Interior, United Mine Workers of America union hall, Sundial, West Virginia

The Union Hall in Sundial is the meeting place for Union Local 6608 of the United Mine Workers. During the field project there was much discussion of the Massey/Pittston strikes that had occurred in the 1980s, and about the deeper history of District 17, which some called "the backbone of the United Mineworkers." Districts 17 and 23 had been prominent in the famous March on Blair Mountain of 1921, when 10,000 armed miners attempted to march against the industry's hired thugs in Logan County in order to establish the union there. That uprising was put down by the federal government. In the 1990s, after many decades of union strength in the coal fields, coal is being removed in record quantities with a greatly reduced workforce, much of it non-union. We encountered many miners who had been laid off after nearly twenty years in the mines, just short of eligibility for pensions. Blair Mountain itself is slated for mountaintop removal. We met with members of the UMW Local to ask them for their views on forest issues. A number of miners linked forest health with their hope that deep mining will return to replace mountaintop removal mining -- both as a means of putting more men to work and minimizing the destructive impact of mountaintop removal mining on the land.