Bloody Harlan

We saw an interesting documentary tonight at our local library. Harlan County USA was filmed in the early 1970s to document the struggle for coal miners in Kentucky to unionize.

The resulting strike lasted for months and months, and was ended only when one of the strikers was shot and killed.

During the film, the time in the 1930s dubbed “Bloody Harlan” was referred to several times. This was another time of violent struggles between the miners and the mine owners.

Safety, medical care, and pensions were the goals the miners were looking for. Especially safety.

And even in the 1970s, when this film was made, the filmmaker stresses that the mines were being inspected, and given safety variances during all or most of the inspections - and then there were life-ending mine disasters.

And this still happens today. The mine cave-in where 11 miners were killed a couple of weeks ago in West Virginia happened in a mine which had been inspected, and given variances.

Why can’t there be better oversight of these mines? Not ENOUGH government? Not enough money to increase the oversight? Yet folks keeps hollering for less government and less government oversight. Any possibility of collusion between mine owners and the people who do the inspections?

And the miners keep dying.
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Sometimes, when you’re whale watching and taking photos, you just get the backs of heads of people (with casts on their hands) trying to take pictures of the whales.