‘A reminder of why we have unions’: Matewan writer and director on the film’s lessons for the labor movement
John Sayles’s 1987 film, which dramatizes a 1920 labor conflict, shows how class solidarity can overcome prejudice
Sayles noted workers at the coalmine were segregated into groups based on race and ethnicity, a labor tactic referred to as a *judicious mixture* meant to prevent unionization from occurring.
Yet local West Virginian, Black and Italian-immigrant miners still banded together to strike against the coal company.
“When they went on strike, all three of those groups got together and went out together, and that was really interesting to me, the way that a common enemy can overcome these other prejudices that the miners had,” Sayles said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/03/john-sayles-matewan-unions
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