First and foremost, the Windber Project is an exercise in compassion. In days when there are deep divisions among Americans drawn along lines of race, ethnicity, gender and citizen/alien status, the story of the peaceful struggles of the people of Windber, Pennsylvania, a small coal mining town in the western part of the state, is instructive and inspiring on all fronts. Immigrants seek prosperity and peace among native-born Americans who bear hostility toward them. The conditions created by the pluck-me system, as uncomfortable as it might be to say, were nothing less than those experienced by sharecroppers in the South. Nonetheless, awakening to a sense of deserved dignity, they overcame the same divisions we experience today: foreign-born vs. native-born, white-skin vs. dark-skin, English-speakers vs. non-English-speakers, men vs. women.