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By Albert Daly
WORCESTER – This past Sunday, November 17, Worcester DSA, in collaboration with the WPI Graduate Workers Union (WPI-GWU), hosted a film screening and subsequent discussion of Harlan County, USA.
Harlan County, USA is a classic documentary that follows the 1973 Brookside Strike, a year-long struggle by coal miners in southeastern Kentucky to win their first union contract. After workers at a Harlan County mine unionized with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), Duke Power Company refused to agree to a contract unless it had a no-strike clause. The mine workers held firm, and the film shows the efforts of their wives to support the strike, the health and safety issues in the mines, and the intervention of police and the courts to keep roads open to scabs while ignoring their acts of violence and even murder.
Union reformers may find especially interesting the storyline covering the downfall of corrupt UMWA President Tony Boyle and the rise of reform caucus-backed leader Arnold Miller. The film highlights some of the democratic reforms introduced by Miller, including a member ratification vote on the 1974 National Coal Wage Agreement, but also the lack of right-to-strike protections in the same contract.
As Maddie P, facilitator of Worcester DSA’s Labor Committee noted, “This film reminds us that the harsh realities of American labor history persist in the struggles workers face today. The miners’ fight for their rights is not as distant as it seems and is part of the ongoing class struggle. While the specifics of their working conditions may differ, the underlying dynamics of exploitation, inequality, and corporate power remain strikingly similar.”
Much of the discussion after the screening centered around violence. In the documentary, a scab worker murders one of the striking miners, in addition to scabs and strikebreakers shooting up houses and using guns and violence to intimidate picketers.
The capitalist state did nothing to deter or punish these acts of violence. The police and courts focus largely on the striking workers and their supporters. In effect, they double down on the violence of Duke Power Company, which as one attendee pointed out, forces their workers to suffer in mines and succumb to black lung disease all to live in shacks without hot water. And we see in the film a cameo of sorts from the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, who comments on the impact of the 1974 nationwide miners strike on the economy, a reference to President Gerald Ford’s threat to invoke a Taft-Hartley Act injunction to force the miners to return to work.
Ezra S, facilitator of Worcester DSA’s Political Education Committee, said, “I’m always blown away by the points that other chapter members raise in discussion because they change the way that I view these pieces we consume. My father first showed me this film many years ago, and it was before I knew much about labor or labor history. My second time watching it, the film made so much more sense to me and seemed so much more applicable.”
Worcester DSA’s Political Education Committee prepares presentations and discussions for the chapter’s General Meetings, as well as movie nights like this one — including recent screenings of Concerning Violence, Nae Pasaran, Pride, Union Maids, and A Very British Coup. The Poli Ed Committee also offers regular reading groups, with discussions every month of both short-form, standalone readings and multi-session discussions of books, most recently The Wretched of the Earth and starting in January, Class Struggle Unionism.
“Politicized, socialist union members are stronger, more effective trade unionists because we understand the nature of class struggle on and beyond the shop floor,” said Jake S, a Worcester DSA Steering Committee member who helps direct the Political Education Committee and who is a member of WPI-GWU.
Worcester DSA’s Labor Committee also assisted in putting on the event. The Labor Committee coordinates labor solidarity work across Central Mass and beyond, supports and initiates union drives, and hosts a bi-weekly Workers’ Circle, where DSA members can discuss organizing challenges in their workplaces and unions.
Shane Levett, a Worcester DSA Steering Committee member who helps direct the Labor Committee, said, “Watching this film I hope people see how the mine owners contribute nothing and yet take everything, how the capitalist state facilitates this and is putting its finger on the scale and not in our favor, and how the workers and oppressed peoples of this world have the power in our hands to change it all.”
Albert Daly is a Worcester DSA member.
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