Matewan is on the IFC RIGHT NOW

[ikojo]

Excellent movie that shows how the mining industry used racism and nationalism to keep working class people from unionizing mines.

[Duncan Grant]

1. The Baldwin-Felts thugs were the Blackwater Security of their day.

Matewan is a great movie (it's the one DVD that I had to own). Thanks for the heads-up. :)

edit: clarity

[ikojo]

2. I don't know who said it but some anti union

pig corporado at the end of the 19th century supposedly said that he could pay one member of the working class to kill another member of the working class.

Matewan, and a few other movies such as Grapes of Wrath, should be required viewing not only in unions but in schools. We learn all about the robber barons and they are held up as models but our labor education is woefully inadequate.

I say that if you like the weekend and the 40 hour week (such that it is) THANK A UNION!!!

[Duncan Grant]

3. And child labor laws, thanks to the unions (and progressive politics).

As you know, very young boys were working in the mines.

I'm currently reading "The Battle of Blair Mountain". Blair Mountain is a relatively unknown chapter of our history (post-Matewan). In a union busting maneuver our government dropped bombs upon its own citizens (coal miners in Logan County, WV). Unbelievable.

[ikojo]

4. What party was in power when the US government

dropped bombs on the miners in Logan County WV?

Found this on a website

http://www.rootsweb.com/~wvcoal/red4.html


The marchers called themselves "red necks." The name, which is now commonly used as a slang term for someone who is uneducated, bigoted, or reactionary, in those days referred to a radical, or "red." It may have had a further meaning to the marching miners, in reference to the red neckerchiefs.

snip

http://www.rootsweb.com/~wvcoal/red6.html

Sheriff Chafin in desperation hired privite airplane pilots at $100 a day to fly over the miners and drop homemade bombs on them. The bombs were made out of four-to six-inch oil well casing. Most of the bombs were dropped over Hewett Creek and failed to explode. One which did go off was aimed at a one-room schoolhouse the miners were using as a hospital, on Graddock Fork near Lake. The bomb missed the school by about 100 yards and exploded harmlessly in a field, making a crater large enough to hold a wheelbarrow. No one was reported injured by the bombs.

[doc03]

7. Great movie

More information about Matewan and the Battle of Blair Mountain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

[speedoo]

5. First John Sayles film I ever saw.

Also the first time I saw Kris Cooper in any film... I think he's in just about everything Sayles has done. Not sure about Eight Men out.

Matewan is a great film.

[sendero]

6. And I'm recording it..

.. I love John Sayles.

[Blue_Tires]

8. ttt n/t

[WCGreen]

9. It is one of my favorite movies.....