Jase Media Service Podcast

This is part of a series featuring Roberts telling the story of mine work.  

President Roberts speaks on different aspects of mineworker history in a series of interviews. In this podcast, a section of this interview tells of the tragic events in Ludlow Colorado. He also has some advice for union members. 

On April 30, 2023, the Union Miners' Cemetery, Friends of Mother Jones Museum, and the city of Mt. Olive, IL, will present a reenactment of the funeral of Mother Jones in December of 1930 when 40,000 kindred Spirits came to pay their respects. In a radio interview, Joann speaks about it.

This Podcast is part of a series of Public Service Announcements about unionism and their value. The voice of Mother Jones is Illinois resident, Loretta Rymer Williams. 

As part of a seires of grassroots Public Service Announcement, Mother Jones warns minimum wage workers they must join unions before the corporate robber barons makes impossible.

Mother Jones visited the Edwardsville Illinois tornado damaged Amazon Hub warehouse where 6 workers died to raise hell about the lack of support that the workers received after the disaster. She called the unsafe warehouses mausoleums. She said what the workers need for Christmas was not an Amazon gift card but a union. Mother Jones knows suffering. After leaving Ireland during the great hunger she eventually married Iron Molder union leader, George Jones and they had 4 children. She lost them all in Memphis to the Yellow Fever. She took her belongings to Chicago and opened a small dress making business only to soon lose it to the great Chicago fire. Mother Jones died in 1930 and is buried in Union Miner's Cemetery in Chicago IL. Loretta Rymer Williams who portrays her is the only MJ re-enactor to have performed both in her country of birth, the Shandon district of Cork Ireland and at her final resting place, in Union Miner's Cemetery in Mt. Olive IL. 

Loretta Rymer Williams channels Mother Jones as she provides great wisdom while comparing the slavery of old to the slavery of modern times. She documents periods in our history where the bosses could get away with murder and how we are facing it again in modern times. Precious blood of our martyrs cannot be allowed to be shed in vain. 

This Podcast takes place in Union Miners' Cemetery in Mt. Olive Illinois, it is the only union owned cemetery in the USA. General Alexander Bradley speaks at annual celebrations of the UMWA members who were killed in a gun battle in Virden Illinois with mine guards working for the Chicago-Virden coal company while also paying homage to the legendary Irish firebrand, Mother Jones. Mother Jones requested to be buried there with "Her boys", these poor miners who were killed. 

David Hatfield, of the well known Hatfield and McCoy feud, recounts his family history, his relationship to folk hero Sid, the gun battle that led to his trial and his eventual murder on the courthouse steps of the courthouse in Logan county West Virginia where nobody was charged for his and deputy Ed Chambers assassination.  Their murder helped spark the battle at Blair Mountain, the largest civil insurrection on American soil after the Civil War. 

Loretta Rymer Williams, the only Mother Jones re-enactor to have performed at the location of MJ birth and at her final resting place, uses Irish supplied story boards to recount the hardship in Ireland that drove her brother and father to immigrate to Canada. She tells of her travel to America and Canada and eventually her marriage, the sad ending of it, and more hardship.  She became a union organizer, perhaps a people raiser as she raised hell about the poor conditions the poor were forced to endure.  At the end of a hard life, she is honored where she died and found even greater honors at her final resting place in Mt. Olive, IL, in Union Miner's Cemetery. At the end, she tells a little known tale, not found on the story boards.  It is testimony from Brother Joe Ozanic Sr. at her grave and monument which he played a vital role in.