When the Pittston Coal Company in Virginia terminated the medical benefits of pensioners, widows, and disabled miners in 1988, the entire coalmining community was outraged. The United Mine Workers of America called a strike and more than 1,700 miners walked out. Filmmaker Anne Lewis follows the ten-month dispute as it moves from the picket line to civil disobedience, capturing vivid footage of the miners and their families blocking the entrance to the mine and later taking over the company and being dragged away by state troopers. Providing commentary are voices from all sides—striking miners, “replacement workers” who took their place, the coal company president, a federal judge, a public interest lawyer. One of the most important labor struggles since the 1950s, the Pittston strike revealed the extent to which the law stripped unions of their bargaining power. All in all there were 4,000 arrests and $64 million in injunctions and fines against the UMWA, prompting one miner to observe, “We have plenty of law; we have no justice.”  EM