10: 28 a.m. President Roberts hailed the support of CBTU and other unions that stand in solidarity with the UMWA.
"I don't come today as president of the United Mine Workers. I come because I represent those retirees and widows who still have the health care" that John L. Lewis secured in 1946. "Our government said 'You will have cradle to grave health care, and we've had it ever since."
"People like my father built this and I'm not going to stand idly by and let somebody take away what my Daddy built. He died in great dignity because of the health are he had."
He cited the police across the street as workers, too. "The police didn't take our health care. Peabody and Arch took our health care."
"I know where the ultimate justice comes from, because we'll get judged by how we treat the least" among us. "This is nothing but a scheme to bamboozle and rob us. This is morally wrong!"
He said Patriot's in the wrong courthouse.. "You ought to join the United Mineworkers and sue Peabody and Arch" for what they've done.
He called to the stage the 9 other mine workers who he said we're committed to go to jail during the march, two of whom had oxygen tanks strapped over their shoulders. Others had diabetes, agent orange poisoning from the Vietnam War; another is on oxygen 24 hours a day. Several others had black lung..
Reading from 7:14 Chronicles, he urged Peabody and Arch to read the passage and learn from it. He then called for a moment of silence for those in hospice "who will not see the morning come," others "tethered to oxygen bottles," and many others with lung, heart problems and lukemia, "who without their medicines will not llve."
"I urge the people at Peabody to think about what they are doing to them," he said.
"We march for them, and ask God's guidance in returning everybody to their homes and the strength to return here again, and again and again and again."
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