Miners to be memorialized in monument (Labor vs. Business)

<snip>

Among labor groups and historians, Virden is famous for a bloody gunfight that erupted on Oct. 12, 1898, when coal miners refused to accept a pay cut.

More than 100 years later, the city is getting ready to erect its first monument commemorating the eight miners killed that day. A bronze sculpture will be installed this fall on the central plaza of the downtown square.

"It was a classic case where workers stood up to the system and defended their jobs and their families and their right to work," says Alexander, who owns Books on the Square and is co-chairman of the committee raising money for the monument.

In 1898, the Chicago-Virden Coal Co. wanted to renege on an agreement to raise the wages of its miners, according to a booklet published for the 100th anniversary of the battle. The company recruited black men in Birmingham, Ala., to work for lower wages in the Virden mine.

<snip>

http://www.sj-r.com/sections/news/stories/55723.asp

Everything old is new again. Now it's outsourcing and porous borders.

i completely understand what these people went through. We stood up and fought Thatcher for a year, in an attempt to prevent the death of coalmining in England, and the brutality from the state apparatus when it really gets going is frightening. They'll do anything including killing people to keep the economic order.

Brave people like this need remembering.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/21/newsid_2705000/2705335.stm

Off the topic a bit I understand, but I still would like to know . . .

<snip> KENTUCKY

Sid Hatfield Monument
Buskirk

The United Mine Workers of America honor the police chief of Matewan, WV, killed by Baldwin-Felts agents in 1921, as dramatized in the John Sayles film, "Matewan". <snip>

http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/safety/memorial/wmd_mem.cfm

Apparently, no monument to Joe Hill ...