Alabama coal miners keep strike alive

May 14, 2022

By May Day 2022 coal miners at Warrior Met in Brookwood, Ala., had been on strike for a year and a month since they walked out April 1, 2021, to demand restoration of their wages, benefits and work rules. Strikers rejected a tentative contract as an insult. The company offered to restore just $1 more in wages.

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Climate obstruction unplugs Texas

The way business and government prepared—or failed to prepare—for the Winter Storm Uri disaster and the way they responded to it tell a bloody tale of climate obstruction, greed, indifference and cruelty.

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Decommissioning nuclear reactors

July 6, 2017

How is decommissioning of nuclear power plants being regulated to protect public safety? How can nuclear communities undergo a transition to new and productive jobs for the stranded workers?

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Nuclear waste traveling to your neighborhood

September 17, 2016

Anti-nuclear activists expose the dangers of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) being shipped around the country, the conundrum of what to do with it and the lies the U.S. Department of Energy tells to make HLRW appear safe.

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One year for 29 lives!

May 18, 2016

Massey Coal’s CEO Don Blankenship gets only 1 year in prison for murdering 29 coal miners in the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion of 2010!

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Disappearing coalminers

August 31, 2015

Escalating bankruptcies in the nation’s coal industry paint a grim future for the industry and for coal miners and their families. The bankruptcies, sweeping the coal fields everywhere, have affected the largest and smallest mines. As a result, thousands of coal miners have been laid off.

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Murderous King Coal on trial

January 29, 2015

Don Blankenship—owner of the Upper Big Branch Massey mine in West Virginia in 2010 when the mine exploded, killing 29 coal miners—was indicted. Nevertheless, the coal lobby still exerts considerable power in the state, and uses that power to support mountaintop mining and to thwart environmentally progressive programs that try to minimize the many dangerous aspects of coal mining.

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In the belly of the beast

May 12, 2012

From the May-June 2012 issue of News & Letters:

Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2012-2013
II. In the belly of the beast

A. Occupy and anti-Occupy

The very new phenomenon of the Occupy Movement brought this moment of revolutionary new beginnings squarely to the U.S. Though not now a revolution, it nevertheless transformed the political atmosphere in the [=>]

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Justice still overdue for 29 murdered coal miners

April 10, 2012

Detroit—A new break in late February signaled a giant step forward in the prosecution of officials at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia, where a methane gas and coal dust explosion two years ago killed 29 miners in the worst mine disaster in 40 years. The break came when federal prosecutors filed [=>]

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Occupy Wall Street, Oakland, Chicago

March 22, 2012

Oakland–In the past I have been involved in a lot of struggles: workers’ and immigrants rights, animal rights, etc. They were all single issues, isolated by their demands. The Occupy Movement brings them all together and addresses the cause of the problems, the whole system.

What was most important during the encampment of Occupy Oakland was [=>]

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Miners’ lives bought at discount rates

February 17, 2012

Detroit—A $209 million settlement, and a record $10.8 million in fines: that’s what newspaper headlines, TV and radio news reports throughout the nation proclaimed on Dec. 7 for the mine safety violations that killed 29 coal miners on April 5, 2010, at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia. It was then owned by [=>]

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Tar sands pipeline vs. human future

November 6, 2011

Tar sands pipeline vs. human future

The battle over the Keystone XL pipeline reveals two opposite futures. The push to complete the pipeline, which is to carry tar sands oil 1,980 miles from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, represents capital’s drive to keep expanding production for production’s sake, no matter how disastrous it may be [=>]

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Mine owners and Congress desecrate 29 miners’ graves

February 24, 2011

Detroit–Following the coal mine explosion that killed 29 miners at the Massey Coal Company’s Upper Big Branch mine last April, Congressional hearings disclosed the horrendous safety violations at that mine and produced a lot of breast beating and outraged outcries vowing to pass mine safety legislation that would “never allow this to happen again.”

At that [=>]

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