Professor’s Facebook group rallies +2,800 member to search for change

By: Margaret Thompson

After the coal mining accident where 29 workers were killed in early April, a history professor decided to create a Facebook group to raise awareness about the situation.

Melissa Steinmetz is passionate about politics and teaching history. In her US Modern History class she allows students to discuss current news topics in relation to the history they are learning.

“My real fondness or my emotional connection to labor history in the late 19th century is the idea that there is a group of hard working individuals who are being treated so poorly by the owners of corporations and have no where to turn but each other.” Steinmetz said. “The government wasn’t helping them. The owners weren’t helping them. Everything was about profit for the owners.

“FDR showed us that the government can do effective things to help the population, to help ordinary people. It’s my fervent wish that the government would do more to protect working Americans.”

Steinmetz said a class discussion on this what led her to create the Facebook group “Don Blankenship is a criminal. Charge him with manslaughter.”

Don Blankenship is the CEO of West Virginia’s largest coal producer, Massey Energy Company. After the explosion at the company’s Upper Brig Branch, where 29 workers were killed, attention was focused on Blankenship.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration cited the Upper Big Branch mine 458 times in 2009 and 117 in 2010 with violations of health or safety standards, rules, orders, or regulations.

Graph taken from MSHA webpage concerning Upper Big Branch Mine.

Blankenship has been known for aggressively appealing mining safety violations.

Steinmetz said she believes these problems should be prevented and it is Blankenship’s responsibility to correct violations, not simply appeal them. For this reason she said she believes Blankenship should be held responsible for the deaths of the 29 miners.

“It seems that the strategy of Massey has been to appeal these violations rather than take care of the issues,” Steinmetz said. “Massey has been criticized, and Blankenship in particular because of some comments he has made, for putting profit ahead of worker safety.”

Steinmetz said the problems the mineworkers are facing today are similar to the Progressive era labor issues she teaches to students.

“We were talking about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911, where 146 workers died.” Steinmetz said. “The owners of the factory were charged with manslaughter and they, of course, were found not guilty. But similar ideas were going through my head as I was thinking about the miners and getting increasingly angry that workers are still facing issues related to safety that are rooted in the late nineteenth century.”

“I was feeling very powerless and just feeling sad sitting around the house thinking about what I could do,” Steinmetz said.

This is when she decided to check Facebook to see if there was a group she could join about the issue. Unsatisfied with the groups she found, Steinmetz decided to create her own group about Blankenship soon after the accident.

“I maybe expected maybe 10 or 15 people to join and we could talk about the incident and whether there was anything we could do to be politically active,” Steinmetz said. “But what happened was at this point I think there over 2,700 members.”

Of the close to 3,000 members in the group now, Steinmetz said the father of one of the miners joined along with Rose Harlow, aunt of the president of the United Mine Workers of America.

In a Facebook interview Rose Harlow expressed her support for the Facebook group.

“I think the Don Blankenship Facebook group is the best thing formed to get the word out about him,” Harlow said. “He is the reason our coal miners lost their lives, because he is only cares about the money and not the safety of our coal miners and he needs to be put in jail.”

Harlow shared her personal experience as a mineworker.

“I worked as a underground coal miner and of course we had a union to protect our rights and if we felt anything was unsafe we did not have to work in unsafe conditions. We had a union fireboss who checked the whole mines for all unsafe conditions and gases before we ever entered the mines.”

Harlow draws her opinions about today’s mining situation form her family history.

“My children’s great grandmother Sarah Blizzard and Mother Jones fought to organize the union here in West Virginia, when the union was first organized,” Harlow said. “Their Great uncle Bill Blizzard was tried for high treason for organizing the united miners workers at Blair Mountain in West Virginia.

“I believe that if the miners are going to work in the non union miners that congress is going to have to step in and put higher regulations on these non union mines. I believe Don Blankenship should have charges brought against him and stand trial.”

Several students from Steinmetz’s class have joined the group. Sophomore Integrated Social Studies student, Kirk Marsh said he joined the group to support its views.

“Don Blankenship only cares about himself and his loved ones,” Marsh said. “He only wants to make money and isn’t thinking about all the people he killed or hurt by cutting corners. He is a corporate criminal.”

“I think the Facebook group was a good idea and it was awesome our class discussion inspired it” Marsh said. “I feel like I am a part of it so that’s why I joined.”

Many of the Facebook members are from West Virginia and coal mining families.

“[They are] people who talk about the fact that their relatives years and years ago were lost in mining disasters and that it is almost part of their family history, this shadow of mining danger,” Steinmetz said. “But they really talk about their anger that this has not been solved yet, that it is 2010 and this has not been solved yet.”

One of the solutions members have come up with is making it mandatory that all miners be members of a union. There was not a union at the Upper Big Branch mine, which some blame the poor working conditions on.

According to Mine Safety and Health Administration reports, the Upper Big Branch mine has had consistently higher amounts of citations, orders, and safeguards than the national average since 2006. In 2009, the Upper Big Branch mine had close to 57% more violations than the national average.

“The only other solution I can imagine of is the federal government being very, very aggressive in enforcing safety regulations and really shutting down mines that continue to have a pattern of violations”Steinmetz said.

Steinmetz said she is looking for ways to use the group to create a change in how mines are kept safe and who is held accountable for their accidents.

“There is a real sense in the group as a community that we should be able, no matter where we are from geographically, to combine our collective efforts to either to increase awareness that people, especially in West Virginia, all over the country are incensed that this happened and to put some pressure on the justice department to go forward in investigating Massey in particular.” Steinmetz said.