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This Week in People’s History, Mar 5–11

Portside
Engraved image of the 1770 Boston Massacre If This Be Treason (in 1774), War Is Such an Ugly Word (1919), U.S. Thumbs Nose at International Law (1984), International Women's Day! (1914), Joe McCarthy's Dam Cracks (1954), Whose Streets? Our Streets! (1969), Big Win for Miners' Health (1969)

Tidbits - Oct. 15, 2020 - Reader Comments: Right-Wing Plots - Kidnap Governors, Voter Suppression, Supreme Court; 2020 Elections; Learning from History - Nonviolence, Self-Defense and Provocateurs; 50-50 All Souls to the Polls Concert This Weekend; more

Portside
Reader Comments: Right Wing Plots - Kidnap Governors, Voter Suppression, Take Over Judiciary, Supreme Court; 2020 Elections; Learning from History - Nonviolence, Self-Defense and Provocateurs; 50-50 All Souls to the Polls Concert This Weekend; more

Black Lung Disease on the Rise

Anna Allen, Carl Werntz The Conversation
An article published Feb. 6, 2018 in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health had identified 416 cases of advanced black lung disease among coal miners in central Appalachia. New cases of black lung had been rare until recently, but this study suggests that the incidence is rising.

labor

Lump of Coal

Rosemary Feurer Mother Jones Museum
Well over 150,000 miners lost their lives in the late 19th and early 20th century, more than in most wars in US history. Mother Jones would have argued that the problem was that the needs of the industry are prevailing above the needs of the earth and its people. For her and radicals of her generation, thinking of natural resources as belonging to the public was the great collective objection to the plunder for private gain.

Johns Hopkins Medicine Terminates Compromised Black Lung Program

Jamie Smith Hopkins Center for Public Integrity
On Wednesday, John Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore quietly announced it had discontinued its program that focuses on Black Lung Disease. The controversial program had been suspended in 2013, two days after a joint investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News revealed how physicians at the nationally recognized university hospital had routinely helped the coal companies reject the legitimate disability claims of more than 1,000 sick miners.

Tough Questions About Black Lung and Money

Coal companies have paid millions of dollars to Johns Hopkins medical institutions over the last decade for medical opinions that have been used to deny hundreds of ailing mine workers meager black lung benefits
 
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