Denver, CO – On June 22, eight Teamsters from Local 455 in Denver drove 200 miles south to attend the Ludlow Massacre Memorial near Trinidad, Colorado. For some, it was their first exposure to this type of history. Working class history is seldom taught in schools, and when it is, it is often taught from the perspective of the bosses.

Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), spoke on this at the memorial, saying “You can open up any textbook and find the name of the murderer, Rockefeller, but you will never find the names of the workers that bravely stood up for all working people!”

The Ludlow Massacre Memorial is held annually to serve as a reminder for working-class people of the struggles that took place to advance the labor movement. Coal miners at Ludlow were demanding better wages, an eight-hour day, less company control, a safer workplace, and the right to organize. When the miners went on strike over these issues, they were evicted from the company towns and forced to set up a colony of tents outside the mines. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who owned Colorado Fuel and Iron, hired private guards and worked with the Colorado National Guard to bring an end to the strike. The result was a massacre; tents were burned down, miners were shot, and many suffocated from the smoke of the fires. In all, 21 deaths were recorded, 11 of which were miners’ children.

The Teamsters who visited Ludlow had their own experiences of fighting the bosses. Just the day before, management called the police on the rank-and-file Teamsters for their distributing information about contractual and legal rights outside of their UPS hub. Their bosses saw workers fighting for better working conditions and tried to use force to remove them by alerting the police. The attempt did not work.

Bob Butero, the regional director of the UMWA, spoke to the crowd of people attending the memorial, stating, “You need to take this back with you, we cannot let this history die. It is up to us to keep it alive.” Teamsters Local 455 seeks to keep the history alive by returning to the Ludlow Massacre Memorial every year.

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Ludlow, CO – On June 27, the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA) hosted a commemoration of the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 at the Ludlow Monument near Trinidad, Colorado. The commemoration was attended by approximately 75 trade unionists and community members to solemnly remember a violent period in Colorado labor history.

The Ludlow Massacre, one of the most explosive periods in U.S. labor history, occurred in 1914 when the Colorado National Guard and company thugs burned striking miners’ tents and shot people in the camp, killing 13 children, two mothers and a number of miners. The massacre marked the climax of a conflict known as the Colorado Coalfield War, a period in 1913 and 1914 in which thousands of miners went on strike against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. The miners wanted an eight-hour work day, enforcement of Colorado mining safety laws, and, most importantly, union recognition.

In response to the Ludlow Massacre, the United Mine Workers of America armed around 1000 miners, who shut down more than six mines. For the next ten days, miners were in charge and shot anybody who dared to oppose them with weapons. The Colorado Coalfield War left around 50 coal company thugs and state militiamen dead. Federal troops were called in.

“We coal miners are not bashful; sometimes you have to march, sometimes you have to use a gun, you do what you have to do to survive,” said UMWA District 22 Vice President Michael Dalpiaz, highlighting the determination of the miners at Ludlow. Dalpiaz went on to trace the militant history of the UMWA, from the Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia to the Peabody Coal Strike of 1993, stressing the need for militant class-struggle unionism. “If you’re gonna have a cause, you better be ready to fight, because if you don’t fight you won’t get anything,” said Dalpiaz proudly.

Another speaker, Dr. Ericka Wills of the University of Colorado, connected the struggle of the miners at Ludlow to the 2020 uprising in response to the murder of George Floyd. “When you look at the Chicano Movement or the African American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s or other pivotal periods in U.S. history, you see that the history of labor rights, civil rights, gender rights are all inextricably intertwined,” Wills stated.

Wills also presented a letter of solidarity from the Mexican Miners’ union Los Mineros to the UMWA and the United Steel Workers. “For decades, Los Mineros and the United Steelworkers in the U.S. have worked to represent laborers on both sides of the border. USW and Los Mineros have come together in solidarity and education on both sides of the border,” Wills proclaimed, showcasing the importance of international worker solidarity.

The commemoration ended with a prayer and a call to action to support striking UMWA miners at Warrior Met coal in Alabama, who have been on strike since April 1. Dalpiaz concluded the event by stressing the importance of remembering the martyrs of Ludlow, “This is hallowed ground. This is sacred ground for our union, and we will never, ever forget.”

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