Wars Peterman, president of International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 953 and an endorser of the fund, invited a representative to explain the case to those in attendance. Officials from the local made a donation to cover the cost of producing enough endorser cards for all 50 participants in the women miners conference and to receive a full packet of material on the case.

Giving a short presentation at a lunchtime gathering, Tamar Rosenfeld, a coal miner from Price, Utah, represented the Political Rights Defense Fund’s Militant Fighting Fund. “The Co-Op miners have received extensive coverage in newspapers throughout the state as well as in the pages of the Militant each week,” she explained. “Much of the content of the articles focused on what the miners were fighting for: better wages, safer working conditions, and to be treated with dignity.

“One aspect of the lawsuit filed by the C.W. Mining company and the company union is a charge of defamation against the two main Utah dailies, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News, as well as the Militant newspaper,” she explained. “In their suit they allege that the paper’s sources—miners who labored under these conditions—are not trustworthy or reliable. They say quoting ‘a rabid labor union and its cohorts’ defamed the company and what the workers describe as the company union that operates at the mine.”

When Rosenfeld described the issues that were involved in a 1984 lawsuit by an FBI agent and the governor of South Dakota to prevent the distribution of the book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, the mostly Navajo audience was quick to see the similarities in the two cases. Written by Peter Matthiessen, this book is an account of the FBI assault on American Indian Movement (AIM) activists at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota in 1975.

“The author and publisher were sued for defamation based on the premise that AIM activists and their supporters were not good sources, and that the author was one-sided and therefore supposedly defamatory,” said Rosenfeld. When she explained that the FBI agent and governor eventually lost the suit, and what an important victory this was, one of the women miners broke out in spontaneous applause. “But it took seven years—during which time no one could buy the book—and it cost the publisher some $3 million in legal fees. Civil suits like these are designed to inflict just this type of damage on those they are filed against,” Rosenfeld concluded.

Those who signed on in support of the Militant Fighting Fund included several coal miners who are members of IUOE Local 953 in Farmington; Professor Margaret Montoya from the University of New Mexico School of Law in Albuquerque; and Eulynda Toledo-Benalli, a director at the Crownpoint Institute of Technology, a tribal technical college on the Navajo Nation. Donations to the Political Rights Defense Fund's Militant Fighting Fund from participants totaled $125.

Amber Creel, a student at the UNM School of Law, volunteered to help the Militant Fighting Fund organize a public meeting on her campus. “I can think of several groups we could contact who would be excited about sponsoring something like this,” she said.

To endorse the case or make a contribution, send your name, address, phone number, and e-mail to Political Rights Defense Fund, Box 761 Church Street Station, New York, NY 10007.
 
 
Related articles:
Coal miners discuss how to fight discrimination
Changing Woman Conference draws miners from five Western states
Bosses reply to ‘Militant’ motion to dismiss suit
Socialist unionists discuss fight against mine bosses’ lawsuit  
 
 
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