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Camp Solidarity: A training event to build worker power where unions were born
Start: Thursday, September 18, 2025• 8:30 AM
End: Saturday, September 20, 2025• 5:00 PM
Location: West Virginia Mine Wars Museum•401 Mate Street, Matewan, WV 25678 US
Host Contact Info: campsolidarity@wvminewars.org
The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum is holding its second Camp Solidarity September 18-20, 2025, in historic downtown Matewan. The three-day conference will feature courses on labor history, organizing tactics, and leadership development. It will also feature panels centered on the future of labor, the green economy, and a special retrospective commemoration of the 1984-1985 strike against the A.T. Massey Coal Company by miners who participated in the strike. Conference attendees will also take part in a walking tour of Matewan, an artifact show-and-tell, and a screening of John Sayles’s landmark film Matewan. There will also be music, including an open jam session.
Camp Solidarity was inspired by the UMWA miners who fought and won a massive victory when the Pittston Coal Company tried to strip them of their healthcare benefits. During the year-long strike, miners and their spouses blockaded roads and mine entrances, slowed traffic, and occupied the Moss 3 Preparation Plant and Pittston corporate offices. The original Camp Solidarity, itself a tribute to the tent colonies where miners and their families resisted the coal operators during the Mine Wars, was a gathering place where strikers and their allies kept each others’ morale up through music, speeches, and mutual aid and support. The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum strives to honor the legacy of the original Camp Solidarity by bringing together labor and community organizers from a variety of backgrounds together to learn from each other and build class solidarity with one another.