The strike has its immediate beginnings in 1927 when the IWW called for a three-day nationwide walkout to protest the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

[6] While the United Mine Workers predicted the IWW's walkout would fail in Colorado, Sheriff Harry Capps of Huerfano County commented that "fully two-thirds of the miners in the [Walsenburg] district [are] members of the I.W.W.

[7][9][10] Under threat of injunction, the IWW leaders felt they'd demonstrated success, and they persuaded the miners to return to work one day early.

[7] Conlin wrote, "The tactical decision of the Wobblies was to give ground on this occasion to intensify organizing efforts for a statewide strike.

In one mine, the Supervisor went to work one morning and discovered "Wobbly stickers pasted on every timber and cross beam in the place.

"[12] IWW leader Kristin Svanum met in a mass meeting with 187 delegates from 43 of the state's 125 mines to work out the miners' demands.

[11] The perceptions expressed in the IWW Preamble coincided with the Colorado miners' personal experiences with capitalism, and also with their feelings about the United Mine Workers union which since 1914 had seemed to ignore their needs.

[16] All national groupings were represented on the General Strike Committee—"Mexican, Slav, Spanish, Greek, Anglo, Italian, and Negro.

[17][18] But the IWW, always the champion of the immigrant and the ethnic worker, had readily overcome such challenges as early as the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike.

"[20] The Denver Morning Post criticized the strikers' spelling, their speech, their dress, their personal hygiene, and their values.

In Lafayette, so many people arrived at the meeting hall to endorse the pending strike that the vote was moved to the football field, and conducted under the headlights of trucks.

[23] Along with the coal companies, the state, and many local communities, the United Mine Workers came out publicly against the pending strike.

Two coal mine operators sought to demonstrate that such cooperatives were impossible, and they issued a challenge to the IWW to follow through at their facilities.

[39] The State of Colorado and local law enforcement began to arrest every strike leader that they could identify, on vagrancy or other trumped up charges.

In Trinidad, in Walsenberg, and elsewhere, members of strikers' families stepped forward to take the place of arrested leaders, and lead the strike.

[41] In Pueblo, the jail was secured by "200 deputies armed with tear bombs, machine guns, rifles, and fire engine pumpers.

"[47] On November 26, 1927, 1,000 people gathered in Union Square, calling for the end of troop use and protesting against the recent killing of strikers.

[48] Following the Mine Massacre public pressure led to the starting of Colorado Industrial Commission formal hearings announced on December 12, 1927.

[53] Although the United Mine Workers in Colorado had vocally opposed the strike, they had established an official position of neutrality.

However, United Mine Workers agents conducted overt actions against the strikers, including participation in vigilante raids against IWW property.

[33] One popular United Mine Workers official, a union organizer from the Ludlow era by the name of Mike Livoda, hired himself out to the governor to spy on the Wobblies.

In Conlin's words, "[t]he failure of the Wobblies to establish and maintain a viable organization in Colorado resulted from the anarcho-syndicalist strategy of the IWW (i.e., no labor contracts, no union recognition), not from the absence of class consciousness and radicalism among the miners.