The team distributed a July 28 statement released by Tony Lane, the party’s candidate for governor, in which he puts the responsibility of the disaster on the unrelenting drive for profits by the coal bosses (see the August 19 Militant). Team members also introduced miners and other workers to the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial. Four copies of the Militant were sold at the Maple Creek portal and the 84 Mine, and another half dozen going door-to-door.

At the 84 Mine portal one miner said they had faced a similar flood there because they had worked a nine-foot seam. The water only came up chest high and they were able to get everyone out.

A woman truck driver in Boswell angered by the disaster stated, "Someone should pay" for what happened to the miners.

A former garment worker in Jenner expressed how glad she was that all nine of the miners got out alive. Referring to Pennsylvania governor Mark Schweiker, she said, "Who is [he] anyway? He comes down here and everything is ‘I, I, we, we,’ but he didn’t do anything. He wasn’t drilling the hole or working to get them out." After the bosses closed the last garment shop in the area down, she found a job at the local hospital.

A retired strip-mine worker from Gray was pleased with the fact that Schweiker had spent so much time at the site. But he also thought working people needed someone like himself to run for governor. The miner said he had been turned down for black lung benefits because the mine where he worked was outdoors and aboveground--even though the coal dust got so thick that it interfered with the operation of the diesel machines.

"At the hearings," he said, "the company brings a lawyer from Pittsburgh. All he does is squash down on us. I never had a chance."

The team also met a miner’s widow in Gray who had a lot to say about the coal companies. Her husband, father and brothers had all been miners, and all died from black lung disease. Her son was disabled in the mines about nine years ago. "You can’t tell me anything about the coal companies," she said, adding that the family has waged a fight to get continuing medical care for her son since he got injured.

Even though they received a money settlement, the company resists paying for his pain medication. "When the company put their people in the road down from his house to photograph my son," she said, "local people ran them off."
 

At the Jim Walter No. 5 mine, where 13 miners were killed last October following an explosion, a miner stopped his car and asked "is that the Militant?" as he approached with his $1.50 ready to buy a copy. Another miner bought the paper because he was interested in the article opposing the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Two other miners purchased a copy of the socialist newsweekly. Many who stopped told team members that conditions have not gotten much better since the explosion. Another team sold three papers at the Jim Walter No. 7 mine.

While selling outside a local grocery store at the nearby coal mining town of Brookwood, the team met a woman whose relatives had been killed in the explosion at the Jim Walter mine. She said families of those killed have filed 10 lawsuits against the coal bosses at Jim Walter.

The team also reached out to students in the area. At the UAB campus students purchased eight copies of the Militant and one pamphlet. A student who was familiar with titles published by Pathfinder stopped by to take a look at the literature table on her way to her class on the civil rights movement. An hour later she came back to tell the team that she had recommended to her class that they stop by and check out the books and told students the location of the local Pathfinder bookstore.

Chris Remple is a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees Local 622 at Flushing Shirt in Jefferson, Pennsylvania.  
 
 
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