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CUMBERLAND, Ky. – A little after 4 pm On Friday, four huge taxis facing each other, facing each other in pairs and taking both lanes, stopped the Kingdom Come Parkway. On the road between the trucks, eight unemployed coal miners waved a banner: "No Pay We Stay".
This is the miners plan in its entirety, and that's what they did for almost three weeks.
An event that began with five men blocking a train filled with coal has become a small town of tents that can accommodate 24 hours a day, along some railroad tracks along the road. It has become a place of pilgrimage for union activists, a rallying point for the community – "a steroid lobby", as approved by a local official. And it's the first organized miners' event that anyone can remember for decades in Harlan County, Kentucky, a place that once was almost synonymous with bloody labor wars.
The rail blockade began in late July, about a month after Blackjewel, the two-year-old mining company, suddenly went bankrupt. Blackjewel owned mines in four states and employed more than a thousand miners in central Appalachia.
In the middle of the afternoon, the miners learned that Blackjewel immediately shut down and put everyone out of work. She did so without filing a mandatory 60-day advance notice and without depositing bond, required by Kentucky law, to cover the payroll.
Workers were not paid for their last week of work. They then learned that their pay checks of the previous two weeks had rebounded. Bankruptcies and layoffs have become commonplace in coal mines during an exhausting decline in the industry, but nobody seemed to remember anything of the sort.
"It's no different from robbing a bank," said Jeffrey Willig, a nervous 40-year-old son with six children.
In Harlan County, hundreds of miners ended up with negative bank balances, mortgages, car payments and drug costs. Some were informed of the news by ex-spouses who had not received automatic support payments. The lawyers representing the miners in the bankruptcy proceedings estimated that Blackjewel employees located in central Appalachia each had $ 4,202.91 as salary and benefits earned.
But the employees are only one party fighting alongside other Blackjewel creditors to obtain parts of the company in the Federal Bankruptcy Court.
One of the company's assets was a coal-laden train worth more than $ 1 million at Cloverlick No. 3 Mine in Harlan County. The coal, recovered by the unpaid workers, had been sold, but had not yet been transported to the buyer. In the afternoon of July 29, the train slowly left the mine. This did not go unnoticed.
"They were doing it as silently as possible," said 20-year-old Dalton Lewis.
A junior colleague called him with his plan: "Come here, we'll stop this train."
This instinct is deeply rooted in Harlan County. In the 1930s, efforts to organize the miners culminated in "Bloody Harlan" – a hashtag printed on protest signs – a deadly conflict between thousands of union miners at coal mines, law enforcement and security forces. to strikebreakers. Blood was poured again in the early 1970s during a fierce 13-month strike by workers at the Brookside Mine, which was the subject of the award-winning documentary "An Oscar."Harlan County, United States ยป
But there had been little union protests in Harlan for years before the afternoon of July when Mr. Lewis joined Willig and three other miners on the railroad.
Nearly three weeks later, the coal train remained idle at the mine. Alerted by the news of the stalemate in Harlan, the Ministry of Labor intervened to block the shipment of coal, viewing it as a "hot commodity". Blackjewel quickly agreed that the proceeds from the sale of coal would go to his former employees.
Some have found work, often far from Harlan; Mr. Lewis left for Alabama. Blackjewel's mining operations in Harlan have been purchased and the new owners are committed to paying miners some of the money they are due. But the mines have not reopened yet and no money has arrived – not new owners, and certainly not Blackjewel.
So, day after day, a small group of families sit in camp chairs at the edge of the tracks, trapping a million dollars of coal in a bend. A group of ropes meet occasionally on the tracks to play old mountain songs and ballads.
The tents have proliferated, some bearing the logos of the local funeral homes that provided them. There are portable toilets provided by the city and county, as well as a generator and a children's tent with books, toys and portable cribs. A The philanthropic foundation donated $ 2,000 to each miner, and the owner of a local Chinese restaurant raised thousands of dollars for herself. Hair salons offered free haircuts for back to school, and the county probation and parole office provided donated toiletries.
The camp runs on Red Bull and soda – with the ice cream offered by a retirement home. Meals are prepared in an improvised kitchen that holds two tents. The donated food has been returned by wagon since the beginning of the event.
"Bernie Sanders has offered me pizza," said a puzzled Pizza Hut delivery man who stopped on Friday afternoon. Someone involved in the protest reportedly spoke to someone from Sanders' presidential campaign.
Politicians flocked to the scene including Governor Matt Bevin, a Republican, and Amy McGrath, a Democrat candidate for the Senate. However, to maintain their eclectic coalition, camp leaders tried to curb explicit discourses on partisan politics. This is particularly difficult when strangers come forward, such as solidarity truckers who came from all over the country last week in the Black Smoke Matters group, one of them wearing a t-shirt celebrating the construction. from a wall by President Trump. .
Much of the day-to-day life in the tent city was organized by a group of activists who camp on the spot, many of whom identify as transgender and anarchist. The activists came from the region in the early days of the blockade, some with experience in managing these types of camps during environmental protests, and they quickly began to work to manage the kitchen and exploit the networks of liberal interest groups to get contributions.
Echoing unexpected unexpected protest alliances of the past, the militants have quietly mingled with the daily traffic of the city under the tent. Meanwhile, evangelical preachers come to attend impromptu prayer services and union officials deliver beer vases in the bed of a van.
There have been no union mines in eastern Kentucky for decades, but the speeches allude to the old labor war in Harlan County. This is not too far away: the unemployed Blackjewel miners remember their father talking about dynamite and shots.
"The story is repeating itself," said Willig, who stood on the sidewalk Friday with the miners, waving the banner of the protest.
The blockade of the road, organized by the truckers, lasted about ten minutes. There was no specific plan for what was going to follow, Willig said returning to the tent city. No plan, that is to say other than staying on the spot.
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