The Indy Journalists Who Covered a Massive Coal Miner Strike That Corporate Media Ignored

A conversation with the grassroots journalists who have consistently covered the strike.

Maximillian Alvarez

Hamilton Nolan

Over 1,100 union coal miners in Brookwood, Alabama, have been on an unfair labor practices strike against Warrior Met Coal for over five months. And for five months, the mainstream media has barely made a peep about the strike. Instead, a small collection of independent journalists and local and progressive media outlets have been working overtime to cover this important story. Jacob Morrison, David Story, and Adam Keller at The Valley Labor Report (Alabama’s only weekly labor radio talk show), have been doing more than almost anyone to cover the strike and support striking miners and their families. There is one person, however, who has done more than anyone to lift the strike at Warrior Met into public consciousness for five months straight, and that is independent journalist and all-around badass Kim Kelly. In Part II of our special, two-part update on the miners’ strike, Jacob from TVLR and Kim have a wide-ranging conversation about Kim’s labor and writing background, the experience of covering the Amazon union drive and the Warrior Met strike in Alabama, and what it means to truly care about and be invested in the people and struggles we cover in labor media.

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Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemu​si​carchive​.org)

  • Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song”

Maximillian Alvarez is editor-in-chief at the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, available at InThe​se​Times​.com. He is also the author of The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke.

The text is from the poem “QUADRENNIAL” by Golden, reprinted with permission. It was first published in the Poetry Project. Inside front cover photo by Golden.
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