In 1914, near Trinidad, Colo., coal miners from the southern coal fields of Colorado tried to organize a union to improve working conditions, enforce the eight-hour work day, have the right to select their own boarding places, doctors and grocery stores, and decrease the high death toll of miners. Their struggle made history on April […]
Communities
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Do we really need the rural West?
Note: this article is accompanied by another article in this issue, “Yes, we need the rural West.” Dan Dagget, the well-known authority on Western livestock grazing and a seemingly mild-mannered guy, lost his cool and fairly screamed at me: “Why don’t all of you go back to the cities back East you came from and […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Yes, we need the rural West
Note: this article accompanies another article in this issue, “Do we really need the rural West?“ Hal Rothman is normally a very cool guy – a history professor fascinated by the culture and economy of his hometown of Las Vegas. But he recently went to a conference about the rural Northern Rockies, and after sitting […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
A norteno champions a local environmental ethic
Many here in “New” Mexico have not forgotten that the United States violated the 150-year-old Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by asserting ownership of community ejidos – common lands under the historic land-grant system. Today, those lands make up national forests and land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. In this contested landscape, environmentalists and […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
At your service
Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
The drive to organize
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. “In solidarity we will survive.” The slogan is splashed in red paint across the white and blue cement walls of the Culinary Workers’ Union hall, an unimpressive building in the older part of town. Inside, I meet with Geoconda “Geo” Arguello-Kline, a small woman […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
‘Women are the backbone of the union’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Peggy Pierce works at The Desert Inn as a banquet server: “I think Las Vegas is just like every other town. People go to work, they take care of their families, they do pretty much normal things. We don’t spend money differently. We also […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
‘Ain’t no sucha thing as you can’t’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bernice Thomas runs the maids’ training school for the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas. A mother of eight, she moved there with her husband from Tallulah, Louisiana, 25 years ago. Bernice Thomas: “We train 33 students every two weeks with a full class. […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
‘There are no support networks here’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Aldona Sobiecki moved to Chicago from Warsaw, Poland, 18 years ago, then traveled farther west to Breckenridge, Colo., in 1996. Six months ago, she opened a deli that features Polish food. Aldona Sobiecki: “For me, since I open here, it’s hard to find help. […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
‘It’s my dream’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Elena Bernlohr, who works in Breckenridge, Colo., is from Khimky, a suburb of Moscow, Russia: “I am three-quarters Jewish, but my mother gave me her last name so that I wasn’t discriminated against in school. My father was a very important scientist in Moscow, […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Wildcat subdivisions fuel fight over sprawl
Arizona argues over how to rein in runaway development
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
An industry booster becomes a supporter of Western land
There is nothing remotely radical about Alvin M. Josephy Jr., or if there is, he hides it in his memoir, A Walk Toward Oregon. There was a comfortable childhood in Manhattan; well-to-do relatives like his uncle, the founder of the firm that published this book; a couple of years at Harvard, until his father’s financial […]
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
Indian reservations: Environmental refuge or homeland?
To non-Indians, reservations look like vast de facto wildlife areas. But that’s not what they’re for.
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
The Old West is small potatoes in the new economy
Local and state governments are no match for the massive corporations moving in on the West’s open spaces
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
The infinite West reaches its limits
Undaunted optimism runs up against a finite landscape
Posted inMarch 27, 2000: The last wild river
Oh, give me a home…
Contrasting Western images: A lone cowboy on horseback rides through the recently paved streets of a new, cheerily painted subdivision, while a voice laments that the West is becoming a place an old-timer might not recognize anymore. That’s how the documentary, Subdivide and Conquer: A Modern Western, begins. It takes a sobering look at the […]
Posted inMarch 27, 2000: The last wild river
Tax-averse Wyoming hurts itself
As other Western economies boom, Wyoming is trying to rein in a large budget deficit without raising taxes. The Equality State Policy Center, a nonprofit public-policy advocacy group, doesn’t share Wyoming’s romance with “no new taxes,” and says taxes on the state’s minerals industry are an overlooked source of revenue. A report released by the […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Shadows out West
She greets you and your kids at the doctor’s office. Watching her as she goes about her work she seems very intent, almost frowning. But when a patient arrives she is attentive, tender towards the suffering, reassuring the frightened, and, especially with children, offering an encouraging smile. Her filing is precise and swift, as if […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Tom Watkins has left us, but his Western dream remains
Tom Watkins, another pathfinder, has passed from the campfire circle. “He was a strong, clear and important voice backed by a good old-fashioned Rooseveltian-Ickesian liberal heart,” says Bozeman writer David Quammen. “Now we’re all older and more alone again, as we knew we were when Ed Abbey died.” T.H. Watkins died last week from cancer […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
A new town hits the skids
Residents say no to development