The Working-Class Heroes Tour – Scranton, PA

, ,

Scranton is a beautiful small city with an active downtown and lots of economic potential.

But the history of the city, and of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, lies under the ground, hundreds of feet under the ground.

So that’s where we went, 300 feet under the ground into a coal mine, to see what work was like for the parents and grandparents of Scranton current residents.

Folks, people use terms like “life-changing experience” far too loosely, but this isn’t one of those times.

In a series of short videos and social media posts, we’re going to introduce you to John, our tour guide at the Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour and Ed, the site foreman – the men who taught us about the life of a Pennsylvania coal miner, and also the men responsible for making sure we came back out of the mine once we went in. Before we went into the mine, we sat down with Ed in the small museum at the top of the hill:

Once inside the mine, we were in John’s hands, and he showed us what Ed had previously told us about:

These short videos only scratch the surface of what we learned about the conditions the workers lived and died in, and just how many lives were lost so we could power the industrial revolution with Pennsylvania coal.

It’s an experience we’ll never forget, and an education in the kinds of cruelty that can follow when workers don’t have the power to control the conditions in which they work.

Don’t miss this episode. And if you ever get to Scranton, take the tour. It will probably make you uncomfortable, but it’s an experience every American working person should get to learn from, so we never, ever, ever let our fellow working Americans go through this again.

For all the links you need to follow the tour and, of course, download the podcast, just click HERE.

Every day a new town. Every day a new story about America’s working people, their history, and the issues that matter to them most.

Thanks for following. We hope we get to meet you out there on the road.