Radicals in the Barrio by Justin Akers Chácon

Radicals in the Barrio by Justin Akers Chácon

Author:Justin Akers Chácon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781608467761
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2018-06-04T16:30:33+00:00


Survivors of the Ludlow Massacre

Six miners were also killed in the attack, including Louis Tikas, a Greek camp leader who was captured, beaten badly, and executed after returning to the tents in an attempt to rescue the buried.47 Even though the deaths were ruled homicides, no one was ever charged for the murders.48 The only operating press in the region not tied to the operators, the Rocky Mountain News, claimed that the militia gunman shot Tikas fifty-one times.49 John Lawson, the UMWA executive leadership representative for District 15 and leader of the strike, claimed that as many as fifty women and children in the camp were unaccounted for after the fires, believing that the second round of fires were intentionally lit to burn evidence of the massacre.50

The massacre at Ludlow set off several days of intense armed conflict between miners and enraged community members against state troops and company militias. Miners throughout the state were called to arms by the leaders of the Colorado State Federation of Labor, the WFM, and the UMWA, and joined by others. Socialist journalist John Reed reported that “After Ludlow, doctors, ministers, hack drivers, drug store clerks, and farmers joined the fighting strikers with guns in their hands.”51 A call was made in Denver for a mass meeting of unionists to form a Workers’ Defense League. The convocation included a rousing condemnation of the coal capitalists, claiming:

The money masters, realizing that we will not surrender as long as life lasts, are resolved upon a campaign of utter annihilation. Of all those who labor, whether in mine, mill, shop or store, not one is safe from capitalism’s savage menace. It is the turn of the miners today. Oh, brothers in other callings, it may be yours tomorrow. It is not a handful of coal diggers that have been marked down for slaughter; it is the right of the worker to better his condition that they mean to destroy. If Ludlow shall go unanswered it will be the death knell of human hope and human aspiration.52

Out of the meeting, the unionists called for “the instant seizure of the coal mines by the state pending an agreement between the operators and the strikers” among other demands.

A circular was then created by the state UMWA leadership, the WFM, and the president of the AFL-affiliated State Federation of Labor, and distributed to unions across the state, and to UMWA affiliates nationwide, with this text:

A CALL TO REBELLION.

Denver, Colo., April 22, 1914.

Organize the men in your community in companies of volunteers to protect the workers of Colorado against the murder and cremation of men, women and children by armed assassins in the employ of coal corporations, serving under the guise of state militiamen.

Gather together for defensive purposes all arms and ammunition legally available. Send name of leader of your company and actual number of men enlisted at once by wire, phone or mail, to W. T. Hickey, Secretary of State Federation of Labor. Hold all companies subject to order. People having



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