January - February - United Mine Workers of America

Celebrating King in the Big Easy
around
our Union
At the same time that millions of
jubilant Americans were gathering
in Washington, D.C., to witness
the historic inauguration of Barack
Obama, dozens of UMWA activists
and staff joined hundreds of other
trade unionists in New Orleans for the
annual AFL-CIO Martin Luther King,
Jr., Holiday Observance.
After listening to welcoming
remarks from AFL-CIO Secretary-
Treasurer and UMWA International
President Emeritus Richard Trumka
and other labor leaders, the UMWA
participants spent two days of community
service moving and installing
several truckloads of fill to repair
baseball diamonds in some of the
city’s depressed neighborhoods.
Then came two days of conferences
examining post-Hurricane Katrina
New Orleans and analyzing the 2008
election, followed by a parade through
the city’s streets ending at the Louisiana
Superdome, site of much of the
storm’s tragedy and suffering.
At one point in the proceedings,
the UMWA delegation broke away
for a visit to the Lower Ninth Ward,
the part of New Orleans that received
Katrina’s greatest destruction, meeting
with and giving support to residents
who have yet to rebuild their homes
lost in the 2005 storm.
David Kameras
Robert Green, a Lower Ninth
Ward resident who lost his mother
and granddaughter in Katrina’s
floodwaters.
David Kameras
Cherry Coal Mine Disaster
Nov. 13, 2009, marks the 100th anniversary of the
Cherry Coal Mine Disaster, an explosion that took
the lives of 259 men and boys in Bureau County, Ill., 90
miles southwest of Chicago.
The disaster began when a spark from a kerosene
lamp touched off a load of hay destined for a mule
stable, and a fatal decision to reverse a fan pulled flames
up the escape shaft and set ablaze a wood staircase,
leaving only the main shaft for escape. Twelve men made
several trips in the shaft’s cages to rescue the trapped
miners below before themselves succumbing to the
flames. Many of the miners died from a poisonous gas
called black damp, which is caused by coal burning
in an atmosphere lacking oxygen. Since the fan house
was severely damaged from the reversing of the fan, it
could not provide air to those who still might be alive.
Miraculously, 21 men survived eight days by going into
the far recesses of the mine and barricading themselves
to block the smoke and black damp.
The Town of Cherry has designed a monument
to mark the centennial of this disaster, and activists
are trying to raise $15,000 for the effort. For
more information, contact Jack Rooney at jack@
cap-strategies.com.
United Mine Workers Journal • January/February 2009 17