Tag Archives: Mexico

Oaxaca- the people continue to battle back

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Viva La Lucha PopularWhat a turnaround. The Mexican and US elites have underestimated the people’s will to resist in Oaxaca. People arrived from around the country in support of the embattled local population, and the result was a massive demonstration Sunday of possibly up to half a million people. The demonstration was said to stretch for 3 miles along the highway entering the city!
 
Here in the US, this was not really reported on, even though a tiny proPRI demo earlier in the week received exaggerated US media attention. The Gazette, for example, had a big article about this pro sicario action that made it seem huge, when it was certainly not that in the least. There is more great footage of this struggle online.

The turnaround for the people began when the students on the campus successfully beat back a military attack on their stronghold at the university on November 2. This film coverage is entirely in Spanish, but it is obvious what is going on. Once again, we can see that self-defense includes being able to respond in non-pacifist resistance. See the population’s necessary response to military attacks

Oaxaca and Iraq- The people have a right to self defense

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Oaxaca and Iraq demonstrate that the people have a right to self defense against state terrorism. Today, the Mexican police were assaulting the students holding a radio station use in their self defense against the governmental death squads that have been terrorizing the population of Oaxaca. When captured and jailed, the protesters have been severely tortured. What would the mealy mouthed, American Christian pacifist communkity have them do during the military assault on them? Turn the other cheek? Not throw rocks to stave off the capture of the one piece of media available to the Oaxacan community; the university radio station? Not to set fire to barricades to hold the government thugs back from capturing the protesters, and then jailing and torturing them? The American ‘peace’ pacifists would lecture them about the supposed lessons of Gandhi and non-violence, no doubt, as if self defense was some sort of violence itself! The US pacifist community certainly live with a surreal mindset lacking in clarity and reality. And what would they have the Iraqis do as the Pentagon terrorizes that nation? Sit down in the streets and pray? With their constant prattle about the need to be ‘non-violent’ martyrs, the pacifist community tries to deny that people under attack have the right to resist, by any means necessary, as Malcolm X would have stated it.

The resistance of the Iraqi and Oaxacan communities are two examples of the need to RESIST oppression with self defense, and not just the silly pacifism of overly religious folk. It is not just church mice that bring about justice, but real people using real tactics to defend their rights, and not just always spouting Jesus-Gandhi talk. All the ‘peace and justice’ pacifism that bogs down our Left activism in the US, is a denial of solidarity with those folks under the gun. They are also our heros, and not just US Quakers and US Catholic nuns who might accept arrest here at home. Peace with justice can only come about through united resistance of all types, including armed resistance of some type or other.

I am not advocating picking up the gun and going after ‘them’. But what I am saying is that the message and tone of pacifism is a bunch of religious babble, in general. It does not help in building a US antiwar movement to only talk about Jesus, ‘nonviolence’, and Gandhi. The religious message is not our only one, and should not even be our dominant one. It hinders our ability to communicate with the US community at large to always emphasize only this liberal religious sermonizing about ‘peace’. An antiwar community is about much more than just ‘peace’.

I am overjoyed that there are peoples around the globe that are defending themselves against our government violence, and the violence of their death squad allies around the globe. They are doing it with rocks, molotov cocktails, guns, and bombs. They are doing it peacefully if they can, and not peacefully if that avenue is cut off to them. One just gets sick of Englsih speaking (principally) pacifists saying that that is wrong. Let’s tell the truth here. Much of Anglo pacifist sermonzing is pure bullshit. The people have a right to resist and defend themselves no matter what the pacifists in imperialist countries might say.

Let’s say it straight. We want this government organized, US imperialist army defeated. And it is because the US army is wrong in their battle on behalf of the imperial Super Rich in this PARTICULAR war, not just because all battles and all warfare is wrong to fight. It is not just pacifists that are anti US war making. Non-pacifists also hate this US governmental war making, too. Let’s open up the US antiwar community to those of our population that are not religiously motivated by pacifism and spouting non-violence all the time. A ‘peace’ movement that is only trying to convert folk to liberal religous faith is self limiting. There has got to be more message than that.

May the people of Iraq and Mexico push the forces of US hegemony aside, and build themselves a better world.

Documentary about another current Mexican political crisis

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For those who have begun to follow the events in Oaxaca due to learning of Brad Will’s assassination there, I highly recommend this film about the conduct of the Mexican government in another community they have been repressing.

Be sure to watch all three parts of this documentary, and not just the first part, which starts out kind of slow. It is well worth the effort if you do, as this may well be the best documentary ever made about Mexico’s political situation. It records quite well the events that occurred at Atenco (a suburb of Mexico City) in May of this year. And understanding what happened at Atenco will fill you in quickly about what’s going on right now in Oaxaca.

(Parts 2 and 3 have been added in the comments.)

Death of Brad Will sparks US protests against Mexican government

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Tourist destinationThe murder of journalist Brad Will by Mexican government death squads in Oaxaca City last Friday, has brought out multiple US protests at Mexican consulates around the US. And once again, the international spotlight is being turned on the Mexican government like it was previously, when the Zapatistas began their uprising in Chiapas. Mexico, prodded by the US Clinton Adminstration to allow the reign of another polticial party other than the PRI, has in actuality changed not in the least. The PRI institutional dictatorship of old has now morphed into a PRI-PAN alliance for the updated dictatorship of today. A PRI-PAN alliance that conspires together to steal elections, murder off opposition, and to rape and pillage the country on behalf of the US multinational corporations.

Brad Will was an inspirational younger US radical like Rachel Corrie, who was in like fashion murdered by the Israeli military 3 1/2 years ago. Both were dedicated to helping out foreign peoples who were being repressed with the complicity and political support of our own US government. The martyrdom of both have helped open the eyes of many an American to world events that they had been ignoring. We learn, from the sacrifice of their lives, about just how evil is Amercian foreign policy. And we have learned that there are some Americans who are not complacent, but rather are involved in trying to make the world a better place.

Mexico is not a safe place, neither for American travelers nor for the Mexican people themselves. And it is kept unsafe and desperate, due to American interference into the politics of that nation. Our elites are integrally linked with the Mexican elites, and both are sorry and corrupt. And both elites are bankrupting the common folk of their respective nations through militarism, cronyism, and impunity for the corporate criminals that reign supreme in both nations. Brad Will hoped to open eyes with his independent journalism, which he did for no salary. Sadly, he became another of the many victims of Mexico’s government death squads.

Israel and Mexico hope that the Americans, Rachel Corrie and Brad Will, will be forgotten. But they won’t be. Instead, they have inspired us to do more. The Palestinians and the Native Mexican-Americans of Chiapas and Oaxaca have inspired us to resist more, also. We live in a sick world society led by our own US government, and we owe people everywhere to resist more from inside this nation itself. Let us remember the examples of Rachel Corrie and Brad Will, and not let the official media bury their stories. Thank you, ‘Democracy Now’ for your special report today on the life of Brad Will. He was an inspiring young man.

Brad Will presente

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The city of Oaxaca, Mexico is now under direct military assault. For days now death squads have been killing the people there who have been demanding the dismissal of the state governor, who is the guiding force and organizer behind that state’s death squad activity. One of those victims, murdered just a couple of days ago, was an American reporter for IndyMedia, Brad Will. He was dedicated to bringing to light, the fight for justice of the Mexican people against the US supported Mexican dictatorship. See the last film he ran as he was shot down in cold blood: Brad Will- Presente .

One might ask, just what does Oaxaca have anything to do with us here in Colorado Springs? The answer is simply that for us to intelligently judge our own government as it builds a Border Wall and talks tough on Hispanic immigration to this country, we need to know what is going on inside Mexico itself, and other Latin countries, too, like Nicaragua. And just what has been the role of our own government in its long standing propping up of Mexico’s institutional dictatorship? It has not been a very pretty story, and this history says a lot about how little our own elites actually have any democratic inclinations of their own.

For more info on the current situation in Oaxaca and Brad Will, go to either Narco News or IndyMedia

Oaxaca versus Colorado Springs

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In the streetsWe are not supposed to follow these obscure current events in Colorado Springs. Oh sure, our local rag can write editorials advising the Mexican presidential candidate that got robbed of the presidency fraudently in that country to lay down the struggle and do an Al Gore, but….. us US plebians are really not to think about things in far away lands, unless they are more directly pointed out to us. Then of course we can all get up in arms to defend Tibetians, Kosovar Albanians, and all the other what not, while on the way to WalMart to buy Chinese goods.

But still I got to thinking about how all those thousands of Oaxacan rebels marched from the city of Oaxaca, 280 miles away until they arrived yesterday in Mexico City. It seems that they have a Governor who is an assassin and torturer. Kind of like our very own president of the United States. That’s right, thousands of outraged and concerned Mexican citizens marched 280 miles in protest there to show their national capital how they felt.

Here in Colorado Springs, we got our work cut out this week in trying to get tens of people to march 280 inches in reflections upon eyes wide open. No protest signs allowed by order of the Friends it shall be said. What a contrast! Do you think DC will quiver at our power and courage?

Global South evangelism

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Viewed from MexicoThe Global South. There’s an interesting term. I heard it bandied about on the radio yesterday. What a brilliant glimpse of the parochial drive to globalize, to convince us and all to be global citizens. “South” to whom, developed nations? The “southern” climes which struggle perpetually to develop are the tropical zones between the northern and southern hemispheres. They’re not south of Australia, for example, or Argentina. We live on a spinning marble, let’s remember. No one’s on top. Americans have accepted international where we used to say foreign. “Global South” is about as xenophobic as overseas, with condescension thrown in.

In Carlos Fentes’ The Old Gringo, a fictional account of Ambrose Bierce’s last days following the Zapata revolution in Mexico, the aging writer encounters Poncho Villa. Behind Villa’s men on a front porch hangs a map of North America, upside down. When Bierce points this out, the Mexican fighter explains that whether Mexico is viewed as above or below Los Estados Unidos is of course a matter of perspective.

The context in which I heard a Global South being discussed on NPR’s Fresh Air was on the matter of religion. The warmer countries are practicing a more durable form of Christianity apparently. They are an example, it was insinuated, of which traditional developed-nation Christians must take heed. That was the pitch.

The scare? The darkies will usurp our northern moral authority. “Will the next pope be from the Global South,” an incredulous Terry Gross asked? It’s not even a question was the reply. With their overwhelming preponderance of Catholics, the Global South will elect popes of color for as far as we can see. That was not even an answer, if you were paying attention, and clever. Otherwise how to explain a Catholic Church already vastly Latin American electing a German ex-Nazi to popehood?

I hope I’m not also contributing to the condescending tone by suggesting that the tropics offer mankind not much in the Christianity department. Spirituality yes, especially as it might be tied to nature and man’s quest to transcend his basic and collective nature, but self-reflection on printed texts? I think that’s been best left to the colder climes which necessitate industriousness and passing the time indoors reading.

I mean in no way to disparage religion as it’s practiced where it is needed. But to insinuate that a prayer spoken in a precarious environment should put our well-fed congregations to shame is manipulative and base.

Maybe of course we are being prepared for the global economy, the new downsized everybody. No health care, reduced social services, reduced community wealth. Iraqification. The New World Order is a Third World Order. Get ready for Global South uncertainty, anxiety, fragility, mortality and a faith with which to endure it.

The religious example with which NPR was trying to inspire its listeners was made clear by this incredible question: “Is the Global South mainly Evangelical?” The non-answer was again a misleading confirmation. “We should avoid trying to analyze the Global South in northern terms.” Exactly. Different parlance for different folks, my thesis entirely.

And Terry, over half of the world’s Christians are Catholic. The percentage is even higher in the tropics. Evangelicals garner but a fraction. Yours was what’s called a loaded question. So, are most NBA stars rapists? Very hard to say in white men terms probably.

NPR versus Habeas Corpus

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I caught a little of National Public Radio today. Here’s what I heard: A news story about a new program of repatriating illegal immigrants: by flying them back their ancestral homes, away from the Mexico-American border. It’s working rather well administrators say. The program interviewed a freshly apprehended Mexican who has been returned to his $12 a day parking lot attendent job in Mexico City. He said through a translator that he is likely inclined to give up his dream of reaching El Norte.

So let’s see, that’s a story about subsidizing airlines, budgeting Homeland Security funds for the tickets, to be clear. And the one-way-trips seem to be along the logic of driving a live-trapped vermint a minimum of five miles away from your home to keep him from coming back. Works sometimes.

So is it working with the persistent Mexicans? Hard to say as yet. And yet, here’s a report about it on NPR.

Switch over online to Democracy Now and what are they talking about?

Holy Shit, the Senate has passed a torture/anti-human rights bill which repeals the right of Habeas Corpus! The Right of Habeas Corpus has been nearly universal in the western world since the Magna Carta, since 1215 AD. Thirteen Democrats joined with the Republicans to pass the bill, including our man Ken Salazar, and everybody’s slippery rodent Joe Lieberman. Commentators have likened this bill to the internment of the Japanese Americans during WWII and similar national disgraces. We’ll be struggling to apologize and pay reparations. Many are sensibly embarrassed already.

Next up, a description of the Green Zone in Baghdad. Halliburton is serving pork there, and alcohol, insensitive to the Iraqis who must work and eat there, unclean. And on and on.

Can you imagine an informed American populace without the media telling them what’s happening? Why are your friends and neighbors not able to hear Democracy Now on their radios? Who’s standing in their way from hearing the truth over the public airwaves?

In Colorado Springs the gatekeeper is KRCC, the public radio station with a dedicated community of listeners, most of whom are kept in the dark about Democracy Now. On a day like today, it would seem the difference of opinion about station programming is less about taste and more unthinkably out of touch.

Mexico’s election and ours, the different and the same

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Across the US political spectrum it is now widely understood that the US government does aggressively intervene in Latin America, no matter whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House. So no matter what political stripe your average Joe and Jane neighbor may be here in Colorado Springs, you are not too likely to have one deny that the US has historically intervened South of The Border in some form or another; militarily, economically, and culturally. The neighbor leaning Left might say that this has been negative for those countries, while the Rightist will most probably sing interventionism’s praises. The memory of Reagan’s Central American wars of the ’80s remains strong, because some of these wars were so widely covered in the press.

There is one caveat to mention here. The belief that the US is intervening, and has intervened in the past in Latin America, is mostly confined within opinion by the American public, that this is so only south of Mexico. Why? The answer is in that the US press as a whole, treats mention of US interventionism in Mexico and its politics as its grand taboo. Despite the fact that Mexico is a huge and populous country and is where the Third World meets the US to our South, the US press does all it can to keep Americans just as ignorant about Mexico as they can be made.

As one example, just how many non Hispanic Americans can name the Mexican states that border the US? How many of these same Americans know that Mexico is divided into states even? But how many of these same folk yet have strong and basically uninformed opinions regarding immigration from that country? The sum total of belief the US non Hispanic public has been taught by the English language US press, is that Mexico is poor and that many want to live here because of that. Further information is kept back, and the widespread Anglo public view is that Mexicans run their own country and the US has nothing to do with that. Unfortunately, that perception is totally false.

To illustrate the point that the US in fact has a major role in directing Mexican life, let me just mention a few facts about Walmart in Mexico. This American company is Mexico’s largest private employer with over 100,000 employees and over 800 stores there. It now is entering into the countries banking structure as a major player, too. It is just ridiculous to imagine that the Walton family of Arkansas is just standing to the side when political and economic decisions are being made, whether in Spanish, or not.. They have an agenda, and push it just as hard in Mexico as they do in the US. Their agenda, in short, is to make profits in that country and to move those billions to Bentonville, USA.

I don’t want to pick on Walmart here. They are just one of many prominent examples of US presence in Mexico, and exploitment of it. They have high level company officials, as other US companies and the US government itself do, that interact with the Mexican elites themselves to maintain a ‘good business climate’. What existed before the year 2000, was the longest running one-party dictatorship in the world. Both Mexican and US elites decided was that this was not good for business at that time. Previously, they had agreed that this dictatorship was absolutely just the thing for business and US government support for the PRI dictatorship was kept solid. And the US press’s silence about this ran solid for decades, too.

In the last 2 US presidential elections, the results left many believing that fraud had carried Bush into office twice. At any rate Bush received less votes (called popular votes, as if that made them insignificant) than Al Gore did in 2000, and yet got the office! Gore realized that though he had won the vote count and that the Republicans had fraudently purged voter lists of largely eligible Black voters, that he was not as popular amongst the US elite as Bush was at the time. So he laid down his claim for the presidency, and conceded without a struggle! And America has been as it has, ever since.

Mexico had its presidential election about 10 weeks ago. News of it was kept quiet in the US daily press, as if it was of no real concern to Americans. Pretty strange behavior for what bills itself as the ‘free press’, but not real shocking if we consider how the US press has been largely lap dogs in support of Bush’s multiple invasions, occupations, and wars. Not much coverage of Bush in Haiti these days, neither. How much real examination has there been of whether the Israeli invasion of Lebanon had roots in the White House?

But what came out of this election south of us was a fraudulent result that will possibly impact the US as much as Iraq now does. After all, the US and Mexico are intertwined on the North American continent, and neither country will ever become an island into itself,no matter how hard it is tried. I could go into the many details of why the results were fraudulent, something that is now being denied in US daily editorial after another. That would seem arcane and boring to most readers though. What counts, is that about half of the Mexican population is certain that the results are fraudulent and the official president stands with little legitimacy in their eyes. And the US supports that man, as do the Mexican church, government, and economic elites that have long impoverished that country.

What really is fearful to the US media, is that the official ‘loser’ of the Mexican presidential race, Antonio Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), has chosen a path completely in contrast to that of our US loser of the past, Al Gore. He has decided to struggle against the fraud rather than to meekly surrender to it. Despite the effort to reconstruct Gore’s image amongst the US public as Mr. Ecology, he will probably go down in history as the goat that led to the construction of the Bush Administration. Mexico’s ‘loser’, AMLO, may well go down to being seen as a hero in the struggle against US control of his country, and the destruction of its national integrity.

The situation in Mexico now is quite complex. The country’s highest court just put a man in office, that even with fraud in his favor, gathered less than 40% of the votes! The south of the country went for AMLO, and the north went more to Calderon, now the official ‘president’. About 30% of the country stuck with the PRI, party of the no supposedly defunct one-party dictatorship of the past. Fact is, that both Calderon’s party and the PRI have been acting in conjunction with each other, as if they were but 2 wings of one corporate party. Does this ring a bell for some Americans?

Our government and institutions should not fall into line accepting Mexican electoral fraud as they are now doing. The fact that they have done so bodes poorly for our own embattled system. Neither country can afford to continue where only elites make decisions that effect all of us. Neither country needs Tweedle-Dee/ Tweedle-Dumb governance. That way leads to national insecurity for both nations.

The close election portent

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Hmm. Another bad sign.

I saw CNN running a promo for its election season coverage, a teaser purporting to remind us to stick with CNN when the election is upon us.

At face value, is that not odd? Wouldn’t we be judging our news source based on its reporting of today’s news, instead of its relative foresight of tomorrow’s excitements? Also, are we not already CNN watchers if we are seeing the ads? This is not like advertizing one TV show to viewers of another. It’s like promoting the second half of the Superbowl during the first half. Pointless, I’d say, unless we have something to spin with the promotion.

CNN’s election 2006 hook? The CNN tagline was “Election 2006: How close will it be?”

How close will it be?

Has anyone said it will be close? At present the GOP is getting a trouncing. All the Republican yahoos have egg on their faces and the public wants to run the bums out. It’s happening all over, if not so widely celebrated on mainstream news.

Nevertheless, someone thinks the election in November will be close. Who? My guess it’s Diebold.

I’m guessing that Diebold would like to pave the way for an election result they can live with. To do this they first have to create an anticipation that the election will be close. Too close to call in fact. Then it won’t be such a surprise when the winners are… Republicans! By a nose!

When our media anchors began to report that the Mexican election was going to be very close, the fix was in. How chilling it was to hear. Until then everybody’s favorite Obrador had been leading throngs of supporters through the streets of Mexico City, leading a peaceful revolution against the entrenched pro-US corruption government. Mexico was following the populist flow of the Latin American justice and equality movement.

Then apparently the election was looking to be close. What, were there suddenly just as many entrenched corrupt bureaucrat voters as there were oppressed masses? Where would that voter parity come from, if not electronic ghost votes?

And now the Mexican election is being decided by their supreme court. Sound familiar?

Unfree unfair elections

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Ask a Democrat when you have the chance, to what do they owe their sense of optimism about the upcoming elections? Do they think they can beat Diebold and GOP election administrators this time around?

Really, what went wrong in November 2004, and before that 2000? What could the Democrats do differently this time to win? (If not dismantling black box voting?)

Mexico’s popular candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador expected a clean win in this summer’s election. But the voting machines came up dead even, and then tilted toward the bad guy by a smudge. Sorry Charlie. The Mexican public suspects foul play.
 
Millions of Mexicans are protesting in the street, asking for a recount of the election.
Do the Democrats imagine that they will be able to rally a disenfranchised American public? 		  Mexico City protest

 
Except for Robert Kennedy Jr, a good many ostracized experts, and a growing progressive cognoscenti, few voices in the Democratic Party are even addressing the issue of crooked US elections. When will Democratic candidates and party leaders concede that previous elections have been stolen? How are Democrats to win if they face rigged results?

Instead Democratic Party members are urging us to concentrate on grassroot fund drives.

What kind of idiots do they take us for? To condemn them less cynically, what kind of idots are they? Or, less insulting, are they in collusion with the GOP?

Local Democratic organizers expect the rank and file to do their utmost this time, to walk the streets for the candidates, to contribute their money and their hope. The party is expecting all of us to place our hope in middle-of-the-road issues, nothing too radical for the sake of having a broader appeal in the next election.

Without electronic voting reform, I don’t think we have a chance in the next election. And I think DC Democrats are advocating centrist objectives to keep pertinent issues from the public discourse.

And it looks to me like Democrats are preparing to tell us, after lots of grassroots work, at the close of another lost election, that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Israelites go home

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Baja JudeaAdmittedly this is a picture of Tel Aviv residents protesting their nation’s militant actions against Lebanon and gathering to offer a prayer for peace.
 
On another level, is it also a picture of fair-skinned westerners on a Middle Eastern beach who’ve overstayed their welcome?
 
Maybe it’s time to close Club Med Judea.

Americans descend upon Baja Mexico all the time, we don’t try to annex it. Or Costa Rica, or Belize. There’s nothing wrong with vacationing in the tropics, but is it fair to emigrate there, declare it your own, and ask the world to protect you from the anger of the people who you sent packing?

Let American and European Jews have their promised land, as promised vacation land. Visit and sunbathe all you want, then go home. This idea that white man should colonize Arabia is so 19th century. Colonization doesn’t work, and we have no right.

Nowhere was this more obvious than South Africa, where white colonizers held themselves as superior to the natives, imposing apartheid to force the indigenous populations to keep to their own neighborhoods.

Can there ever be peace in the Holy Land? Of course there can. Return Israel to its rightful owners. Let Jew, Muslim and Christian live together in a secular state. Will there always be sectarian violence? Perhaps, we’re seeing it elsewhere between Muslims. Sectarian problems will have to be worked out between neighbors. It’s clear the answer was not to give the whole ball of wax to one religion. Especially not the white one.

Some Colorado labor history

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Labor day. It commemorates the likes of Samuel Gompers, Big Bob Haywood and Mother Jones and their efforts to unite working class peoples. They met great resistance from gullible populations of consumers and business owners who weren’t going to give anything unless they were forced.

Child labor laws, five day work weeks, eight hour days, overtime pay, work breaks, retirement, benefits, sick days, vacation days, we owe all these to the might of collective bargaining.

Today’s labor organizers are seen more as standing in the way of productivity. We think of union workers as lazy and greedy, corrupt and undeserving. How is it the labor unions have fallen so low in our sentiments? Probably because businesses have public relations budgets which advance the corporate view, and labor unions, well, do not.

Was this always so? Actually, yes.

The Gold Miner’s Strike, 1894
Colorado Springs citizens themselves figured prominently in an early and notorious labor conflict: the Cripple Creek Miner’s Strike of 1894. Miners united by the Western Federation of Miners were fighting for the three dollar, eight hour day. This was a high wage at the time, but the gold mining business was a veritable bonanza and mine owners were building huge homes on Wood Avenue, “Millionaire’s row.”

Up on the mountain the miners seized and shut down the mines. From their exclusive hang out, the El Paso Club, the mine owners complained about the evils of socialism and the populist leanings of the governor.

When underhanded attempts to dislodge the strikers failed, the mine owners, with the assistance of the Gazette, convinced the population of Colorado Springs to rise up in arms against the miners, lest the miners descend from the mountain and attack them. Twelve hundred men were deputized and led on a march to defeat the seven hundred miners. Luckily the 1,200-strong Colorado Springs volunteer posse was outwitted and the miners achieved their demands.

The struggle was long and bitter and makes an amusing story now. We can be happy that the miners prevailed but let us not today be mistaken about which side most of Colorado Springs was on.

Breaking the union, 1904
By 1904, miners had lost the eight hour day. The Mine Owner’s Association issued work permits only to miners who would renounce their union memberships. As the owners shipped in scab labor to substitute for the union holdouts, the conflict grew bloody. The state militia was called in to close the Victor Record, a newspaper sympathetic to the W. F. M. The union was silenced.

On June 6, 1904, a lunatic fighting on the side of the miners, but for motives of his own, blew up a train platform, killing 21 nonunion workers. Though it was not then established who had done it, the W. F. M. was immediately blamed and routed. 225 union miners, a number of whom had families in Cripple Creek, were boarded unto trains and deported from Teller County.

One group was sent to the Kansas border, marched across, and abandoned. The other was dropped off in a desolate part of New Mexico. All were threatened with dire consequences should they return. The mine owners responsible have names which any Colorado Springs resident can recognize today: Carlton, MacNeill, Penrose, and Tutt.

The Ludlow Massacre, 1914
Who hasn’t heard of the “Ludlow Massacre?” The Ludlow Massacre put Colorado on the map. Do you know what for?

In 1913, the coal miners of Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation in Trinidad were protesting against poor wages, unsafe conditions, and struggling with debt in towns owned entirely by their employer. Naturally when the workers went on strike they were immediately evicted from their shacks.

With help from the United Mine Workers Union the striking workers were able to set up tents in the nearby hills and continue their protest. The Rockefellers hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to snipe at them and fire into their camps with Gatling guns. The National Guard was brought in to further harass the striking workers, the justification given to the public being the interrupted supply of coal.

When the miners were able to keep up their strike through the harsh winter that year, the Rockefellers had the Governor of Colorado order an all out attack. The National Guard encircled the largest of the tent settlements at Ludlow, inhabited by approximately one thousand men, women and children, and commenced firing.

Thirteen people were killed in the shoot out before the soldiers set fire to the tents and forced the families to flee. After the fire, someone discovered eleven burned corpses, most of them children. They’d been hiding in a shelter dug to escape the incessant gunfire.

News of the “Ludlow Massacre” spread fast. Working class people came from the surrounding areas to avenge the massacre. Mine shafts were exploded, mine guards were shot, anarchy reigned in the hills, and this time President Wilson sent in the Federal troops.

In the end, 66 people were killed. Not a single mine operator or soldier was indicted of a crime. The press announced the attack on the union stronghold and the burning of the sheltered children to have been “a tactical blunder.”

Should such accounts be taught in our schools? The next time we’re told that a union’s demands are unreasonable, let’s remember to look who’s doing the telling.

(This article is reprinted from CRANK MAGAZINE, vol I, number 7)