Kennedy, who works at an underground mine in Colorado, noted that "every month or so, there is some new development that socialist miners are a part of, as working people resist and fight back against the devastating conditions imposed by the employers. These struggles are going to continue."

Members of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists employed at mines in the western coalfields; the southern Appalachian region in Alabama; the northeast Pennsylvania anthracite region; and the southwestern Pennsylvania bituminous underground mines participated in the meeting. They are either members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) or work at nonunion mines where they seek to build the union.

This geographic spread, Kennedy said, is a result of the communist movement reaching out to and becoming part of the working-class resistance. It means the movement "is there when vanguard workers go into action and start looking for answers to what's happening in the world," she said.

Kennedy reported that the work of the SWP branches and YS chapters in the coalfields helps show the opportunities before the movement today. "What the party does will be noticed by the fighters who will be attracted to the party. They will begin to see that we are not only effective co-fighters, but have a program and strategy for the entire labor movement--one that points to the need for a revolutionary struggle to take power out of the hands of the capitalists and replace it with a government of workers and farmers."

Among working people involved in these struggles today are many who are open to discussing revolutionary perspectives, in part because their actions already point in such a direction. "This underscores the importance of our timely response to these unfolding battles and of introducing the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, Pathfinder books, and New International as widely as possible," she said.

The fights discussed at the meeting included a range of actions demanding that the federal government provide benefits to coal miners who have black lung disease, along with their spouses and widows. Socialist workers at the meeting have been building support for the widows' walk from Charleston, West Virginia, to Washington, D.C., spearheaded by two women who have been involved in this struggle for many years.  
 
Fight for black lung benefits
At the meeting, miners from Pennsylvania reported on their progress in building the April 1 rally in Uniontown to defend black lung benefits. They are talking up the walk in their union local and collaborating with co-workers to publicize the action. United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) locals in the area have voted to send funds to the march. Socialist workers at a garment shop in the area have also helped spread news of the action, including in their Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) local. Through sales of the Militant on the job, at portals and plant gates, and in the coalfield communities, socialist workers have broadened their knowledge of how the roots of this struggle extend into the battles by coal miners over the decades.

Frank Forrestal, a miner from Pennsylvania, explained that the widows' walk helps supporters of the fight explain the offensive by the coal bosses and "the conditions that are fueling the social movement." Widows and disabled workers have always been a part of the struggles of mine workers in the coalfields, he said, a fact that is registered in the name of the organization that was forged--the Black Lung and Disabled Workers' Association.

Kennedy reported that socialist miners in western Colorado helped build a Militant Labor Forum in Craig, Colorado, that discussed the widows' walk. The forum was widely publicized, including in an article in the Craig and Steamboat Springs newspaper. "It opened up discussion at work, where co-workers had read the article and asked questions about the forum," she said. A retired miner who wanted to bring information to his retirees' local meeting came into the bookstore seeking information on the widows' walk and the recent attacks on the Coal Act.

Jason Alessio, a member of UMWA Local 1984, reported on efforts he had undertaken with a co-worker to build the widows' walk. They had organized to get publicity out to their fellow miners through the union local and had also discussed how to build the walk more widely in the western coalfields.

The forum on the widows' walk was among the first events in the newly opened Pathfinder book store in Craig, Kennedy reported. The bookstore is part of expanding efforts to get revolutionary and communist literature into the hands of working people in the region. At a forum on Argentina's social and economic crisis, a former UMWA member and worker at a nearby mine--closed by the owners--asked if "similar things could happen here, and what we could do about it."  
 
Responding to world events
Forrestal said that with the exhaustion of the war momentum built up by the U.S. rulers in the months following September 11, responsiveness is growing among coal miners and other working people in coal mining regions to what socialists have to say about world events. He pointed to the resistance of the Palestinian people against the onslaught of the Israeli regime, and Washington's frame-up and imprisonment of five Cuban revolutionaries, as two examples of questions that can be brought to co-fighters. Two of the Cuban patriots, he noted, are being held in prisons in Colorado and Pennsylvania, both coalfield states.

Other participants in the meeting noted the openings for broader political discussions with co-workers. Alessio reported how a discussion with one person about the widows' walk turned into a 45-minute exchange on questions like the U.S. assault on Afghanistan and how to strengthen the UMWA. Betsy Farley, a surface miner from the anthracite region in Pennsylvania, reported on discussions she had with co-workers. After discussing the U.S. war in Afghanistan, one asked, "Who are they still trying to kill over there?" Another bought a Militant after a discussion on the Iranian revolution and Bush's belligerent remarks about that country, which he named, along with Iraq and north Korea, as a member of an "axis of evil."

Farley described progress in establishing an SWP organizing committee in the anthracite coal mining region of eastern Pennsylvania. The committee was set up following a strike by workers at the Jeddo mine. Socialist workers are also employed at several garment plants in the area, where there is a history of union struggle. "The entire area is informed and impacted by the history of mining and miners' battles," Fineas said. The organizing committee has decided to open a bookstore as a next step in its party-building work.

Brian Taylor, a UMWA underground coal miner in Alabama, recently took part in an international team of communist workers who represented Pathfinder at the Havana book fair in February. After learning that he had visited Cuba, one co-worker flashed a big smile and said, "Cuba? Socialism? Some people get nervous about that. But Cuba is a place where it's better for workers. That's why the U.S. doesn't like Cuba--they don't like the example."

Taylor reported important progress in building a fraction of coal miners in the Alabama coalfields and in establishing a workers district branch in Birmingham. A bookstore was recently opened in the area, which is directly connected to the mines through the many Black miners who live there.

The meeting discussed the ongoing fight around safety in the Alabama coalfields in the wake of the explosion that took the lives of 13 miners at the Jim Walters no. 5 mine last September. Clay Dennison, who works in a mine in the area, reported that the bosses are preparing the mine to restart production and are hiring new miners. Widows of the workers who were killed in the devastating blasts are protesting the memorial fund allocations, he said. Some have filed lawsuits around the deaths, and one is challenging the company for violations of mine safety procedures.

In her report Kennedy said that "as we participate in struggles, we find ourselves working on an equal basis with co-fighters who act like communists but don't yet see themselves that way." This opens up the opportunity for these determined workers to draw broader conclusions about the role of the bosses' government around the world. That is why socialists workers need to place a premium, she said, on getting the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, and Pathfinder books into their hands on the job and through mine portal and plant-gate sales, street tables and door-to-door canvassing; building a weekly Militant Labor Forum series; and bringing campaigns such as the fight for workers' rights in the case of Michael Italie, the defense of the five Cuban revolutionaries framed up by Washington, and condemnation of the brutal treatment by the U.S. government of prisoners it is holding at its naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Jack Parker, a coal miner from the western coalfields, said, "being a little bit bolder is at the heart of what we need to take out of this meeting. The results will be positive." A Militant sales team that helped build the widows' walk forum in Colorado had sold 20 papers at portals in the area in the course of a few days, he said. At the Deserado mine the team put up signs opposing the attacks on the Coal Act and supporting the widows' walk. After driving past the team some miners backed up to find out more information or to buy a paper.

After discussing the upcoming drive to increase the long-term readership of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, the socialist workers in the mining industry voted to sell 15 new Militant subscriptions to coal miners, 2 PM subscriptions, and 10 copies of Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by Jack Barnes. They also took a goal of selling 10 copies of From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution by Víctor Dreke.

Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, several participants pointed out, is a central part of the campaign. In its description of the Cuban Revolution and the evolution of U.S. politics, the book lays out for working people the possibility and necessity of workers and farmers joining together in a common revolutionary struggle in the heart of the U.S. imperialist empire.

The socialists plan to concentrate on selling these periodicals and books in the mines where they work in order to maximize the potential for follow-up and recruitment.
 
 
Related article:
Black lung benefits walk gains support  
 
 
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