West Virginia

WV resident Jo Santiago, a wildlife biologist and a raptor rehabilitation specialist with the US Forest Service gives us a seldom seen glimpse of a raptor rescue and subsequent release back into the wild.

Cross-posted from "32 AGs Call on Congress To Implement Cannabis Banking Reforms" by @gingerbier@lemmy.world in !newjerseycannabis@lemmy.world

The linked letter has the signatures from all of the AGs supporting cannabis banking reform. I was absolutely shocked to see WVAG McCuskey was among the signatories.

Does this mean, maybe, we're ever so slightly closer to legalization here? I know I'm grasping at straws, but this state has been extremely hostile toward cannabis legalization, so I'm taking what potentially good news I can get.

This is part two of a series of pieces of WV history I'm actually proud of; history our residents / voting demographic seem to have completely forgotten.

The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in United States history and is the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War. The conflict occurred in Logan County, West Virginia, as part of the Coal Wars, a series of early-20th-century labor disputes in Appalachia.

For five days from late August to early September 1921, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers (called the Logan Defenders) who were backed by coal mine operators during the miners' attempt to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields when tensions rose between workers and mine management. The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired, and the United States Army, represented by the West Virginia Army National Guard led by McDowell County native William Eubanks, intervened by presidential order.

MATEWAN MASSACRE. In 1920 area miners went on strike to gain recognition of UMWA. On May 19 of the same year, twelve Baldwin–Felts Agency guards came from Bluefield to evict the miners from company houses. As guards left town, they argued with town police chief Sid Hatfield and Mayor Testerman. Shooting of undetermined origins resulted in the deaths of two coal miners, seven agents, and the mayor. None of the 19 men indicted were convicted.

--Historic Marker located off of Main Street in Matewan, WV

Wikipedia Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Matewan

Note: Apologies for the possible double post. I wanted to add an image, but when I did, the embed metadata went all screwy so I just deleted that post and re-created it.

The Battle of Matewan (also known as the Matewan Massacre) was a shootout in the town of Matewan in Mingo County and the Pocahontas Coalfield mining district, in southern West Virginia. It occurred on May 19, 1920 between local coal miners and their allies and the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency. The dead included the detective agency's founder's two brothers and Matewan's mayor Cabell Testerman, who supported the union.

History

Employed by the Stone Mountain Coal Company, a contingent of the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency arrived on the No. 29 morning train to evict families that had been living at the Stone Mountain Coal Camp on the outskirts of town. The detectives carried out several evictions before they ate dinner at the Urias Hotel and, upon finishing, they walked toward the train depot to catch the five o'clock train back to Bluefield, West Virginia. As the detectives made their way to the train depot, they were intercepted by Matewan Chief of Police Sid Hatfield, who claimed to have arrest warrants from the Mingo County sheriff. Hatfield, a native of the Tug River Valley, was a supporter of the miners' attempts to organize the UMWA in the southern coalfields of West Virginia. Detective Albert Felts and his brother Lee Felts then produced their own warrant for Sid Hatfield's arrest. Upon inspection, Matewan mayor Cabell Testerman claimed it was fraudulent.

Unbeknownst to the detectives, they had been surrounded by armed miners, who watched intently from the windows, doorways, and roofs of the businesses that lined Mate Street. Accounts vary as to who actually fired the first shot and the ensuing gun battle left seven detectives and three townspeople dead, including the Felts brothers and Testerman. The battle was hailed by miners and their supporters for the number of casualties inflicted on the Baldwin–Felts detectives. This incident, along with events such as the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado six years earlier, marked an important turning point in the battle for miners' rights.

Coal Miners

At the time, the United Mine Workers of America had just elected John L. Lewis as their president. During this period, miners worked long hours in unsafe and dismal working conditions, while being paid low wages. Adding to the hardship was the use of coal scrip by the Stone Mountain Coal Company, because the scrip could only be used for those goods the company sold through their company stores.

A few months before the battle at Matewan, union miners in other parts of the country went on strike, receiving a full 27 percent pay increase for their efforts. Lewis recognized that the area was ripe for change, and planned to organize the coal fields of southern Appalachia. The union sent its top organizers, including the famous Mary Harris "Mother" Jones.

Roughly 3000 men signed the union's roster in the spring of 1920. They signed their union cards at the community church, something that they knew could cost them their jobs, and in many cases their homes. The coal companies controlled many aspects of the miners' lives. Stone Mountain Coal Corporation fought back with mass firings, harassment, and evictions.

Town of Matewan

Matewan, founded in 1895, was a small independent town with only a few elected officials. The mayor at the time was Cabell Testerman, and the chief of police was Sid Hatfield. Both refused to succumb to the company's plans and sided with the miners. In turn, the Stone Mountain Coal Corporation hired their own enforcers, the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency, dubbed the "Baldwin Thugs" by the miners. The coal operators hired them to evict the miners and their families from the company-owned houses. As a result, hundreds of miner families spent the spring of 1920 in tents. The assemblage of tents was known as Stony Mountain Camp Tent Colony.

Battle

On the day of the fight, a group of the Baldwin–Felts enforcers arrived to evict families living at the mountain coal camp, just outside Matewan. The sheriff and his deputy, Fred Burgraff, sensed trouble and met the Baldwin–Felts detectives at the train station. News of the evictions soon spread around the town. When Sid Hatfield approached Felts, Felts served a warrant on Hatfield, which had been issued by Squire R. M. Stafford, a Justice of the Peace of Magnolia District, Mingo County, for the arrest of Hatfield, Bas Ball, Tony Webb and others. The warrant had been directed to Albert C. Felts for execution. Burgraff's son reported that the detectives had sub-machine guns with them in their suitcases.

Hatfield, Burgraff, and Mayor Cabell Testerman met with the detectives on the porch of the Chambers Hardware Store. It was then that Albert Felts fired from his coat pocket, mortally wounding Testerman, and then fired over his shoulder at Sid Hatfield, instantly killing a miner, Tot Tinsley. At this time Sid Hatfield opened fire, killing Albert Felts. When the shooting finally stopped, there were casualties on both sides. Seven Baldwin–Felts detectives were killed, including Albert and Lee Felts. One more detective had been wounded. Two miners were killed: Tinsley and Bob Mullins, who had just been fired for joining the union; both were unarmed. Mayor Testerman died in hospital the next day from his gunshot wound. Four other bystanders were wounded.

Aftermath

Governor John J. Cornwell ordered the state police force to take control of Matewan. Hatfield and his men cooperated, and stacked their arms inside the hardware store. The miners, encouraged by their success in getting the Baldwin–Felts detectives out of Matewan, improved their efforts to organize.

On July 1 the miners' union went on another strike, and widespread violence erupted. Railroad cars were blown up, and strikers were beaten and left to die by the side of the road.

The trial for the miners who killed the seven agents started January 26, 1921, and ended March 19, 1921, with all defendants being acquitted of all charges.

Tom Felts, the last remaining Felts brother, sent undercover operatives to collect evidence to convict Sid Hatfield and his men. When the charges against Hatfield and 22 others for the murder of Albert Felts were dismissed, Baldwin–Felts detectives assassinated Hatfield and his deputy Ed Chambers on August 1, 1921, on the steps of the McDowell County courthouse located in Welch, West Virginia. Of those defendants whose charges were not dismissed, all were acquitted.

Less than a month later, miners from the state gathered in Charleston. They were even more determined to organize the southern coal fields, and began the march to Logan County. Thousands of miners joined them along the way, culminating in what was to become known as the Battle of Blair Mountain.

See Also: Battle of Blair Mountain

I may do another post for Blair Mountain, but it's a good read if you don't want to wait.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/8481673

Zach Shrewsbury faces an improbable task to replace the conservative Democrat in the face of a Republican onslaught – but he won’t be put off.

To launch his campaign for US Senate, Zach Shrewsbury chose the site of one of America’s most famous hangings.

Charles Town, West Virginia, was where state authorities executed the abolitionist John Brown after he led an attack on a federal armory a few miles down the road in Harpers Ferry, a pivotal moment in the lead-up to the civil war. One hundred and sixty four years later, Shrewsbury – who decided against attempting to get a permit for the event at the site of the insurrection, which is now a national park – stood on the courthouse grounds where Brown’s hanging took place to announce that he would be the only “real Democrat” running to represent West Virginia in the Senate next year.

“We need leaders that are cut from the working-class cloth. We need representation that will go toe to toe with corporate parasites and their bought politicians. We need a leader who will not waver in the face of these powers that keep the boot on our neck,” Shrewsbury said to applause from the small group of supporters gathered behind him.

“So, as John Brown said, ‘These men are all talk. What we need is action.’ I’m taking action right now to stand up to these bought bureaucrats.”

Joe Manchin warns second Trump term will ‘destroy democracy in America’ Read more The remarks were a swipe at Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator who for the past 13 years had managed to represent what has become one of the most Republican states in the nation. In recent years he has used his power as a swing vote in Congress to stop several of Joe Biden’s legislative priorities – attracting the ire of progressives and prompting Shrewsbury to mount a primary challenge.

A few weeks after Shrewsbury began campaigning, he was showing a friend around an abandoned mining town when his phone rang with news: Manchin had decided not to seek re-election, leaving Shrewsbury as the only Democrat in the race.

By all indications, Shrewsbury, a 32-year-old Marine Corps veteran and community organizer, faces a difficult, if not impossible, road to victory. West Virginia gave Donald Trump his second-biggest margin of support of any state in the nation three years ago, and Manchin is the last Democrat holding a statewide office. Political analysts do not expect voters to elect the Democratic candidate – whoever that turns out to be – and predict Manchin will be replaced by either Governor Jim Justice or Congressman Alex Mooney, the two leading Republicans in the Senate race.

Shrewsbury’s message to them is: not so fast.

“People were really sold on the fact that Joe Manchin could be the only Democrat that could win in West Virginia, and I very much disagree,” Shrewsbury told the Guardian a week after the senator made his announcement.

Also a former governor, Manchin is considered the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, and when the party took the majority by a single vote in the chamber in 2021, Manchin stopped the Biden administration from passing policies that would have made permanent a program to reduce child poverty, and more forcefully fight climate change.

Sitting in a conference room at the Fayette county Democratic party’s headquarters in Oak Hill, where visitors pass a lobby displaying an American flag, a pride flag, and a stack of Narcan, the opioid-overdose reversal medication, Shrewsbury outlined his plans to run a campaign distinctly to the left of Manchin’s policies – and one he believes can win.

“People want someone who’s genuine. They don’t want a politician. They want someone who actually looks like them. I mean, hell, you can’t get much more West Virginia than this,” said Shrewsbury, fond of wearing flannel shirts and hunting caps.

Among his priorities are creating universal healthcare and childcare programs, and reducing the role of incarceration in fighting the opioid epidemic ravaging West Virginia.

“Everyone here just is thankful for the scraps or crumbs that we get from whoever we elect. And that’s who we keep electing – whoever can keep the little crumbs coming along. I’m trying to say there is a better way,” Shrewsbury said.

He also doesn’t shy away from identifying as a socialist, arguing the term may be less politically damaging than it appears – West Virginia Democrats voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary, and the independent senator, he argues, is popular even with the state’s Republicans.

“If caring about working-class people, caring about people having bodily autonomy, water rights, workers’ rights, makes you a socialist, then call me whatever you want. Doesn’t bother me,” Shrewsbury said.

Raised on a farm by a Republican family in rural Monroe county, Shrewsbury dropped out of college after a semester and joined the marines. In the years that followed, he guarded the perimeter at the US base in Guantánamo Bay, and was deployed to Japan, Malaysia and South Korea before eventually moving to Seattle and then returning to West Virginia, where he realized how bereft his home state was of the prosperity he saw elsewhere in the country and overseas.

“Why can’t my home be as economically profitable as the rest?” Shrewsbury recalls thinking. “It woke me up in the Marine Corps a little bit, and once I got back home, I really just kind of put the nail in the coffin there for what I was gonna be for work. I want to help people.”

He turned to community organizing, seeing it as a way to help a state with the fourth-highest poverty rate in the nation, which is struggling to transition from the declining coal and logging industries that have historically undergirded its economy.

“I know Zach’s a long shot. It’s like David against three Goliaths,” said Pam Garrison, a fellow community organizer. “Zach is able to be hardline when he needs to be. I’ve seen him being forceful and steadfast in his principles and what things are. And then I’ve seen the compassionate and empathy side of Zach too, And that’s what makes a good politician.”

Since 2020, Shrewsbury has helped towns dig out from flooding, door-knocked in the narrow Appalachian valleys – known as hollers – to find out what residents were looking for from the state legislature, and talked to mayors and city councils about the opportunities presented by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which incentivizes consumer usage of renewable energy, including home solar panels.

Though Manchin played a key role in authoring the IRA, he also nixed the expanded child tax credit, which has been credited with cutting the child poverty rate by half in 2021, the sole year it was in effect. Shrewsbury was outraged by reports that later emerged of the senator privately expressing worries that people would use the program’s money to buy drugs, and jumped into the race.

Despite the state’s conservative leanings, Sam Workman, the director of the Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs at West Virginia University, believed Manchin may have had a path to victory had he decided to run. But he said the same cannot be said for Shrewsbury or any other Democrat.

“It’s kind of a fall-on-your-sword moment,” Workman said. “Politics is like sports: you should never say never, but I do not see the Democrats winning the Senate seat, no matter who runs.”

Shrewsbury may be alone in the Democratic primary at the moment, but he expects other candidates to enter. Since launching his campaign, he has not heard from the state Democratic party, nor the national party’s senate campaign arm.

“I’m not exactly what the party wants, because I speak my mind. You know, I’m not going to toe the party line,” he said. “I wish the party would get back in more touch with the workers. But like I said, I have the message that many people aren’t saying.”