REUTHER-POLLACK LABOR HERITAGE WEEK: The Long History of "Going West Virginia on You."

August 28, 2018

“A Brief Sketch of West Virginia Labor History in Modern Context or: The Long History of ‘Going West Virginia on You.’” 

In February 2018 West Virginia teachers and public employees disrupted national narratives about “red state politics” when they went on strike for higher wages and a fix to the state health insurance plan. This successful movement inspired similar strikes across the country and reshaped national conversations and developments around austerity and neoliberalism. However, it was not the first time West Virginia laborers stood at the forefront of working-class politics and industrial democracy. 

Jack Seitz is the Lead Educator at the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in Matewan, WV. In this capacity, he develops and delivers curricula for public schools in West Virginia and works to help tell the story of the Mine Wars beyond the four walls of the museum. The Mine Wars education project seeks to educate and preserve the memory of the bloody labor and civil rights struggles in Southern West Virginia in the early 20th century through popular education pedagogy that empowers West Virginians young and old to reclaim their history and inspire them to make the state a better place in which to live. A native of Morgantown, WV, he holds an M.A. in Central Eurasian Studies from Indiana University and is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History Department at Iowa State University. His dissertation, "Science and the Steppe: Agronomists, Nomads, and the Kazakh Steppe Settler Colony 1881-1917" examines the role of agricultural science in Russia's colonization of Kazakhstan. His research has been supported by numerous organizations such as the U.S. Department of State Fulbright program, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the American Council of Learned Societies.