Nick Brisini has written this piece on the great Cassandra coal strike in 1932. The battle for human rights in the Appalachian coal fields had a long history and, if studied, has a lot of lessons for workers today. One strike, barely known, was the great Cassandra coal strike of 1932. It was a yearlong […]

Lyrical Capo has covered this weekend’s Stand with Letter Carriers Rally in Johnstown at the Central Park Gazebo this past Sunday (while I was at the Appalachian Studies Association conference). Her report is below. “Community Unites to Save USPS!” On Sunday, March 23rd, at 1 p.m., the community came together to fight against the dismantling […]

On March 11 Theda Skocpol and Lainey Newman of Harvard University spoke at Watershed Books on their book Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party. The book began as a senior thesis project for Lainey Newman under her advisor, Theda Skocpol. Thirty minutes of the talk can […]

This is the second post by Nick Brisini. After doing research on the history of puppeteering, I realized that this noble art form seemed to be dying out in the modern world. Historically speaking, puppet shows were one of the main forms of entertainment for children and even adults. Puppeteers were esteemed, especially a woke […]

Yesterday I had a pleasant conversation with retired IUP sociology professor Jim Dougherty on labor history. He is the founder of the Center for Northern Appalachian studies. When he retired his center ended so he took the sign and put it on his door. We spoke about the history of labor struggles in the area, […]

The Battle of Homestead Foundation and the Pennsylvania Labor History Society held a commemoration of the 1922-23 coal mine strike in Windber, PA. The next day they held a commemoration of a failed 1924 Ku Klux Klan raid on the coal mining town of Lilly. This post will focus on the first day. The meeting […]

Below is another excerpt from my upcoming book on Johnstown by the numbers.  It is a discussion of the job mobility of East central European immigrants in the steel mills in Johnstown, PA from 1900-1950.    Ewa Morawska (1985) in For Bread with Butter: Life-Worlds of East Central Europeans in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1890-1940 thoroughly chronicles the […]

As the standoff at the State Capitol in Wisconsin continues over public employees and teachers to continue to have the right to collective bargaining with no end in sight a similar bill in the Midwestern state of Ohio passed it’s State Senate this week by a vote of 17-16 with protesting crowd sizes maxing out […]

Hans Rosling (Host of the BBC documentary The Joy of Stats) tweeted “In 2009 Saudi Arabia had a lower Democracy score than Tunisia, Egypt & Libya http://www.bit.ly/12T624m, In fact the lowest in the world!”  In the original link he shows for the year 2009 these three countries where recent uprisings have occurred or are occurring […]

I was sent this good first hand account of the events in Madison, WI on Twitter which are on their 6th day and their similarities to those on the Middle East. I couldn’t have written it better.  He tells me he believes there will not be violence in Madison. The Worden Report: Protests in Wisconsin […]