on the icon of America's union movement, Blair Mountain.

Blair Mountain's storied history dates back to West Virginia in the 1920s, when the entire state was a company town. Big Coal dominated every aspect of economic life. The industry owned the shops, the homes, of course the mines -- and made sure there was virtually no other source of employment in the state. Working conditions were horrendous: men and their sons worked 12 to 16 grueling hours in dark, dangerous mines dying from a notorious plague of subsurface explosions, cave-ins and black lung.

The companies used local sheriffs to enforce their system of feudal serfdom. When a miner was injured and his family needed to be evicted from their home, the sheriff did the dirty deed. When union organizers appeared, the sheriff arrested, jailed, and routinely beat them, before escorting them to the county line. One sheriff refused to tow the company line: Sid Hatfield, of Hatfield and McCoy lore.

Not only did Hatfield refuse to do the industry's bidding, but he jailed mine operators for mistreating their workers. In the infamous Matewan gun battle, Hatfield helped kill seven mine company private investigators who had evicted union families from their homes.

Hatfield was never convicted for the Matewan shootings, but the mine operators took their revenge and on August 1, 1921 when industry thugs executed Hatfield in broad daylight on the McDowell county court-house steps.

Hatfield's assassination triggered one of the biggest labor demonstrations in American history. Ten thousand miners from the coalfields of Kentucky and West Virginia marched for six days, converging on Blair Mountain to confront their industry bosses. They were met by King Coal's powerful army of thugs and mowed down by Gatling guns.

President Warren Harding, a so-called "friend of coal," like most of the leading politicians of the Gilded Age, authorized the U.S. army to drop bombs and poison gas on the marching miners -- the only time in American History when our military deliberately bombed U.S. citizens. These military measures broke the demonstration but outraged the public, and gave vital traction to the United Mine Workers and the American labor movement.

Over the next 60 years unions became the critical counterweight to corporate power and the principal platform for the growth of the American middle class, which gave our Democracy its wealth, prosperity, and sense of justice as a core value.

Now, as the union movement finds itself battered, beleaguered, and under assault by a legion of corporate toadies in state governor's office from every director to chamber of commerce. Tea Party, talk radio, Fox News and the tsunami of corporate money released by the Citizens United case, Massey Energy has recently announced that it intends to blow up Blair Mountain, the Gettysburg of America's union-based Democracy, to mine it for coal.

For the first time in decades, environmentalists including the NRDC, Sierra Club, Waterkeeper Alliance and local groups have declared common cause with unions in staging a six-day march to retrace the steps of the 1921 Blair Mountain miners. The march convenes Saturday morning June 11 with a final climb up Blair Mountain. Marchers hope to save this historic mountain from Massey by securing its status as a historic landmark.

West Virginia is today's epicenter of one of America's greatest civil disobedience movements. More than 200 people have been arrested protesting mountaintop removal coal mining in the past 18 months. The protesters include college students and local West Virginia marines, former miners, housewives, and an 82-year-old grandmother who was arrested in her wheelchair. They are all calling for an end to mountaintop removal, the extreme form of coal mining that has flattened 500 mountains in Appalachia, illegally buried 2,000 miles of streams, destroyed one million acres of forest, and devastated numerous communities, lives, and towns in the region.

Union busting corporations have commoditized not just the workforce, but the historic landscapes of West Virginia, using great machines and dynamite to eliminate mining jobs. While production has more than doubled in 10 years, industry employment is one-tenth of it what was when my father warned me about strip mining as a 14-year-old boy.

It is time for Americans to march in the footsteps of our union ancestors of 90 years ago to protect our jobs, and save our national patriarchy, the purple mountains majesty, the individual rights and community based values that make our country of the envy of free people.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears in the documentary The Last Mountain (www.thelastmountainmovie.com), currently playing in theaters.

The film reveals the devastating effects of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia and features the dedicated activists who are fighting to make sure all Americans have access to clean air and water.

So what can we do?

CALL YOUR SENATORS, CALL THE WHITE HOUSE, CALL ALL LAWMAKERS and tell them: Blair Mountain, W. VA MUST BE PROTECTED AS AN HISTORIC LANDMARK!

NATIONAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL

FIND YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS

The Triangle Factory Fire

100 years ago today, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory caught fire, killing over 140 young women. Most of the victims were recent immigrant Jewish and Italian women aged sixteen to twenty-three. It is one of the America's landmark disasters. And we should remember those who died.

It happened in New York's famed garment district, which in those days employed women and girls as young as 10 years old...or even younger...for 9 to 12 hour, 6 day shifts.

"On Saturday, March 25, 1911, at 4:45 p.m., near quitting time, a fire broke out on the Triangle Waist Company building's eighth and ninth floors. Factory foremen had locked the exit doors to keep union organizers out and keep workers from taking breaks and stealing scraps of fabric. Other doors only opened inward and were blocked by the stampede of workers struggling to escape. The ladders of the city's fire engines could not reach high enough to save the employees.

As a result, workers burned or jumped to their deaths.

On April 6, 30,000 New Yorkers marched -- and hundreds of thousands more lined the march's route -- to memorialize the fire's victims."

From WIKI
Louis Waldman, later a New York Socialist state assemblyman, described the scene years later:

"A few blocks away, the Asch Building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street was ablaze. When we arrived at the scene, the police had thrown up a cordon around the area and the firemen were helplessly fighting the blaze. The eighth, ninth, and tenth stories of the building were now an enormous roaring cornice of flames.

Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies.

The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the police lines."

It was outrageous and dangerous conditions that led to these tragic deaths. The overworked girls were kept in ridiculously cramped spaces and in those days there was no OSHA to secure better and safer environments.

New Yorkers and indeed all of America were saddened and horrified by what happened. Those girls did not die in vain though because as a result of that tragedy, people of all walks rallied for change in workplaces everywhere.

"The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers. As a result of the fire, the American Society of Safety Engineers was founded in New York City on October 14, 1911."

CNN Article

HuffPost Blog on whether conditions are any safer.

Rabbi Levine's Blog on Remembering the Fire

GREAT article on the history and lessons learned from the fire.

Buy American

This is from the great blog: Foodie Scoop

This has been on everyone's minds lately.
ABC Nightly News has been doing an ongoing story: Made in America

BUY AMERICAN !!!

Check the Can or Box

I received this email from a friend. It made perfect sense to me so, I am passing on this information.

Check the can or box to be sure the item you are buying is from America and, not China.

Are we Americans as dumb as we appear or is it that we just do not think? The Chinese, knowingly and intentionally, export inferior and even toxic products and dangerous toys and goods to be sold in American markets.

Yet 70% of Americans believe that the trading privileges afforded to the Chinese should be suspended.

Well, duh.. Why do you need the government to suspend trading privileges?

SIMPLY DO IT YOURSELF, AMERICA !!

Simply look on the bottom of every product you buy, and if it says 'Made in China ' or 'PRC' (and that now includes Hong Kong ), simply choose another product, or none at all. You will be amazed at how dependent you are on Chinese products, and you will be equally amazed at what you can do without.

Who needs plastic eggs to celebrate Easter? If you must have eggs, use real ones and benefit some American farmer. Easter is just an example. The point is do not wait for the government to act. Just go ahead and assume control on your own.

THINK ABOUT THIS: If 200 million Americans refuse to buy just $20 each of Chinese goods, that's a billion dollar trade imbalance resolved in our favor... Fast!!

The downside? Some American businesses will feel a temporary pinch from having foreign stockpiles of inventory. Wahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

The solution? Let's give them fair warning and send our own message. Most of the people who have been reading about this matter are planning on implementing this on March 4th and continue it until April 4th That is only one month of trading losses, but it will hit the Chinese for 1/12th of the total, or 8% of their American exports. Then they will at least have to ask themselves if the benefits of their arrogance and lawlessness were worth it.

Remember March 4th to April 4th

START NOW!! (Even though this has reached some of us past the start date.)

Send this to everybody you know. Let's show them that we are Americans and NOBODY can take us for granted.

If we can't live without cheap Chinese goods for one month out of our lives, WE DESERVE WHAT WE GET!

And, continue the boycott after April 4th because we don't need toxic and, polluted items on our shelves.

Pass it on, America

HERE IS A LINK TO AMERICAN MADE PRODUCTS:
Resource Guide

The Dark Side of Hershey Chocolate Co.

Milton Hershey (1857–1945), was a Pennsylvania farm boy with a fourth grade education who went on to build a vast empire. After creating and selling (at a huge profit) his own caramel candy factory, using a caramel recipe he obtained while traveling, Milton went on to invent his own milk chocolate recipe/formula. His is a success story of the utmost caliber. He created a chocolate product that is an American icon and we think he should be honored as a national BONAFIDE HERO and Legend.

What made Milton great though, was the fact that he was a philanthropist of the highest order and proved it through the commitment to fund education of the area's children. He and his wife, never having been able to conceive children of their own, donated and built a school (It still owns the stock for the entire Hershey Chocolate Company and Theme Park!) and a charitable foundation to help township residents.

This guy was solid gold. So what's the dark side?

Well, in the many, many years since his death, the Hershey Company has succumbed to modern business practices. Meaning, that the cocoa itself is outsourced to "improved supply-chain efficiencies." Mainly, the source of the Hershey cocoa now is West Africa and the famed Ivory Coast. A romantic sounding name for a fucking hell-hole where children by the hundreds of thousands are sold into slavery and are beaten, whipped and forced into hard labor on cocoa farms every single day. Children whose bodies are covered in scars and bent crooked from all the physical labor. Half-starved children who will never run in sunshiny grass fields enjoying a piece of chocolate candy.

The CEO of Hershey takes in an annual salary of over $8 million. Just salary, Not bonuses, incentives, stock options and what-have-you. The children on the cocoa farms get nothing. The parents that sold them there probably got a one time only pathetic stipend for the sale of their child.

In fact, all of this is very well known and documented. Hershey Company refuses to comment or change practices, other than issue a pathetic corporate doctrine entitled "Corporate Social Responsibility Report." Gee, wow. We're impressed. You paid spin doctors to write up some bullshitty corporate spiel while children are dying on your farms the entire time and currently continue to do so.

Other companies HAVE indeed changed including Cadbury's who was the first chocolatier to make their products "Fair Trade Certified."

We think Milton would be flipping around in his grave if he knew the good name he spent his lifetime building would be used to denigrate, use and abuse children. The very thing he always wanted.

We will find Hershey's chocolate hard to swallow after this.

Full article at The Huffington Post

READ MORE about Milton Hershey's incredible life