The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor Highlight

When you stand on the street in Elkview—or in any of the small towns like it—you can look up in any direction and see the dark green hills looming right over you, like seething waves frozen just before they crash. Cynthia and Daniel Nicholson will tell you about hundreds of people in those hills, all the way up the Elk River, living in tents, or in their cars, just hanging on. A single union at a single biscuit restaurant in a single dot on the map can seem like a small thing. Really, though, it’s a big thing: proof that, no matter who or where you are, you can make a union, and it can change your life. The workers at Tudor’s may never see their Quixotic union dream come true. But they have already set a bar that the labor movement must live up to, or die.