KASAMA

ESSAYS FOR
DISCUSSION
Inside the Coal Miners Great Gas Protest of 1974
Tis and other Kasama pamphlets are downloadable at
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/pamphlets/
Iublished July, 2009
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States Licence.
Feel free to reprint, distribute or quote this with attribution.
Kasama
is a communist project that seeks to reconceive and
regroup for a profound revolutionary transformation of society.
website: kasamaproject.org
email: kasamasiteyahoo.com
80020A_r5 07.09
Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Iart 1: No Gas: No Coal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Speaking Bitterness in the Courthouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Meeting at the Velch Bypass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Roving Iickets and Vildcats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Te Unexpected Color of Iickets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Iart 2: Te First Iicket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Iome, Briey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
A Reckless Morning in Eureka Ioller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Iart 3: Injunctions and State Iolice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Te Fight Local by Local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Imagining Communist Vork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
A Flyer: Controversy Inside and Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Te Argument Against Explanations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Fishing at Midnight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Iart 4: Tings Start to Crack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Bucket or Suitcase: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Keystones Outlaw Iistory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
A Darkly Revealing Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Iart 5: Bullets of Iidden Gunmen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Vaiting in Virginia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Ambush from Company Iroperty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Let Iim Die . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Springing the Jailhouse Doors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Afterward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4
Introduction
Coal miners in Appalachia waged a erce ten-year
movement of illegal walkouts called wildcat strikes,
starting in the late 1960s. Tens of thousands of miners
repeatedly confronted the federal and state authorities,
the courts, the police, the mine owners, the media, and
their own top union ocials. Most strikes involved in-
dividual mines and local grievancesand lasted a day
or two. But especially after 1974, some strikes started
to spread from mine to mine, county to county, state to
statechallenging government policies and court re-
pression. Te hard-fought strikes lasted for weeks. Te
leadership of these strikes was entirely at the grass-
roots, among the working miners and sometimes the
local elected leaders at their mines.
Tis was one of greatest upsurges of working class
struggle in modern U.S. history. And yet it is virtually
unknown.
1

And there is a second story here that is also un-
known: A small cadre of Maoist activists worked
within that wildcat strike movement to promote revo-
lutionary politics among the coal miners. Radical activ-
ists had been sent to the coalelds by the Revolution-
ary Union (RU) to get jobs in the mines and connect
with the militant networks among the workersboth
to help organize a distinct self-conscious pole of radical
1. Fire in the Hole: Miners and Managers in the American
Coal Industry, Curtis Seltzer, University Iress of Kentucky
p. 136-138
Vildcat strikes dened the three years following the
1974 contract, logging more than 5.6 million lost workdays, or
almost 6 percent of all workdays in this period.Te Revolu-
tionary Communist party, through its Miners Right to Strike
Committee, played an important role in shaping several wild-
cats between 1974 and 1976.
struggle among miners, and to connect them to larger
plans for a socialist revolution in the U.S.
Iistories of the coal mines or 1960s radicalism
barely mention that strike wave and the RUs Miners
Right to Strike Committee, if at all. If you want a sense
of the power of this wildcat strike movement, you still
have to go burrow among the records of the federal
courts and the coal operators themselves. Or you can
leaf through the yellowing archives of the local news-
paperswhere the strikes were denounced in livid
redbaiting tones.
Te Bituminous Coal Operators Association
(BCOA) reported that miners launched an average of
1,500 wildcats in each year from 1971 to 1974. Ten
the rate doubled for 1975-76 to more than 3,000
strikes per year.
2

Files for federal restraining orders of the Charles-
tons U.S. District Court note that 2 locals were re-
strained for striking in 1970. In 1971, it was 20. Ten:
1971, 20 ; 1972, 69; 1973, 127; 1974, 267; 1975, 295;
1976, 188.
3

Often during the 1970s, the nightly local news was
cut short, so that these federal court orders could be
announced over TVone after another threatening
specic mines and local ocials with prison if they did
not return to work.
Gina B. Fall and I were part of the revolutionary
communist organizing project among coal miners dur-
ing the 1970s. She was one of the writers and distribu-
tors for our local communist newspaper, the Coaleld
Worker, and a leader in the local Black Lung Associa-
tion. I worked in the mines from early 1973 until I was
red and blacklisted at the end of 1979. And during
that time I was one of the core activists of the Min-
ers Right to Strike Committeea communist-led or-
ganization of coal miners that helped lead the biggest
wildcats that broke out, in 1975 and 1976, challenging
injunctions and demanding the right to strike.
Tere is new interest these days in the work of
connecting revolutionary politics with working people.
2. Wildcat strikes in Bituminous Coal Mining by Jeanne M.
Brett and Stephen B. Goldberg, in Industrial and Labor Rela-
tions Review, July 1970, Cornell University. http://www.jstor.
org/pss/2522962.
3. Seltzer, p. 138
5
Tis essay explores one experience in service to that
discussion.
Tis is the story of the rst major strike that RU
comrades participated inshortly after we arrived in
the coalelds. Te strike erupted before we were widely
known as communists and atheists. Tese were days
when we were rst learning the lay of the land and rst
meeting the main players in the rank-and-le struggle.
In the raw experiences of this strike, new perceptions
collided constantly with our own preconceptions.
Mao 7edong talks about how perceptual knowl-
edge is the doorway to conception and insight. Ie
describes how practical experience accumulates and
makes leaps in our understanding possible.
4
Tose
leaps from experience to insight are ongoing, and all
around us, right now, are signs of new leaps demanding
to be made.
Tis essay will not sum up the full arc of our com-
munist work over the 1970s. Tat may come later. Tis
is a description of events and people for the much more
limited purpose of giving the reader a sense of the times
and those struggles.
Gina, my close partner and comrade through those
days, died not long ago, and so this report will not ben-
et from her sharp memory and insight. Tanks to
Judy, Mike and Khia Branch for help in writing this
piece. I welcome questions and criticism.
5
4. Mao 7edong, On Practice, marxists.org.
5. Abbreviations are given in the place of peoples names
for obvious reasons.
Iart 1: No Gas: No Coal.
I had to hitchhike down to the big mass meeting.
Like so many other people, I simply had run out of gas.
So I walked down the hill from our house to the main
road and stuck out my thumb.
Jack I. picked me up in his beat-up green pickup.
Jack was one of the safety committeeman at the Key-
stone #1 mine where I worked. Ie was a self-absorbed
and extremely talkative man and in his eyes I was just
a kidso he chattered on, as we drove down the Tug
Fork valley toward Velch. Iretending to listen made it
easier for me to hide my excitement. It was early spring,
and the steep hills were already lling the air with the
smell of new sprouts and pollen.
Tere were also rumors of a strike hanging heavy
in that air. And this was what we had come to southern
Vest Virginia forto connect with the wildcat strikes
of the coal miners, to become one with the people. I
had, by then, been in the mines a little over a year. After
I made it through my red hat probationary months
at the Itmann mine complex, our organization, the
Revolutionary Union, had sent Gina, me and our son
further south, into McDowell County along Vest Vir-
ginias southern border.
McDowell was one of the few places that had a
high percentage of Black coal minersin a band from
Northfork Ioller, down along the Tug Fork to Velch
and then up U.S. Steels Gary Ioller. Ve believed that
connecting with radically-inclined people in that Black
community was crucial for the political work we had
in mind.
6

6. Te Revolutionary Union had been founded in 1968 in
the San Francisco Bay Area, and mushroomed nationally after
the summer of 1970. It absorbed signicant forces emerging
6
Keystone #1 had, so far, been a bit of a disap-
pointment for me. It was a relatively large and long-
established mine, and the old atmosphere of company
town lingered strongly there. Keystones workforce had
a heavy percentage of older, Korean Var generation
men, and not as many of the unsettled and rebellious
Viet vets. It was about a third African-Americanas
were the immediately surrounding coal camps.
Te local union committees were almost all older
Black workers (except for Jack I.), and they seemed to
be on a friendly, almost familial, basis with local mine
management. Te younger workers there muttered
in frustration that the old sucks were never willing
to walk outno matter what the provocation. Some
quit, saying they wanted a mine where the workers had
more backbone.
Speaking Bitterness in the Courthouse
It was early March 1974, and a county-wide pro-
test meeting of miners had been called for the old stone
courthouse in the middle of Velch.
7
I dont know who opened the doors that Sunday,
because by the time we arrived there was already a large
crowd milling around in the main courtroom. And it
didnt take long for things to start. One by one, people
stood up to address the crowd.
Te U.S. was generally gripped by a gasoline short-
agebut here in southern Vest Virginia it had pro-
duced particularly sharp class conict. Te crisis was
triggered by an embargo launched by oil producing
countries in the Middle East. Nightly TV showed long
lines of cars snaking out of gas stations.
In Vest Virginia, the states governor, Arch Moore,
declared an arrogant policy of statewide gas rationing.
Ieople in Vest Virginia would only be allowed to buy
gas if their gas gauge showed a quarter tank or less. In
from the radicalization of SDS. Te RU changed its name in
1975 to the Revolutionary Communist Iarty. At its height it
probably included 1,200 to 2000 members or close supporters,
and declined steadily in the decades after the 1970s. A small
group still exists using that name. http://revcom.us
7. For history busthis is the same courthouse where
the miners hero, Two-Gun Sid Iateld, was lured into an am-
bush and assassinated by Baldwin-Felts gunthugs in 1921ig-
niting armed clashes of miners and company gun thugs that
culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain.
a very American way, people were furious at the idea
that some gas station attendant was being ordered by
the state to stick his head into everyones car. Govern-
ment agents entering your private property (your car:)
without your permission felt intolerableeven if they
were just local teenagers pumping gas.
And more: this quarter tank policy didnt work
for the many miners who drove the long narrow coun-
try roads to their jobs. Ieople were simply running out
of gas, unable to get to work or get home from work.
Iere in the courthouse tempers were high. Several
miners at the Maitland mine had been forced to spend
the night in the bathhouse. And that story was men-
tioned again and again.
Some grievances have a deep symbolic meaning.
For miners the memories are there, just under the sur-
face, of how they and their parents and grandparents
lived and died under the thumb of heartless coal op-
erators. Iow their lives and suering meant nothing,
literally nothing, to those who rule the world. Such ex-
periences shape you, and shape what is tolerable. Tey
left many miners with a sense that whatever you put up
with you would then live with.
Not so long ago, virtually all miners had lived
trapped in company towns in these valleysliving in
deep debt to the company stores, attending company
churches, and moving under the watchful eyes of com-
pany gun thugs. By the 1960s, most miners had moved
out of company housing, and had broken out of debt-
peonage. But, knowing the mercilessness of coal opera-
tors, people felt that without continuous struggle, the
lives of miners and their families could tumble into an
abyss of horrors.
At this meeting, it was mainly young men of my
generation running the show. Tese werent that older
generation with a hat-in-hand mentality and patri-
otic Korean Var buzzcuts. Tese were rednecks with
handlebar mustaches and hair over their collars, many
of them Vietnam vets. A row of them was reared back
with their boots propped up on the courtroom railing,
reeking of insolence. And when they stood to speak,
their blood ran hot.
8
8. It is an irony that many communist organizers, includ-
ing me, had cleaned up in order to go to the working class
7
Miners had been forced to sleep at the Maitland
minecurled up in the bathhouse: It was infuriating.
Vhat are we supposed to do: Move back into small
company towns gathered around the mines: Give up
the right to live and move as we choose: Let Arch
Moores agents stick their faces into our cars to decide
who gets gas and who doesnt:
Ieople grabbed onto the absurdity and injustice of
this: Iere we went underground every day, risking our
lives in the dust, the gas and the rock, to give the world
endless trainloads of coalthe energy that lights the
cities and makes that steel. And they couldnt even give
us each a tank of gas in return: Vere the company coal
trucks on short rations: Obviously not:
Several women addressed the courtroom urg-
ing the men to strike hard and represent everyone by
standing up to Governor Moore.
I wasnt yet known to anyonecertainly not yet
as the notorious communist I would soon become. I
dont remember my exact words, but when I spoke I
embraced the determination to force the government
back, spoke about the unbridgeable gulf between those
who own and those who labor, and brought up the im-
portance of supporting the rights of third world peo-
ples to control their resources, like oil.
Meanwhile, it had been clear from the rst mo-
ments where this meeting was going. A brother soon
blurted out: Ieres what I say: No gas: No coal: to
shouts of agreement.
Ten Young Iatter jumped up on a table. Ie was
from U.S. Steels Gary #10one of the smaller, newer
mines with a very young workforce. Jack I. leaned over
and whispered to me, Tose hot-heads never work up
there.
Iatter was a physically restless man, quick and
muscular, with a pompadour curl hanging over his
forehead. And he was shortjumping on that defense
table made sense.
Iatter addressed the suddenly-hushed room:
Ve all know whats needed. Ve meet at the by-
pass tonight, 9 oclock. Tese bastards will have injunc-
cutting our hair, toning down our stylesto match certain pre-
conceptions of working class culture, and then found out, on
arrival, that many of the more militant workers were growing
their own hair out and smoking lots of weed.
tions quickly if we strike. But this isnt a strike. It is a
protest. Ve just dont have enough gas to get to work.
And if one man cant get to worknone of us get to
work. Ie jumped down.
Men all around me were saying: At the bypass to-
night. I had no idea what that meant.
A couple shouted, No gas, no coal, at the news
reporters as we led out.
Te Great Gas Irotest of 1974 had started.
Meeting at the Velch Bypass
Velch sits where Gary Ioller feeds into the Tug
Fork River. You can drive for hours in all directions,
over narrow two-lane mountain roads, and run across
mines scattered everywhere.
In its Vorld Var 2 heyday Velch had 100,000 in-
habitants. But later the national railroads went diesel,
and rapid mechanization of mining slashed the work-
force in half. By 1974, Velch felt more like a ghost
town. Tere were still mile-long trains of coal pouring
out of the area. Velch was still the county seat and with
10,000 people it was still the biggest town around. But
its hospital, movie theater, and small shopping district
were weather-beaten, and surrounded by boarded win-
dows.
Above the southern edge of Velch, cut halfway up
the mountain, runs a bypass road. It was built so U.S.
Steel trucks could rumble out of Blueeld and turn
up Gary Ioller without stopping for lights or driving
through Velchs small streets. It is a long road without
any turnos, ideal you want to see anyone coming from
afar.
My heart was pounding as I drove up along the
bypass that dark Sunday night. I was alone, and didnt
know what to expect. Tere is one sharp curve in the
road with an especially broad shoulder. And there were
a hundred fty men therein a meeting lit by head-
lights.
Men stood in small groups talking. A few passed
around bottles. Ieople here have known each other all
their lives, and now, at work, these men carried their
lives in each others hands every day.
A few words were said from the back of a pickup
truck about Vhy we are here. But we all knew of
8
course. Ten dierent brief announcements from the
crowd: Im from U.S. Steel #50, our boys are meeting
in Iineville and will take out Vyoming County. And
so on.
It was clear who was in charge, though no one dis-
cussed it. No one introduced the ringleaders. Tere
were no votes. Tree locals right around Velch were
well known for their militancyCapels, Maitland and
the tiny Gary #10. A sizable crew had come from each
of those mines. Teir leaders conferred at the center of
things. Tey sat together in a car, and would wave over
a man they knew well. Ie leaned in the window, and
in whispers instructions were given about which mines
to picket. And he would take o with a small crew of
ve or six men.
9
Tere were dozens of mines to pull outand so
the crews were sent out strategically. In some cases we
just shut down a central cleaning plantwhich meant
that miners at a network of many small mines would
stop work, and hear about the strike.
Tere would simply be no work until our demands
were met. Te state rationing had to be withdrawn and
the gasoline had to ow. No gas? No coal.
Roving Iickets and Vildcats
As the strike erupted, we expected similar picket
movements to develop at the edges of our territoryto
spread the strike into new areas.
Under the national coal contracts, miners are re-
quired to work. Te union ocials at all levels are le-
gally obligated to prevent and suppress walkouts. In
other words, strikes and walkouts end up being illegal,
period. Coal companies could get restraining orders
demanding that miners return to work. Te cops could
be mobilized to enforce them. Refusing to comply
means that the workers and their leaders were subject
9. Each coal mine has its own local and its own union
committees and with a workforce of only 15 to 500 men per
mine, those representatives are all working miners. In the tur-
moil of these times, those local ocials were often forced out
when they didnt seem militant enough. Vhen some circle of
militants took over a mine local, it often led to wildcat strikes
as the workers took on the many accumulated injustices of the
company.
to punishment for contempt of courtnes, jail, and
rings.
After the long awful corrupt decade of the 1950s,
coal miners rediscovered their solidarity. It had some-
thing to do with the new upturn in coal production,
and it had to do with fresh bloodthe arrival of the
1960s and those Vietnam vets.
Vest Virginia sent more soldiers to Vietnam (per
capita) than almost any other state, and more of those
draftees came back AVOL, as deserters, than any
other state. Tey brought with them a rebelliousness
from that ugly war that didnt tolerate well the insults
of old-school bosses or the reckless swap of human life
for prot.
If someone was done wrong, he often only had to
pour out his water at the minea symbol that he was
going home. And one by one, the others would pour
out their water too. At least thats how it worked at the
more militant mines.
Illegal strikes of this kind, initiated by the miners
themselves, were called wildcats. And at some mines,
the grievances were so many and the solidarity so tight
that the mine struck oftensometimes weeklyfor
months and years on end.
At those militant mines, the coal companies were
soon able to quickly get court injunctions and restrain-
ing orders against walkouts. Tey threatened to bank-
rupt local treasuries with nes (so that the miners
would not be able to pay elected safety committeemen
for time away from work). Increasingly, they threat-
ened individual local ocials with contempt of court
and jail.
As these threats came down, the workers would go
stand in front of neighboring mines, calling them out
too. Tere had already been several area-wide strikes
spread in this way, starting with the walkout over the
Black Lung disease in 1969. By the mid-70s, huge
wildcats would shut down the whole industry, over and
over, in long weeks of intense conict.
Te backbone of larger strikes was roving pick-
etsteams of militants who stopped work at neigh-
boring mines. Sneaking in to scab, working when the
rest were out, was seen as the act of a coward and a
backstabber.
9
Tere was something straightforward and heart-
felt in how most miners viewed this: If someone asked
for help, you didnt say no. If someone set up a picket
line you didnt cross. If a scab-hearted few didnt under-
stand, well thats what beating and bullets were for.
As we walked out over the gas rationing, the work-
ers tried to dream up a way to skirt the legalities. Ve
were not striking, they said, we simply did not have
enough gas to get to work. Or, they said, this was not a
strike anyway, but a protest. And the hope was that by
packaging our work stoppage that way, we would make
it harder for the companies to get injunctions.
I thought that was unlikely, but no one was asking
me.
Tis picket meeting drew militants who knew they
were going into a dangerous spot. And looking over
things, you just have to say: Vest Virginia coal min-
ers are some roughneck boys. Tey were pretty fearless,
and a lot of them just liked to ght. Tey have accumu-
lated anger over a thousand slights and outrages they
have experienced at the hands of the coal operators.
And many of them just believe deeply in sticking to-
gether, backing each other upin a beer joint brawl, or
in a struggle between classes.
Tis is rural America where people come well
armed. Gina and I used to laugh a bit remembering
how, in the wake of the SDS breakup, many of the
radicals would debate, soberly, the important question
of when a revolutionary movement should initiate
armed struggle. Vell here, in Vest Virginia, everything
was armed.
10
Down here many of the workers simply had guns
with them all the timea pistol stuck in a pocket or a
glove box, a shotgun in a rack across the rear window.
Te strikes here were armed strikes, the meetings were
10. SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) was, one of
the major radical organizations of the 1960s. As the student
activists of SDS radicalized in the late 1960s, and as the organi-
zations core increasingly identied with Maoism and commu-
nism, they dissolved the loose organization after sharp factional
struggles and build several early communist organizations, of-
ten with the intention of taking their new politics to the work-
ing class. Some forces around SDS thought that the U.S. might
be moving into a revolutionary situation. One current argued
for immediately launching an armed struggle within the U.S.,
and soon broke away to wage a campaign of symbolic attacks
on icons of U.S. imperialism and war.
armed meetings, the picketing was armed picketing,
even the picnics were armed picnics.
Tis had a certain undeniable eect. In intense mo-
ments, people were often very careful of their words.
And the local police were very careful not to drive up
suddenly on miners picket linesbecause that was a
good way to die. (Te town cops had often known these
same boys all their lives, and everyone knew where you
lived.)
If someone wanted to shut us miners up, well, they
had to come in numbers and come loaded for bear.
Tere were lots of forcesbackward workers, com-
pany foremen, state police, authorities at all levels, even
FBI, who knowsthat wished us ill. But the crews we
sent out that night were ready. Tey knew each other
and the terrain, and they were quite formidable.
Te Unexpected Color of Iickets
I was surprised to see that the bypass meeting was
all white. Tis was not what I expected.
Iistory remembers that the miners union had
(from its beginnings in the late 1890s) always orga-
nized Black and white togetherlocals had not been
segregated like the rest of the union movement. I had
met several older African-American miners active as
leaders in the initial 1960s Black Lung movement. I
knew that Black retirees and widows had been active,
at least in some areas, during the 23-day 1969 Black
Lung strikethe rst wildcat strike to spread widely
across the coalelds.
But here on the Velch bypass, I didnt see any
Black workers at all, even though the county had sev-
eral large mines with a signicantly African-American
workforces.
Te revolutionary movement Gina and I came
out of had been marked deeply by the militancy and
consciousness of Black people. She and I had dropped
out of school and spend the last years working as white
supporters of the Black Ianther Iarty. Ve had helped
organize a collective that reached out to white work-
ing class youth with militant anti-racist politicsand
we had then joined the Revolutionary Union (RU)
which promised to carry out revolutionary prepara-
10
tions among working people on a serious, systematic
and nationally-organized basis.
Our small RU project gathering in Vest Virginia
assumed from the beginning that the militant core of
the wildcat strike movements would, naturally, attract
the most politically radical and conscious workers. Our
new communist movement had, at that time, embraced
a saying that Black workers take the leadmeaning
that we also assumed that those active workers would
include (above all) the younger Black workers.
So the fact that this rst bypass meeting was all-
white was the kind of surprise that rocked you back a
bit. It was the rst inkling we had that the most mili-
tantly active miners were not necessarily the same as
the most politically advanced miners. And it would
take quite a while to dispel some stubborn preconcep-
tions and assimilate the implications of what we were
seeing.
Iart 2: Te First Iicket
On the bypass that night, I didnt at rst notice
anyone I knew. It was a bit awkward coming alone, and
standing at the side looking around.
Ten, to my relief, I saw Larry, a white guy I knew
from Keystone. Ie was with the boys he grew up
with farther east, near the town of Blueeld in Mercer
County. I went out with his crew of friends that rst
night.
Te Mercer boys and I rode in a small convoy down
o the Velch bypass, east along the Tug Fork, past my
house, and on to where the Eureka Ioller opens up
toward the south.
Our little line of cars moved in the darkness, up
Eureka Ioller. And there, where the at bottom land
starts to climb and the valley narrows, a small dirt road
went up, o to the right, through the steep wooded
slope. It was the road that led to the Eckman mine.
Ve simply unloaded on the main road, right where
that dirt road turned o. From a nearby ditch, we gath-
ered handfuls of mud, carefully smeared our license
plates, and then just waited for the rst shift of the
week to turn up.
Te rst miners to arrive after the weekend, late on
Sunday night, are the pump-men and those union men
who inspect the mine faces for methane gas. And after
them, one by one, the carloads of miners arrive.
Our picket crew arrayed itself simply. Five of us
stood in the road, and one man approached each car,
and explained that the whole county was out, that we
were protesting the gas shortages and the Governors
quarter tank rule. And that as long as one man didnt
have enough gas, then none of us did, and we were all
staying at the house.
11
And many of the workers were openly supportive,
and certainly all of them turned around without ques-
tion. To those who said its about time, we explained
that pickets were meeting at the Velch bypass each
night, to send out teams of pickets as needed.
Irotected behind our line of parked cars, ve or six
of us stood as visible backup, just watching the whole
scene, ready for trouble.
After a couple hours, there were no more cars, and
the valley settled into the silence of a forest at night.
Ve piled into our cars and dispersed, after making ar-
rangements to meet again in the morning for the day
shift.
At the beginning of a strike you had to be there
at each shift, so all the workers knew what was going
onso you could look each of them in the eye.
Iome, Briey
I barely slept that night, lling in Gina on all the
details, and going over what I had said and done, and
getting her advice.
I have to admit that in the excitement of all this,
I really did not understand then all the ways that we
were impacted by the way work and struggle here were
centered among men.
Gina and I didnt just have an ideological commit-
ment to the equality of men and womenwe had
always been close partners in our previous years of
political work. And we worked within radical circles
that encouraged constantly digging at the habits and
assumptions of male chauvinism.
But here in the Vest Virginia coalelds, life was
strictly divided by sex roles. Only men worked in the
mines. Te women here sometimes found jobs in the
schools, the hospitals or stores. Really, most women
were conned to domestic chores and raising children
in small ingrown coal camps. Even at parties in peoples
homes, men and women would often separate o
each grouped in their own roomhaving very dier-
ent conversations, based on very dierent experiences.
In ways I would not see for a long time, this im-
pacted us communists too. Iere I wasin the middle
of all this exciting workworking in the mine every
day surrounded by both danger and companionship,
and now jumping with both feet into the picket move-
ment. Meanwhile, in ways completely out of character,
Gina was watching a great deal of this from the out-
side, often stuck in the house with a new kid.
She was, of course, alive and active as always
making new friends in the community where we lived,
seeking out the local Black Lung organization, and so
on. But as long as our organization saw the struggle of
the miners themselves as our center of gravity, the fe-
male comrades were often watching that work from the
outsideespecially during the waves of major strikes.
Te male supremacy of the surrounding society
impacted our own organizational dynamics (and even
our marriages) in unexpected and unintended ways.
And, it must be said, it aected the outlooks of male
communists who saw themselves doing the important
work at the center of the action.
In any case, after talking excitedly through the
night, Gina and I separated. I went out to picket that
day shift at Eckman. And she drove north to meet with
our organization, to bring them a report, and discuss
our eorts to help spread this strike in new areas.
A Reckless Morning in Eureka Ioller
Tat next morning, when I pulled up near the Eck-
man mine, there was no else one else there to picket.
Tat wouldnt surprise anyone; Im always early.
I just sat there in my car, looking up through dark
forest at the blinking lights of the Eckman mine. Te
sun slowly started to brush the trees highest on the
mountain. Te smell of damp meadow grass poured in
through my open windows. It was beautiful and calm-
ing.
Suddenly in the distance I saw headlights com-
ing up the bottomland from the main road. Te rst
car had arrived. Te other pickets, I thought. As the
car reached where I was parked, it suddenly turned o
up the dirt road, heading for the mine. Minutes later a
few more cars rolled up the valley, and also turned o,
climbing that dirt road toward the mine parking lot.
Immm, I thought. Tis is no good. Tey cant all
be foremen. If Eckmans union miners are already in
the parking lot by the time the other pickets arrived
how would all that get sorted out:
12
So, largely on impulse, I just decided to start the
picketing. I rolled out of my car and stood, alone, in the
middle of the hardtop road. I was thinking, assuming,
that the rest of my picket crew would arrive any mo-
ment.
And, within a few minutes, a pair of headlights
were heading my way. Te car rolled up with three guys
inside. Seeing me they cranked down their window. I
leaned in and repeated our short rap from the night be-
fore: Ve had met in Velch on Sunday, and the whole
country was out protesting the gas shortage. As long as
one miner didnt have gas, none of us had enough gas
to go to work.
Tey nodded, taking it all in, rolled up their win-
dow and made a u-turn. But instead of driving back
out the holler and going home, they pulled over about
a hundred yards away, turned o their lights and wait-
ed.
A second car drove up. Same thing. I explained
the protest was on, and there was no work today. Tey
made a u-turn, and pulled in alongside the rst car.
Te trac picked up, cars were coming rapidly, and
ve or six cars were soon lined up in front of me, as I
leaned into one window after another. Te sun was re-
ally coming up. Te fog was dispersing. And down at
that wide spot in the shoulder, there were now ten cars,
and a meeting of miners was happening. And I could
tell, by the way they were looking over my way, that
they were deciding what to do with me.
You have to look at it through their eyes: Tey had
not heard of any strike or protest. Tey were simply
coming to work on a Monday morning and a boy, who
none of them knew, barely old enough to shave, was
standing there in the road telling them to go home. You
could be red for missing work. Your paycheck would
come up short. Te local could be ned for striking.
And all they had was my word.
I started getting worried that some of them would
simply decide to drive on in to work. And because I
was determined to stand in their way, I could imagine
two or three dierent ways things could end badly.
Vhat to do:
I decided to change the plan. I hardened my face
a bit, and walked up to the next car. As the window
rolled down, I leaned in aggressively and barked Listen
here, motherfucker. Tis county is on strike. Teres no
work for you here. You can turn around quick and go
home, or you can join our picket meeting over here. Or,
you can try to scab and get whats coming.
I waved my hand vaguely at the dozen cars gath-
ered on the road shoulder. Tinking those men were
my backup, and hearing my tone, this brother in the car
just nodded sharply, rolled up his window and drove
straight down the holler for home. I went to the next
car and barked the same threat. Ie too turned around
smartly and left the scene. And the next four or ve cars
followed, all heading home without stopping to debate
or question.
I was 21 years old then, but had been a pretty hard-
core Maoist for a while. I knew Maos warning not to
blu or strike a pose to intimidate. I just assumed this
moment called for an exception.
After seeing that long line of cars start to go home,
the fteen or twenty men gathered by the side of the
road loaded up and headed home tooleaving me
much relieved and alone once again at the entrance to
Eckman. I never did nd out what happened to the
other pickets.
It was only my second time out, and it had almost
gone terribly wrong. I had been a bit nave and reck-
less.
At the same time, the incident had a positive side.
I was a complete outsider trying to be active within
an illegal movement that was built around tight small-
town friendships. Tis story of my one-man picketing
made the rounds. Tere was some good-natured teas-
ing, but also the beginnings of a certain acceptance
among the other pickets that would prove valuable as
things got a whole lot tougher.
13
Iart 3: Injunctions and State
Iolice
Over the rst days of that week, Monday, Tuesday,
Vednesday, the strike spread quickly. Te newspapers
soon reported that over 20,000 miners were out. Te
work stoppage pushed out of McDowell County into
the surrounding areas, until much of southern Vest
Virginia, the heart of the unionized coalelds, was af-
fected.
Each night we gathered at the Velch bypass, to
hear any rumors of mines or groups of scabs planning
to return to work. And each night, we would send out
squads of pickets to shut down the locals who would
not stay out on their own.
Te strike was, pretty obviously, a direct challenge
to the Governor and state government. Te walkouts
were in direct violation of the national coal contract.
Te states economy was at a standstill.
Te militancy of the miners even inspired other
protests against the gas rationing. For example, in the
tiny town of Var, deep in the maze of western Mc-
Dowell valleys, the mayor had (at gunpoint I heard)
hijacked a gasoline tanker truck passing through town,
and was Robin Iood-like handing out free gas to resi-
dents.
So faced with all that, the machinery of law and
repression started whirring and screeching. Te court
system started issuing injunctions against one union
local after another, demanding that they go back to
work, requiring them to show why they should not be
held in contempt of court, and threatening a series of
heavyhanded measures (including nes and possible
jail for local ocials). Every night you could turn on
the TV for local news, and suddenly there came a long
list of public service announcements announcing in-
junctions against one set of miner after another order-
ing them to return back to work at the next available
shift. Iickets were ocially assumed to be conducting
criminal activityin contempt of court orders.Te
press denounced the strike as illegal (which was true)
and said it was based on the raw threats from a small
fringe (which I dont believe was true).
Tere were heated debates within the state gov-
ernment and coal establishment about how to suppress
the rebellion. I remember hearing about one exchange
in the state capital, where some ocial demanded that
the National Guard be called out against us. A voice of
caution asked what percentage of the National Guard
was coal miners. Te report gave me a passing fantasy
of the states tanks and soldiers coming over to us
since, obviously, the vast majority of the states National
Guardsmen were also coal miners.
Te United Miner Vorkers (UMV) apparatus at
the national level joined in denouncing the wildcat and
(I suspect) in some areas the mid-level ocials played
some role in encouraging scabbing or identifying ring-
leaders for the authorities.
And then, as his main move, the Governor de-
ployed a small army of the Vest Virginia State Iolice
into MacDowell Countyto impose a form of mar-
tial law on the southern part of the state. Teir plan
was simple: Several hundred State Iolice took over the
Velch National Guard armoryas their base of op-
erations. State Iolice were teamed up with state mine
inspectorsso the cops could nd the many, often-
hidden mine entrances and back roads. And they then
fanned out across the area to nd our roving pickets,
to identify the active miners, to serve them injunctions
and arrest them.
In reality these State Iolice carried out a suspen-
sion of basic civil rights. Any time men gathered in
public in groups of three or more they were subject to
surveillance and searches by these roaming cops. Li-
cense numbers were taken down, names were recorded,
searches were conducted for weapons, and increasingly
the brothers started to be arrested and taken into the
Velch armory for interrogations.
14
Te Fight Local by Local
All of these repressive measures, unfolding quickly
over a week or so, had a sharp impact on the struggle.
For one thing, each local was ordered by the UMVA
leadership to hold meetings that rst weekend and of-
cially order their men back to work Sunday night.
Te results of those meetings varied greatly, de-
pending on the political complexion of the workforce
and their local ocials.
In the more militant locals, such meetings were a
chance to consolidate the ranks behind the strike, hear
out problems, identify waverers, and (at the same time)
gain a bit of legal cover. Vhen local ocials at mines
like Maitland or Capels ordered their men back to
work, there was an obvious wink involvedsince ev-
eryone knew these same men were organizing the now-
statewide strike from behind the scenes.
At the more conservative mines, like Keystone
where I worked, the local meeting was a very dierent
aair. Keystones grey cinderblock union hall, a short
distance from the mine, was packed inside and out with
about 150 men. Some (not all) of our local mine com-
mitteemen were encouraging miners to go into work
on any shift where pickets did not appear. At the meet-
ing, some of the most outspoken among the commit-
teemen openly attacked the radicals who keep honest
men from working. Tey argued for obeying the law,
upholding the contract and following the back-to-work
orders of both the judges and the national Union of-
cials. And after that opening, a debate erupted over
whether it was simply too dangerous to scab while the
rest of the county was still on strike.
11
Vhen I rose to defend the strike and its demands,
it was (to say the least) quite controversialsince this
anti-militant politics had had a tight hold on many of
the older workers and the local union leadership. Some
11. Ve had entered the mines shortly after a new reform
union leadership, the Miners for Democracy (MFRD) had over-
turned the murderous and corrupt union regime of Tony Boyle
(1972). Te new Union president Arnold Miller had been a
genuine rank-and-le leader within the Black Lung movement
but, to the great disappointment of the miners themselves, he
would quickly be absorbed into the existing institutional struc-
ture of collective bargainingand prove as hostile to militancy
as the rest of the labor movements ocialdom.
of this locals ocials (a little clique with their hands
on the money) were determined not to let circles of
militants gain a foothold. Te argument got heated
and almost came to blows. Because so few others dared
speak openly for the strike, it was hard for me to gauge
where most of the workers actually stood.
In any case, after this wave of local union meetings,
it became clearer which mines would require continu-
ous picketing.
Clearly, this was a specic tactical plan by the au-
thorities: Tey wanted the more conservative mines to
force us to picket, and then they planned to unleash
the state police to identify and persecute our hard-core
activistshoping to break the back of the movement.
Once one or two mines were successfully back to work,
it would have encouraged the more backward or -
nancially desperate men to scab, and quickly end the
strike.
And, just as clearly, this created a real tension
among the miners: Te militants thought that every-
one knew the strike was onso if there was still a need
for us to run risks, it was only because of a few scab-
hearted men, encouraged by corrupt union ocials.
Tey were increasingly frustrated and furious that they
should risk jail every night just because some selsh
cliques were determined to break the strike.
Tis frustration was focused at a few specic
mineslike Gary #2 or Keystone #1larger mines
that tended to have an older workforce, and more out-
spokenly conservative local leadership.
Imagining Communist Vork
Ve had at that time a small circle of communist
activists in southern Vest Virginia, sent there in 1972
by the Revolutionary Union, one of several national
new communist organizations that had emerged from
the radical movements ghting for Black Liberation
and an end to the Vietnam Var.
Ve didnt have much to guide us. Ve were try-
ing something relatively new. And yet for inspiration,
we had Maos concepts like mass line. Meanwhile, for
theoretical detail, we generally reached further back, to
the early days of the communist movement.
15
Te RUs initial concept was to bring light into the
struggles the workers were already waging. It was an
idea lifted from an early passage by Lenin. Light, in
the enlightenment language of the Russian revolution,
meant revolutionary ideas and socialist class conscious-
ness.
12
12. In the fall of 1972, as we were living out of sight, wait-
ing to move down to Vest Virginia, Gina and I were instructed
to study a passage known as B1, from Lenins 1895 notes for
a draft party program). http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/
DEI95.html:
Te Iartys activity must consist in promoting the work-
ers class struggle. Te Iartys task is not to concoct some fash-
ionable means of helping the workers, but to join up with the
workers movement, to bring light into it, to assist the workers
in the struggle they themselves have already begun to wage. Te
Iartys task is to uphold the interests of the workers and to rep-
resent those of the entire working class movementTe pro-
gram says that this assistance must consist, rstly, in developing
the workers class-consciousness. Ve have already spoken of
how the workers struggle against the employers becomes the
class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisieTe
workers class-consciousness means the workers understanding
that the only way to improve their conditions and to achieve
their emancipation is to conduct a struggle against the capital-
ist and factory-owner class created by the big factories. Further,
the workers class-consciousness means their understanding
that the interests of all the workers of any particular country
are identical, that they all constitute one class, separate from all
the other classes in society. Finally, the class-consciousness of
the workers means the workers understanding that to achieve
their aims they have to work to inuence aairs of state, just
as the landlords and the capitalists did, and are continuing to
do now.
Every strike concentrates all the attention and all the ef-
forts of the workers on some particular aspect of the conditions
under which the working class lives. Every strike gives rise to
discussions about these conditions, helps the workers to ap-
praise them, to understand what capitalist oppression consists
in the particular case, and what means can be employed to com-
bat this oppression. Every strike enriches the experience of the
entire working class. If the strike is successful it shows them
what a strong force working-class unity is, and impels others
to make use of their comrades success. If it is not successful,
it gives rise to discussions about the causes of the failure and
to the search for better methods of struggle. Tis transition of
the workers to the steadfast struggle for their vital needs, the
ght for concessions, for improved living conditions, wages and
working hours, now begun all over Russia, means that the Rus-
sian workers are making tremendous progress, and that is why
the attention of the Social-Democratic Iarty and all class-con-
scious workers should be concentrated mainly on this struggle,
on its promotion.
Tere was an aspect of bringing in conscious-
ness from outsidethe light of anti-racism, womens
liberation, internationalism, socialism and communist
revolution that we had brought with us into the coal-
elds. And there was an aspect of bringing out the les-
sons that were supposedly there to extract within the
workers own experience. As their struggles produced
controversy and repression, victory or defeat, their
experiences would (we assumed) leave them open to
a process of learning new, deeper, and rather radical
political insightsespecially about the class nature of
the state, the possibility of nding allies among other
strata of the people, the importance of a broader in-
ternationalist view of our class struggle, and ultimately,
the question of how to actually end the constant out-
rages of capitalism meaning socialist revolution.
13
In reality there proved to be rather signicant dif-
ferences over what we were doingboth between those
of us on the ground in Vest Virginia and between dif-
ferent factions within the RUs leadership.
Gina and I had a view of winning over a section
of the militant coal miners to the revolutionary move-
13. Tis concept of bringing light into the struggles
the workers were already waging was soon criticized within
the RU and, I believe for good reason. Te problem was the
formulas xation with the struggles the workers were already
waging. As my Gas Irotest story reveals, that is too narrow
a framework and too limited a focus for revolutionary work.
And in fact, many of the struggles that working people need
to engage are rather dierent from the ones that they, them-
selves, will spontaneously start to wage. Clearly the miners were
justied in launching this major movement of resistance. Tey
were right to ght the injunctions and defend their right to
strikeas repression grew over the 1970s. But the goals of lib-
eration also require that struggle be built around the racist mis-
treatment of Black and immigrant people, around unjust wars,
around the brutality of police, the liberation of women, and
the ugly social conservatism of traditional family values. Such
necessary, more explicitly political struggles are essential means
of developing broader revolutionary consciousness and organi-
zation among the people. And they often have to be creatively
initiated by communists and more consciously radical people.
Tey dont arise simply by bringing light into the struggles
the workers were already waging. Shortly after the 1974 strike,
the RUs circles in the coaleld started to develop a two-track
approachwhere we continued to work deeply in the circles
of militants waging the wildcat strikes, and also started to, in-
dependently, initiate various politically radical campaigns and
struggles, that allowed for much more explicitly revolutionary
work among the peopleand not just among the employed
male coal miners.
16
ment that had arisen, mainly among Black people, over
the course of the 1960s. I thought there might be a
second wave of 1968-style radical upheaval, perhaps
in the early 1980s. And I thought that if we did our
organizing well, we might be able to bring much larger
sections of workers into the mix over timeperhaps
making an actual socialist revolution possible. Tis
was consciously a concept of building o a 1905 for a
coming 1917.
Looking back, I can now see that BT (who helped
initiate our coaleld project) had a signicantly dier-
ent concept: Ie saw coal miners as already the most
advanced section of the working class. Ie saw in the
wave of early wildcats over Black Lung as proof of al-
ready-existing class consciousness.
BT thought the miners were playing a special,
leading role in the working class as a whole (and would
continue that in whatever came next). Ie sometimes
hinted that there was something special about miners
historically and internationallya special conscious-
ness rooted in their dicult conditions.
Iis conception pretty openly confused (or equat-
ed) the militant us-against-them trade union solidarity
common among miners with an openness to revolu-
tionary political views. And within the RU generally
there was a related notion that the most active and mili-
tant workers were also naturally the most politically
advanced. Ve assumed that the workers operating at
the core of the wildcat strike picket movements were
most likely to become active supporters and organizers
of a coming revolutionary movement for socialism.
Any radical project among coal miners had to face
some obvious questions: Iow stubborn would the re-
ligious and social conservatism of the workers turn out
to be: Vould their picket militancy help eat up reli-
gious fundamentalism and patriotism when exposed to
our revolutionary politics:
And the original, somewhat nave, assumption was
that such problems could be, relatively quickly, brushed
aside. Tere was explicitly in the RU a saying that tak-
ing Marxism-Leninism to the working class is bring-
ing it home. Ve were to discover that this home was
well-stocked in other ideologies, and the workers were
relatively attached to them.
14
But that discovery, and those experiences, still lay
ahead of us when, in 1974, we dove into this Gas Iro-
test.
A Flyer: Controversy Inside and Out
Te RU had chosen to disperse its few cadre widely
across southern Vest Virginia. Te nearest comrades
were an hour-and-a-half drive from where we lived. I
was the only comrade employed in the mines of Mc-
Dowell county. So, day to day, Gina and I were very
much on our own.
Since this Gas Irotest was centered in our county,
Gina and I had a special responsibility to develop ties
within that picket movement. Ve were mainly just
learning the lay of the land and identifying who we
would be seeking out (after the strike ended). Many
of the strike leaders we met would be among the rst
circles involved in the Miners Right to Strike Commit-
tee that the RU would soon initiate.
At the same time, we were impatient to start inject-
ing larger political lessons and ideas into this strikes
charged atmosphere. So Gina and I were excited when
the org produced a leaet within the rst days of the
strike. Tat seemed an ideal way to start acting as com-
munists among the workers. It was the opening shot of
our public work as a revolutionary organizationan
announcement of revolutionary presence and poli-
ticswith all the attention and controversy that this
would eventually bring with it.
Te leaet (which I may have buried in my les
somewhere) described the justice of this strike. It re-
futed various lies circulating in the local media. It then
went into a lengthy discussion of lessons we workers
could draw from what was happeningabout the oil
embargo, the use of courts by the capitalists, and so
on.
I have to admit my heart sank a bit when I saw how
wordy it was. Our communist movement was always
14. Linc and Me: On the Material Basis of Incorrect Ideas
by Mike Ely, on the Kasama site. http://mikeely.wordpress.
com/2008/02/28/understanding-the-material-basis-of-in-
correct-ideas/
17
long-winded, and its fetish for words would only get
worse. Te yers language was also stilted. I remember
complaining that the strange expression money bags
was used to describe the capitalist class. BT explained
to me (with some pride) that this sentence had been
lifted whole from a letter by Lenin.
So, as you can hear, the leaet was a bit primi-
tivemixing important arguments with mechanical
imitation and dogmatism.
To be honest, my reaction to the yer also had to
do with the pull of being so deeply involved in this
strike. Coal miners could read, but generally not well.
Complex arguments about capitalism would limit the
yers audience and circulationi.e. the very things
that brought light into this struggle could make this
leaet less eective as an instrument for the strike it-
self. Now as always, there was a sharp tension between
our work as communist revolutionaries and our work
as enthusiastic activists of a particular struggle.
Still, it was exciting to have this rst communist leaf-
let in our hands. It was something new and needed. Iow
new it was came out in ways we never anticipated.
Te Argument Against Explanations
Gina and I rolled up to one of the evening picket
meetings which got smaller later as the week went on.
Ve simply handed the leaet to those standing around,
saying it was something we had gotten from friends up
around Beckley (which was true, if not the essential
truth).
Several people read the opening, nodded approv-
ingly, and tucked a copy away in their back pockets. No,
we protested, there were lots more here in our trunk.
Te idea was to hand them out as we picketed, so that
more people could understand what the protest was
over and why their own activism were needed.
Ve had come from a world of campus politics, and
cold mornings selling the Black Panther and other revo-
lutionary newspapers at factory gates in the Midwest.
Te idea of yers was (to put it mildly) second nature.
But this was a much less literate world, where speaking
face to face was how things were done.
One miner suggested that we might have the
Velch paper print the statementwhich was much
more possible than I understood. Others said that they
knew people who would want this, and who would cir-
culate this, and started taking bundles of the yer out
of our trunk.
But then came the real controversy. Te crew from
Capels arrived at the bypass, and they instantly had a
real dislike of the whole idea of the yers. It was not (as
I might have expected) over the communist radicalism
of our (read: Lenins) argument. It was over the very
idea of telling workers what the strike was over.
Now, the vibe of the various crews was very dif-
ferent.
Te Maitand men were, like their leader DD, very
sober and considered. Tey came o as established,
like family men, and had a bit of caution in the midst of
leading this whole rather daring adventure.
Te Gary #10 boys were younger and obviously
wilder, and linked to wide circles of friends their age
throughout the surrounding counties. Some of them
would disappear for a day into nearby Vyoming or
Mercer county and show up that night with ten or f-
teen new pickets ready for action.
But the men from Capels were more like a biker
gangtheres no other way to say it. Over the course
of the strike, I just got the vibe that there was some-
thing sleazy about them. Not the workers of that whole
mine, of course, an older operation on the west side of
Velch. But the crew that ran that union local had a
thuggish feel.
Te Capels crew was led by Ieewee, a squint-eyed,
rail-skinny guy, who had alternated between being a
notorious drunk and a spirit-lled Ioliness preacher.
Ie was a hustler and eagerly promoted himself as the
leader of this Gas Irotest with almost daily statements
to the local press (all while DD, Young Iatter and oth-
ers preferred to lead from the shadows). And Ieewees
prominence wasnt that great for this strike, since the
man had a reputation.
In any case, the Capels crew was not interested in
bringing yers with them on any picket lines.
Vhy in the world do we need to tell those men
what the strike is over: one of them said. All they
need to know is that there is a picket standing on the
road, and a brother is asking them for help.
18
I argued that it was important to put forward
strong arguments that people could take up and em-
brace. And then the argument got to core of the matter.
Te Capels guy came back:
Vhat you dont understand is this: most men,
almost all of them, are scabs in their hearts, cowards
and sucks. You can explain this strike to them all day
long, but the only way they will stay out of work is if
its clear that we will kick their ass if they crawl in. And
if you start explaining this-and-that to them, they will
just get the notion that they have some right to decide if
they should strike or not, and that would end it all.
So there were two approaches running strong in
our picket movement. Te guys from some mines were
eager to use the nightly picket lines to explain what the
strike was overwhile those inuenced by the Capels
line were a bit more heavy-handed.
Fishing at Midnight
One evening, DD called me into the backseat of his
car. Ie explained that his local had now been hit by in-
junctions, and that he (as local president) had issued a
public back-to-work order. Everyone at the mine knew
it was insincere, of course, but if no picket line appeared
at his mine the court would take it as evidence that he
was secretly leading his miners to stay out on strike.
In short, he needed me to go picket his mine, at
least one shift change. I had started in this strike as an
outsider. And this was a sign of trust.
Another miner, Charlie, volunteered to go with
me, and so we waited on that bridge at the usual time
for the midnight shift. DD sat down the road, where he
could watch but not be seen.
Tere was some real danger of arrest and jail. Te
state police were roaming the highways at night look-
ing for pickets, and this mine sat just across the river
from the main road. Because Charlie lived nearby, we
wore bandanas to avoid identication. Charlie also car-
ried a shing pole. Lots of guys were doing that while
picketingin case of arrest, they planned to later claim
they were just shing.
So there we stood, pretending to sh at midnight,
wearing bandanas, on that one lane bridge, with only
the river sounds as company.
Maitland was one of the more militant mines,
so none of the miners showed up for work. Only the
pump men went in (who by mutual agreement keep
the mine from ooding during strikes).
About half an hour after midnight, we got a bit
tense when a lone car drove up on the bridge heading
straight for us. Charlie leaned over the bridge railing,
tending to his shing line. I walked over to the car.
Trough the glass I saw the startled face of an old man.
Ie was a bit drunk. Ie fumbled around, then cranked
down his windowand, to my surprise, handed me
a stful of dollar bills. Vith my face wrapped in that
handkerchief on that lonely road, he just assumed we
were bandits trying to rob himor perhaps jack his
car. Ie was hoping his few bucks would satisfy us.
Laughing, I handed him back the money, and explained
we were there to serve the people, not rob them. Ie
waved and drove o.
Vhen Charlie and I arrived to meet up with DD,
he was sitting slumped in his car with a wide-brimmed
hat pulled over most of his face. Iis voice was low, al-
most a whisper as he spoke, and as I slid into the back
seat alongside him, I saw his hand was actually shaking.
I was bewildered at his emotional state. DD was always
so calma leader by virtue of judgment.
Tinking about it later, I put together the pressure
he was underand suddenly confronted, much more
clearly, the issues of life and death unfolding around
me. I knew the dangers we were under of course, and
(as communists) we had a sense of responsibility to the
people, both here and around the world. But, inexperi-
enced and a bit intoxicated with the excitement, I had
not yet learned to read that larger chessboard on which
moves were being made.
Te state police were hammering our pickets hard.
Numbers of men were being held for trial. DD and the
strikes other main leaders was targeted with injunc-
tionsthreatened with jail by the police and judges.
And there was no hint from Charleston that the Gov-
ernor was about to bend. Te state was slowly tighten-
ing its grip on us. And DD knew well what a defeat
could mean, for the miners generally, for the men at his
mine, and (Im sure) for himself, his personal hopes
and his family.
19
It was sobering, and reminded me sharply, again,
that real lives and hopes were in the balance. Our en-
emy was not a some distant abstraction but a very ac-
tive malevolent force aiming straight for the organized
core of this movement.
Iart 4: Tings Start to Crack
By the time the strike was two weeks old, the situ-
ation was incredibly tense. Te state authorities were
determined to crush the strike by hitting our picket
movement hard. Miners broadly wanted to win, but as
the days passed more workers felt desperate to return
to work. Tat gave a new wind to the more conserva-
tive, law-abiding, and fearful among the workers.
Bucket or Suitcase:
Te Velch papers started highlighting what they
called the bucket or suitcase movement. Tey featured
a rally held in Keystone where some miners wives were
(supposedly) speaking out against the strike, and call-
ing their husbands cowards for being intimidated by
a few radicals. Tey showed a picture of someone
waving a suitcasesince this supposed movement
called on women to present their husbands with an
ultimatum: take your bucket of food and water (to go
to work), or take the suitcase of your clothes (and get
kicked out of the house). Vomen were encouraged to
put a lunch bucket and a suitcase side by side next to
the front door.
It was, as you can imagine, hype orchestrated by
the mine management at Keystone #1. But the fact that
anyone at all felt emboldened to speak out to the press
in this way says something about the climate at Key-
stone.
Behind the scenes, local union ocials were en-
couraging men to confront pickets, saying our mine
didnt support the strike, and were being prevented from
working by outsiders (meaning the pickets who were
coming to Keystone from outside this little town).
20
Ve have to dig into the fact that there was a sharp-
ly racial element involvedin ways that were very star-
tling for me and the rest of the communists. Ve had
all learned much of our politics from the civil rights
movements and the Black liberation struggles. So it was
surprising for us to have stumbled onto a spot where,
for various local reasons, Black people were generally
alienated from most visible struggle.
I need to say this clearly: Te fact that Black peo-
ple were not represented among the most active min-
ers hardly meant that they were not among the most
politically advanced in this area. Tere were, as we are
going to discuss, some real, historically specic reasons
why the wildcat strike movement was disconnected
from the Black communities. But, as we were going to
learn when our communist work took up support for
liberation struggles in Africa and as we organized to
oppose the anti-textbook campaign of the early Reli-
gious Rightthere was a real audience our revolution-
ary politics in the Black communities of this area, espe-
cially among the youth and the younger Black miners.
It would take us a while to understand thisand
adjust our organizations work to identify and attract
the more politically advanced. Certainly, developments
within this Great Gas Irotest shook some initial pre-
conceptions hard.
Keystones Outlaw Iistory
Keystone #1, like several older mines in McDowell,
had opened just as Vorld Var 1 stopped immigration
from Europe. And so, with the oceans closed, the new
coal companies had drawn much of their workforce
from the plantation areas of the Deep South.
In other words, there was a strip of mines in Mc-
Dowell, from Northfork Ioller to Gary Ioller, that
had employed African Americans from their begin-
nings. Tere was a band of African-American coal
camps, settled next to the white onesand the town
of Keystone was the largest of them.
Keystone had a raucous and even bawdy history.
Some coal company towns had been set up as straight-
arrow communities, with company churches and com-
pany inspections of housekeeping. But Keystone had
emerged as a wide open town of (so-called) vice fueled
by the Irohibition-era moonshine. It once boasted of
the worlds longest-running poker game and the world-
famous Cinder Bottom red light district.
By the time I started work there in 1973, the town
of Keystone was just a shadow of its former self. A
small housing project had replaced the brothel row of
Cinder Bottom. Te young boys who had run num-
bers and done errands for prostitutes now worked as
old men alongside me in the main mine. And the rem-
nants of that old town brotherhood dominated our
local unionthey still imagined a connection to the
1940s world of gangsters and saw themselves as ma-
jor players in this town. And they didnt mind speaking
their mindto the press or to young white hell-raisers
trying to shut down their mine.
Tere were reasons that the older Black miners
werent so eager to raise hell over (what they saw as)
minor grievances: Eastern Associated Coal was one of
the only companies that had ever hired Black miners
in signicant numbers. Tey had even promoted a few
Black foremen. And Black workers often felt that if
they were red they would not easily nd work at most
other mines.
So, for a number of reasons, that layer of older
Black miners at Keystone #1 (and similar groups at
the other heavily-Black mines) just didnt like hot-
tempered young rednecks telling them when to work
and when to stay home. Meanwhile the younger Black
miners, who were often quite inuenced by the sixties,
never did move to overthrow the old cliqueas had
happened in so many of the militant mines.
Tere was, as I mentioned, a real tension building:
Te pickets were in danger whenever they went
out, and all the local unions were under pressure to
require picketing. Te more conservative locals started
actively encouraging their members to show up at each
shift change, and urged them to work if there were
no picket lines. And the militants on the bypass were
becoming furious over thisand over having trouble
with the same few mines over and over.
A Darkly Revealing Moment
It came to a head one night, as we gathered to send
out pickets.
21
Our numbers were dwindling. Some militants had
pulled back. Some faced personal injunctions. Some
had court dates. Some just thought there should not be
any more need for picketing.
As quiet conversations picked over rumors of a
back to work push, a car squealed up among us. Two
men tumbled out, badly beaten. Tey had been pis-
tol-whipped while picketing at one of the larger U.S.
Steel mines in Gary Ioller. Tree Black miners had
confronted them there, pulled guns, hurt them pretty
bad and then just walked in to work. Te faces of the
pickets were bloody.
A silence fell over the crowd.
And then, suddenly, a voice shouted out: Tats it.
Lets just go teach those n*ggers a lesson.
To my horror, a second voice shouted out: Lets go
down to that joint in Keystone and burn it out. Tese
n*ggers need a lesson.
Te meeting shattered into a dozen conversations.
Some, perhaps a quarter of the pickets, were shouting
agreement. It included Larry who I knew from work,
and had already been in tight spots with.
But quite a few others were muttering in obvious
disagreement. One man, over my left shoulder said out
loud, If it goes this way, Im out.
Vhat had been a strike meeting had become, in
the blink of an eye, a debate over launching a racist at-
tack. Te outcome clearly hung in the balance. Every-
thing could come unraveledand I dont just mean
that strike.
I jumped up on the back of a pickup, and shouted
as loud as I could: No:
Everyones eyes turned on me, and I suddenly knew
what to say. I dont remember the exact words, but I
said that if we allow ourselves to be divided in this way,
we had no future and our cause had no justice.
I said: Im going to go down to Keystone, to that
poolhall, with anyone who will go with me. Ve will
warn the people there and stand with them.
Anyone who wanted to attack Cinder Bottoms
beer joint would have to come through us.
Vith that, the moment passed. Te strike lead-
ers stepped up, and started loudly organizing pickets.
Tere was no more talk that night of raiding the Black
community.
As soon as the picket meeting broke up, I immedi-
ately called my RU leadership. It took a while for us to
connect, and discuss the events.
Tis was obviously a huge developmentand one
where we communists had a special responsibility to
act.
Te next day, BT dropped everything and and
drove down with a couple of others from Iinnacle
Creek to Keystone. Tere, at the mouth of Cinder Bot-
tom, was the towns main hangout. I dont remember
why I didnt go with them that day, but I wasnt there.
Tey went into the poolhall and explained to everyone
what had happened at the bypass the night before. Tey
convinced a number of the regulars to come with them
that night to the bypass, to talk these things through
and to clear the air. None of the men who came were
even miners, and it took obvious courage for them to
step into that meeting above Velch.
It helped make that moment passbut the un-
derlying contradictions were still raw, and intensifying.
And in our work, cracks were appearing in the assump-
tion that miners represented some special advanced
section of the working class, or that strike militancy was
an automatic marker for deeper class consciousness.
22
Iart 5: Bullets of Iidden
Gunmen
Two days later, the picket meeting was very small.
Charles and I volunteered to go over Gary mountain,
south to Bishop on the Virginia state linewhere, ac-
cording to a rumor, some miners were threatening to
scab. A crew from Iinnacle Creek went to picket Key-
stone. And that was about all our picket movement was
capable of that night.
It was a long drive over that mountain. Charlie
and I hid my VV bug on a side road, and walked to
Bishops mine entrance. Ve stood there for an hour at
shift change. No one came or went. Ierhaps the rumors
were wrong.
As we were about to leave, a man walked up. Ie
whispered quickly that he was the son of a local sheri.
And he warned us that we were going to be tailed after
leaving. A roadblock was planned for us on the lonely
stretch to Gary. Tey planned to beat us hard before
taking us to jail.
Ve thanked him (as you can imagine).
As soon as he left, two cop cars pulled up across
from us and turned o their lights.
Charles and I exchanged glances and eased toward
our car. As we drove o, the cop cars fell in behind us.
Up ahead was a fork in the road. Left led back over
Gary Mountain toward Velch. I had no intention of
going there. Right turned east, over the farmland of
Virginia.
I pulled the wheel hard to the right, turned east,
and roared across that state line into Virginiaas
fast as a little VV could go. To our relief, we saw the
headlights of the Vest Virginia cops fade behind us.
Ve were jubilantand drove east, and then north to-
ward Blueeld. Ve would return home through a huge
loop.
Vaiting in Virginia
Our excitement stopped cold about forty minutes
later, when we ran straight into a massive roadblock
outside Blueeld. Te Virginia State Iolice had been
called out, and they were waiting for us.
Ve stopped, and they pulled us out of our car.
Vithin minutes they had taken the car apartre-
moving seats, emptying the trunkobviously looking
for guns. Te Vest Virginia States had sent out a mes-
sage that we were armed and dangerousand the
guns were supposed to be the grounds for our arrest
in Virginia.
But by that point in the strike, the danger of po-
lice search was so intense that few pickets carried guns
anymore.
Vhen those Virginia cops couldnt nd any guns
on us, they didnt know what to do. So they put the car
seats back in and let us go.
Relieved, we drove that last hour from Blueeld
into the heart of McDowell.
As we passed through Keystone I saw the hillside
completely lit up by ashing blue police lights. Some-
thing had gone down at the mine. But Charlie and I
just drove home anyway and I fell into the sleep of the
exhausted.
Ambush from Company Iroperty
Someone banged on my door early. Tere had
been a shooting at Keystone that night, and the details
quickly came out.
At Keystone pickets gather on the road, just be-
low the mine parking lot, in front of an old church. As
ve pickets stood there that night, under the glare of
the towns streetlight, someone opened re. Te shots
came from company property, from a service road
above the church. Tey came from a repeating rie
(or perhaps two) shooting into the crowd. Jerry J, a
young, heavyset mine committeeman from the west of
Velch, went down hard. As the other pickets scattered
for cover, hiding behind a church wall, the assassins
23
started pumping bullets into Jerry, slowly, one after an-
other. Te shots tore up his intestine from several sides.
Blood started to pool up below him, and run to the side
of the road. Ie would have died there on the ground if
Roger D had not jumped out of cover, under re, and
dragged Jerrys limp body to safety.
By the next day, I heard a new report: Apparently
someone in Keystone was worried that the assassins
would be identied, named, arrested or perhaps hunted
down. So the word went out that if anything happened
to them, someone among the strikers would die. My
name was the one mentioned. I was by then the best-
known supporter of the strike at Keystone mine, and I
guess they gured theyd know where to nd me.
15
Tere were also rumors that Iinnacle Creek crew
had stopped in the Keystone pool hall before picket-
ing, and that they had acted with bravado there. But
Roger denied it, and I was never able to conrm what
the truth was.
Let Iim Die
Te shooting stopped everything cold. It was as if
the whole county dropped into a deep freeze.
No one dared picket. No one dared talk about
working. Te state police didnt dare patrol too far o
the main road. As each of the following nights closed
in, the roads were simply deserted.
During the days, we were all down at the Velch
hospital, where Jerry J hung between life and death. In
an ugly scene, one of the nurses had refused to treat Jer-
15. BT chose to put out a simplistic explanation of this
shooting: Ie said this had almost certainly been a hit job or-
ganized by U.S. Steel, because Roger and most of the militants
on that road were from U.S. Steels brand new Iinnacle Creek
#50 mine. I thought that explanation was overly tidyespe-
cially since there was absolutely zero evidence other than BTs
hunch. In fact, it was whispered that the trigger men that night
were workers from Keystone #1and two specic, very hard
men were sometimes mentioned. I dont know precisely what
motivated them to shoot, and I dont know who was really be-
hind itand I never pushed hard to dig out the answers to
those questions. But on my return to work, I made a point of
seeking those men outand giving them a chance to know me,
as a person and as an active communist. After all, I had to drive
past that church wall, in front of that clump of woods every day,
week after week, for years. One of them, at least, became, over
the next years, a regular reader of revolutionary literature, and
someone, I believe, who had my back.
ry as he came in. Let him die, she had said. Tat nurse
was said to be the wife of Jack I., safety committeeman
at Keystone #1. Alarmed, we organized a round-the-
clock guard for Jerry, haunting the halls of the hospital,
talking in subdued tones about what to do next.
Vhen you study military history, you realize there
is often a moment in many major battles when the
generals of both sides think they are losing. Tey are
each receiving awful reportsabout shattered units,
exhausted reserves, buckling anksand they are rare-
ly seeing the same kinds of reports on the other side.
Often each general thinks he alone is on the brink of
collapse.
And to us, in this battle, sitting in that hospital cor-
ridor, things looked bad. Our militants were exhausted,
and some felt like we were being beaten.
But then, we were not reading the grim reports
that were stacking up on the governors desk.
Suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, the announce-
ment came:
Governor Moore had withdrawn his rationing or-
der. Te state police were going to be pulled out. If the
gunmen at Keystone had intended to break the strike,
they had failed terribly.
Ve had won. It was bewildering. Is this what vic-
tory looks like: Is that how it happens:
In my own primitive linear thinking, I always
thought of a strike as an economic squeezewe
would stop production until the coal operators started
screaming for coal and prot. But this moment revealed
the powerful independent role of politics within class
struggle. In the nal analysis, the governors retreat had
not mainly come from an economic calculation, but
from the realization that events were now careening in
completely unpredictable directionswith his army of
state police, hated and vulnerable, sitting right at the
front lines.
Among us miners, there was immediately talk of
returning to work in triumph on Sunday night. But
there was one problem: Court hearings were scheduled
for that Monday. Several were required to be in the
Velch Courthouse. In a Kafkaesque touch, the only
judge willing (and corrupt enough) to do this dirty
24
work was the countys divorce judge. Ie was the one
holding court.
Springing the Jailhouse Doors
As we gathered in the courthouse that Monday, we
heard that some of the Gary mines had already started
working late Sunday night. Te courtroom was packed,
and one by one, the pickets were called before the old
bastard.
It was a farce. Miners stood up to give their expla-
nations.
I was not there, the police must have made a mis-
take.
I was not picketing, I was shing on the bridge
that day.
I live on the bottom land by the mine, I was re-
turning home when I was arrested.
Several of the workers had brought their shing
poles as evidence.
Te judge was having none of it. Te gimmicks
were all thrown out of court. And one by one the sen-
tences came down: Guilty with sizable jail time. Tese
guys were obviously going to be jailed, then red, then
blacklistedsince they would be unable to return to
work this week.
Te group included many of our most solid mili-
tantsincluding DD and the heart of his crew.
Fifty of us met outside on the courthouse steps.
Te mood was hard, even grim. Ve meet at the bypass
tonight. Some left on the spot to start pulling Garys
mines. Gina and I volunteered to write a yer explain-
ing what had just happened. Ve drove home and typed
up a draft.
It was late afternoon as we rolled back through
Velch, heading north to meet with our comrades and
mimeograph the announcement.
As we passed through northern Velch, we sud-
denly noticed a huge crowd of cars crammed in at the
main burger drive-in. Ve pulled into the parking lot.
Tere, sitting in the window, was DD and his boys
roaring with laughter and celebrating.
Someone high upin the state or in the coal cor-
porationshad heard that these jailings were reignit-
ing the strike. And they had simply ordered the judges
decisions be reversed. I have no idea exactly how that
reversal happenedI dont know what laws were bent,
or money exchanged hands. But it is clear that our
threats had kicked open the jailhouse doors.
Te Gas Irotest of 1974 was overa rare victory
for a completely illegal strike.
And yet.
25
Afterward
Mao writes that to know the pear you must taste
the pear.
Returning to work, after three weeks of strike, my
mind was spinning with unanswered questions. I was
trying to understand some truly writhing contradic-
tions that had revealed themselves.
Clearly the struggle the workers themselves are
beginning to wage had a more complex relationship
with class consciousness than I had understood.
Tis would become even more clear when, shortly
afterwards, a strike broke out around Charleston in-
spired by the religious right. Conservative fundamen-
talist preachers in patriotic three-cornered hats began
pulling out minesin a protest over the use of pro-
gressive textbooks in Kanawha County schools. Te
inclusion of radical Black authors and sex education
outraged some, and confused others. And suddenly we
communists found ourselves, not joining the next wild-
cat strike, but uniting with a community organization
of Black Vietnam veterans to expose the racism of this
Textbook Irotest and actively stop it from spreading to
the whole state.
Vhat emerged over the next years, and what re-
mains to be fully summed up, was a real gap between
our ability to lead militant strike activity, and our plans
to develop a foothold for socialist, revolutionary poli-
tics.
In some ways the crown lay in the gutter in the
coaleldsthe miners were ghting hard for their fu-
ture, generally using their own local trade union struc-
tures as their organizationand yet were desperately
looking for uncorrupted, militant leadership, as an
alternative to the betrayals of their salaried union ap-
paratus. A small serious group like the RU s Miners
Right to Strike Committee could emerge as a welcome
vehicle and rallying point within that.
And yet, at the same time, our attempts at more
politically radical activityorganizing of revolution-
ary May First celebrations, support for African libera-
tion struggles, support for the 1979 Iranian revolution,
informational work around socialist revolution and
capitalist restoration in China, the work of our revo-
lutionary newspaper, attempting to recruit into the
Revolutionary Communist Iarty and moreall that
landed on considerably less fertile ground, and often
found its smaller audiences outside the ranks of the ac-
tive miners.
Tose two spheres of workleading militant
strike struggles and promoting revolutionary political
campaignsdeveloped extremely dierent dynamics
despite our many eorts to fuse them, to bring a sec-
tion of the miners over to a consciously revolutionary
pole. Instead of complementing each other, those dif-
ferent initiatives started to pull our work apart at a very
basic level.
It proved inevitable that one aspect will eat up the
other (as Maoists say).
16
As the 1974 Gas Irotest ended, many of those
experiencesincluding the escalating coixrvivo
attacks and waves of anti-communist hysterialay
in the future. So did the biggest strikes, of 1975 and
1976, where the Miners Right to Strike Committee
helped this miners upsurge take the stage in an excep-
tionally powerful way. Te discussion and summation
of all that is yet to come.
16. Some parts of this dilemma have been explored in an
initial way in letter 2 of 9 Letters to Our Comrades, by Mike Ely
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/9-letters/letter-2/
Other pamphlets available at kasamaproject.org:
Te Historical Failure of Anarchism:
Implications for the Future of the
Revolutionary Project
by Christopher Day
Revolution in India:Lalgarhs Hopeful Spark
by Sam Shell
Shaping the Kasama Project:
Contributing to Revolutions Long March
by Enzo Rhyner, J.B. Connors, John Steele,
Kobayashi Maru, Mike Ely, Rita Stephan, and Rosa Iarris
Indian Maoists Speak:
On International Controversies Among Communists
Kasama Articles: On the Maobadi and the Crisis in Nepal
Two Lines Over Maoist Revolution in Nepal
Five Letters from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
and the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Avakians Assessment of Tomas Jeerson:
A Critical Reading
By Iavel Andreyev
Avakians Away With all Gods!:
Critiquing Religion Without Understanding It
By Iavel Andreyev
9 Letters to Our Comrades:
Getting Beyond Avakians New Synthesis
by Mike Ely
At a Fork in the Road:
A Debrieng of the RCP
by Bill Martin
Cost of Empire:
Time Bombs, Anarchy, Guns and the New Depression
by Eddy Laing
Slipping Into Darkness:
Te Last Revolutionary Years of the Communist Party (1929-35)
by Mike Ely
kasamaproject.org