"You work. They don't. That's all you got to know about the enemy."

Saturday, cigarette #1

"The coal company don't want this union. The state government don't want it, the federal government don't want it, and they're all of 'em waitin' for an excuse to come down and crush us to nothing. We got to pick away at this situation slow and careful, we got to organize and build support, we got to work together till they can't get their coal out of the ground without us 'cause we're a union! 'Cause we're the workers, damnit, and we take care of each other!"

Don't be fooled by my support for Thatcherite labor reforms! I really am pro-union! Just also pro-strike ballots and anti-closed/union shops!

Then again, everything I know about unions I learned from Matewan (good clip here, some rough language), in which John Sayles makes the obvious point that a union that lives by the sword will die by the sword and the less obvious point that making a devil's bargain for government support is, at the end of the day, just as bad. So maybe that's why my support for labor is so enthusiastic yet so narrowly defined. Also why I think every union organizer should have a drawl and look like Chris Cooper.