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The business manager was doing fine back in his office while they were out on the line, hungry. And, so they started to see a lot of that and there was, that maybe the leadership had its own cause. More so than the miners, you know, it was like a power struggle.

Arizona, our beautiful state, was built on mining.

At first everyone predicted that it would be impossible to hold these divergent people together, but aside from the skilled men, some of whom belonged to craft unions, comparatively few went back to the mills. And as a whole, the strike was conducted with little violence.

My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike. She said little, especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners.

It was clear to many American working men and women that the Homestead Steel Strike of the early 1890s, when Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick broke the backs of the steel workers, that that was a watershed.

I believe that Senate Bill 1070 lit America on fire. I think we've all realized exactly what the situation is. And the people of Arizona have lived with these porous borders and illegal immigration into our state and that people throughout America realize that. Everybody understands the problem except the president of the United States.

This is just the beginning of a new era for America's workers.

The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.

Arizonans want us to come together, put aside politics, and solve problems. You want us to do our jobs in way that reflects the best of our state. You want us to stop and listen - something that doesn't always come naturally to people in politics.