Miners fight against strikebreakers

August 28, 2020

Grupo México, the largest Mexican-owned mining company, ruthlessly exploits miners and contaminates water, disregarding health and safety. Miners, their families, and communities have been fighting back.

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Copper miners strike

March 11, 2020

The strike of more than 1,500 copper miners and smelters in Arizona and Texas against Asarco/Grupo Mexico has entered its fifth month, part of a new wave of labor solidarity and revolt.

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From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The dialectic and women’s liberation

April 30, 2015

The article excerpts a summary of a talk by Dunayevskaya to a conference on Women’s Liberation in Detroit. The purpose of the meeting was to help Dunayevskaya work out the final chapter of her book then in progress, Philosophy and Revolution. That last chapter would take up the “New Passions and New Forces” for the reconstruction of society. The Conference was also the beginning of the News & Letters—Women’s Liberation Committee.

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Women WorldWide, March-April 2015

March 7, 2015

A roundup of short news of women including the death of Geraldine Blankenship, an activist in the 1936-37 Flint, Mich., sit-down strike against General Motors; the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation; and the opening of a Mother Jones Museum in Mt. Olive, Ill., in June 2015.

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Put miners in charge

August 29, 2014

From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters

Detroit—A mid-May fire killed 301 miners by carbon monoxide poisoning due to mine owners’ negligence in the worst coal mine disaster in Turkey’s history (see “Turkish miners killed,” July-August N&L). First reports indicated that the fire started when a transformer blew up. A subsequent investigation revealed that [=>]

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EDITORIAL: In the Ukrainian cauldron

July 5, 2014

Facts on the ground threaten to spin out of control, increasing the danger of a full regional war in the eastern region, the possibility of dismemberment of Ukraine, and an intensification of U.S.-Europe vs. Russia saber-rattling. However, these are only the latest moments of the “pseudo-concrete”–the false alternatives that have arisen, seeking to usurp the movement of self-determination that was manifest in the Maidan Nezaleznosti (Independence Square) occupation in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.

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Bolivia’s two worlds

May 11, 2014

A new conflict broke out in Bolivia at the end of March. Thousands of miners blocked highways in five departments of Bolivia to protest a pending new mining law. Three miners were killed by the national police, while the miners took dozens of police hostage.

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Chile re-inters miners

October 1, 2013

Despite overwhelming evidence against the mine owners, a judge ruled that no one was responsible for the mine collapse in Chile that trapped 33 miners three years ago.

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Black lung disease increasing in youth

September 16, 2012

Detroit, Mich.–An alarming increase in black lung disease (pneumoconiosis) among coal miners is raising serious questions about the effectiveness of coal dust suppression in the nation’s mines. Since the 1980s, cases of the disease have quadrupled in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia. Whereas before it had primarily affected older miners, studies by the Center for Public Integrity, 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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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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Solidarity with Mexican miners

March 31, 2011

Chicago–Black, Latino and Anglo workers here showed solidarity with workers in Mexico on Feb. 19, the fifth anniversary of the Pasta de Conchos mine disaster in Mexico. Over 100 people came out, mostly steelworkers, joined by Jobs with Justice, Arise Chicago Worker Center, and News and Letters.

In recent years the National Union of Mine, Metal, [=>]

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