M a r k D i l l e y

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from a forwarded email:

"Dear friends,

Yesterday, June 5, 2005, I had the privilege of attending the re-dedication of the Memorial to the martyrs of the Ludlow Massacre which took place on that site on April 20, 1914.The memorial was first dedicated on May 30, 1918 with John L. Lewis officiating.

In 1913, miners working at a site owned by Standard Oil (John D. Rockefeller I) organized against working for company script, living in company housing, sending their kids to company schools, and protesting that the boys had to go to work in the mine by age 12. In the winter of 1913-1914, the company moved all the miners out of the houses in the company town, prevented them from coming to work, and forced them to live in tents on a plain several miles out of town. To keep them there, soldiers (state and federal militia) were brought in to "guard" the miners, with machine gun nests set up all around the miners camp. We must not forget that the "tent city" sat on a plain at an elevation of about 7,000 feet. The winter of 1913-1914 was the coldest on record at that time.

Over the course of the strike, the miners walked the picket line at the mine site, and somehow the women and children had to survive. Over the course of the many months, many of the miners were kidnapped, killed, deported.

On April 20, 1914, the soldiers opened fire on the camp and set it on fire. When it was over, 18 died:

Louis Tikas, age 30 (leader of the strike)...there is a photograph hanging on a fence at the memorial site that shows Tikas' funeral cortege...it shows a horse drawn wagon with the casket, and a file of people behind it for as far as the eye can see...
James Fyler, age 43
John Bartolotti, age 45
Charlie Costa, age 31
Fedelina Costa, age 27
Onafrio Costa, age 6
Lucy Costa, age 4
Frank Rubino, age 23
Patria Valdez, age 37
Eulala Valdez, age 8
Mary Valdez, age 7
Eluria Valdez, age 3 months
Joe Petrucci, age 4
Lucy Petrucci, age 2
Frank Petrucci, age 6 months
William Snyder, Jr. age 11
Rodgerlo Pedregone age 6
Cloriva Pedregone age 4

The UMWA erected the Memorial in 1918. The statues of a man and a woman holding a child were crafted by Italian stone cutters in Vermont, and have stood there on this simple monument on this menacing wide open land all these years.

Several years ago, someone took a sledge hammer to the statues and destroyed the figures. In addition, the assailants sprayed paint on the memorial and signs leading to it..."Lies, Lies, Lies". Not an act of random vandalism.

The UMWA with some donations has worked with artists and the University of Colorado-Denver to have the memorial restored. It has been restored as close as possible to its original design. There is an archeological dig near the memorial to resconstruct the way the miners had to live through that long winter.

The site is NOT an official historical site. Neither the state or the federal government has acted on requests to make it one. Now, a substantial political movement is being waged by a variety of concerned and dedicated forces to have it made such a site.

To be there, on that ground, realizing that the local people of the UMWA have maintained this simple monument sitting out in the middle of nowhere is both inspiring and completely tragic. It is so vulnerable...to everything from the elements, to people who would actually drive out there and try to destroy it.

At the rededication ceremony, there were about 500 people, mostly local mineworkers and their families as well as union members, officials, and supporters from the nearby towns of Walsenberg, Trinidad, Pueblo, and some from Denver. Cecil Roberts, President of the UMWA gave a wonderful address, putting the martyrdom and courage of these miners in the context of the struggles that we must all face up to in a country, as he put it, that not unlike 1913, our country has been taken over by the corporations. Dan Kane, Sec-Treas of the UMWA reminded us that the Ludlow Massacre occured just 49 years after the end of the US Civil War. As he put it: all the rhetoric and ideas that people fought over in terms of maintaining a democracy were eroded to a political reality that the corporations ran the country. After all, how did Standard Oil get the military to "protect" its property?

We are reminded that this strike occured at the time of the great organizing and strike upheavels all over the US at that time, led by Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Lucy Parsons, and so many others in textiles, steel, mining, woodcutting, and basic industry. Most of those strikes and campaigns were crushed, but the experience and commitment of thiose struggles laid the groundwork for the victories of the mass organizing of the 1930's when the modern working class and middle class was built through organizing. Without the earlier struggles and courage, the later struggles would not have been as large nor as sophisticated, nor as committed.

I can tell you that this sentiment and awareness was hanging over the crowd yesterday...where do we go today, and how do we get there? The people assembled there understand the good fight, and are waiting for leadership to help them make it.

...

We all owe so much to the workers and the leaders of the UMWA, America's oldest sustained industrial union, and the union that helped create the CIO. "