An Injury to One

Travis Wilkerson (2003, U.S., 53 min.) + post-film discussion

In 1917, union organizer Frank Little, part of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) also known as the “Wobblies,” arrived in Butte, Montana to try to organize workers at the city’s copper mines. Butte was a company town, almost entirely run and owned by the Anaconda Mining Company. And when corporate power is that concentrated, workers have few rights and few outlets to address deplorable working conditions. Little is murdered, almost certainly by detectives hired by Anaconda. But the story doesn’t end there.

Moving back and forth through time, documentarian Travis Wilkerson plays in avant garde fashion with views of Butte, past and present, to consider both the murder of Little and the near-murder environmentally of the town itself, as the toxic legacy of the copper mine persists to this day. An Injury to One defies categorization in style and tone, but it is a film that demands to be seen and discussed and in the process demands that we reckon with the rights of workers and the dangers of unfettered capitalism and corporate takeovers of government. (Screening co-sponsored by the Center for Global Workers’ Rights and the LABOR School at Penn State)

Following the film, we featured a discussion with a panel of experts on labor rights and resilience. The panel included:

• Dr. Kate Ragon (moderator); Labor Educator and Assistant Clinical Professor at Penn State’s School of Labor and Employment Relations
• Leo Tang; Graduate student in Labor and Global Workers’ Rights at Penn State University and a labor practitioner from Hong Kong
• Dr. Cody Stephens; Assistant Teaching Professor at Penn State’s School of Labor and Employment Relations