The action will be launched with a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, March 15, and will continue for a month, culminating in a protest in Washington. These fighting women will hold rallies in Fairmont and Morgantown, West Virginia, and in other towns along the route.

There are many ways that supporters of this struggle can join in the initiative. They can encourage union locals and co-workers to join a leg of the march or to go to the rally in Washington. Workers can help organize rallies and get-togethers along the way to help spread knowledge of the fight in local areas. Organizing press coverage and other support activities are other ways to solidarize with the action by the widows.

After years of militant struggle, including a strike wave in the eastern coalfields, the government was forced in 1969 to pass legislation providing medical care for miners who officials deemed sick enough to receive it. This entitlement--which miners and their families consider a basic right--has been largely gutted over the last two decades. At the same time black lung remains the number one killer of miners.

As with other sections of the working class, the wealthy rulers are attempting to place more economic and social responsibilities onto miners' families, letting the bosses off the hook. Like the steel barons, who are attempting to dump their responsibility for steelworkers' pensions, the mine bosses wouldn't think for a minute about the lives of coal miners once their "productive" life is over. It has only been through class battles that the employers have been forced to come up with a modicum of health and pension benefits.

The bipartisan drive to make further inroads into the social wage--denying millions more working people measly welfare benefits and further eroding Social Security as a guaranteed federal government entitlement for all--is of a piece with the black lung benefit program. The logic of the "workfare" supported by both the Democrats and Republicans is the workhouse. Those who cannot work are turned out to rely on charity.

The obstacle in the way of the big-business parties achieving such a dream is the working class itself, whose values and interests are different from those of the capitalists. Workers are motivated by class solidarity, an interest in seeing that no life is devalued or unnecessarily cut short, and the conviction that the social wealth created by the working class should be used to provide cradle-to-grave protection and benefits for anyone who is thrown out of work, struck with illness, injured on the job, or has reached retirement age.

The widows' month-long campaign is one strike back against the attempts by the government to gut programs that benefit working people. Sponsorship by the National Black Lung Association, United Mineworkers of America, and Ohio Valley Environmental Coalitions helps to broaden the opportunities to build support for the march across the country.  
 
 
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