Since starting my personal crusade against mountaintop removal coal mining I have asked myself almost daily – what is it going to take to stop the ignorance? I’m here to tell you today what it will take. It is going to take people just like me banding together with other people just like me and saying we are just simply not going to take it anymore and everybody’s lights be damned. The rest of the country wants their amenities and advantages of electricity – let them get it somewhere else. We can’t let them keep taking it from us. That is the bottom line.
I really don’t believe the regular Joe of Appalachia realizes how much power he has when his voice is combined with that of his neighbors. You hear a lot of talk about the coal wars of the early days. We bound together then to bring the UMW to the coalfields. Are we so beat down as a people that there is no fight left? Will we just sit idly by while the coal industry and the government take everything from us? I’m sorry but I fail to accept that. We have the power right now as a people to bring about a major change that would have worldwide effects. But it has to start right here in the hollows of Appalachia – and end here.
I have read on blogs more than once of outsiders blaming the people of Appalachia for mountaintop removal because we have done nothing to stop it. You know what? Those people are right. I feel I have to look outside the mountains to get help and that is just not right. I’m looking to the very people that depend on our coal for their lights. Mountaintop removal is our problem and it does directly effect our lives regardless of what someone in say, Hawaii would think. Personally I can’t understand why we care what they think. I don’t, that much is for damn sure – and if every person’s light in this country went off tomorrow and stayed that way I would say we would all sleep better tomorrow night.
Let’s talk about our representatives in government for one second – tar and feather every damn one of them. Ship them all off to Guantanamo with all the other terrorists. All the way up to the sorriest President to ever cross the threshold of the White House – George W. Bush.
It is going to take the average person to stop the coal industry from destroying everything that makes us who we are. It is going to take me and my neighbors saying to hell with everybody else – we are not going to take it anymore. And if you want lights in your house we suggest looking into a portable windmill because we have decided to keep our coal. If you want it – come and get it.
These are our mountains and hollows. They don’t belong to someone in a cushy office chair somewhere in the Government. They don’t belong to me and they don’t belong to you – they belong to all of us. It is time we remind the world of that seemingly forgotten fact.
Rise Up Appalachia!!! It is time to say – NO MORE!!!
When one tugs at a single thing in nature; he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
Thank You! Thank You!
One of the big “coal heads” said recently that there are 30,000 people per square mile in Manhattan – but only 50 people per square mile in Boone County. THEREFORE, the people of WV are obligated to get this coal out of the ground and provide electricity to those people living in New York. He actually said, in so many words, that sacrificing the people in Boone County is justified – because those people in Manhattan deserve electricity I really thought that his statement would cause an uprising. But NO! Silence in the wilderness. I really believe that the people here have been victimized for so long that they have forgotten how to fight! They’ll believe anything that King Coal tells them.
We need a champion in the legislature. Rod Harless, from South Charleston, is challenging Sen. Dan Foster in Kanawha County. Harless supports Clean Elections and wants to BAN MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL. I don’t live in Kanawha Co – but I’m helping to put on a campaign rally for Harless this Sat. April 19 – 1:30 – at the LaBelle Theater in S. Charleston. a “Rise Up! West Virginia” Rally. Maybe you can help spread the word. We need people from near and far to come – and to ask their friends in Kanawha Co. to vote for Harless. He is the only person running for State Senate that has the nerve to say “No More!”
Thanks again, Denny! If we scream “NO MORE!” loudly enough someone’s bound to hear us! I’m with you. I wouldn’t trade WV for all the money or jobs in the world. I’m not giving up!
If anyone ever removed mountain top removal mining from WV you better have a back up plan to give jobs to all the people who will be displaced. You want to know why you are not hearing any type of large movement from the people of southern wv? They enjoy having jobs and having money pour into their communities. If you want to stop the mining then you need to provide an economic incentive.
Tony Stewart – I have a novel idea – let’s mine coal the way it is supposed to be mined – responsibly. “Having money pour into their communities”? What part of the planet do you live on?
You people are under the impression mountaintop removal is the only means of mining coal. What a ridiculous and shortsighted view.
What if someone said “we have to support abortion because the people working in the clinics need the jobs – and the community needs the tax revenue” ? Now that would get a headline!
I’m sorry but the jobs issue falls flat on its face with me. If our elected officials were doing their “job” they’d be working on bringing good-paying sustainable jobs to every community in the state. They’d be working on promoting job growth for ALL our population – not just those who benefit from coal-related jobs. Our women, our seniors and our young people need JOBS!
Face it – our young people don’t want to work in the coal mines – and our Governor is a lame-brain for even suggesting that they have to stay in WV in order to receive money to go to college. Stay here for what? To work for minimum wage? To live in towns with polluted air and poisoned water? To break their backs and their lungs for the Don Blankenships of the world?
This is not Walter Cronkite’s 20th Century. Let’s get off this kick of using the jobs issue to defend mountaintop removal. That’s a cop-out for people who don’t have the gumption to do better and be better!
O.k., I debated whether to send an e-mail or make a comment, and this time I’m going with a comment.
First, let me say I understand, as much as I can, your frustration with the MTR situation. You know that, as I’ve told you before.
Second, as someone who, by the way, does not live in Appalachia, but who has worked to help stop MTR and to help inform others about MTR, and has, in addition to lending my own voice to the fight, encouraged others who are involved in an organization of which I am Chairperson to involve themselves in the fight, I’m a bit offended by the post. Your tarring everyone who does not live in Appalachia with a very big brush, and I don’t think that’s fair or right.
Yes, there are people who don’t care. There are also a lot of people who are not informed. To imply that everyone who isn’t from Appalachia simply doesn’t care what’s happening there, implies that everyone knows what’s happening, which I don’t think is the case, or implies that if they do know, they’re choosing their comfort and happiness over that of the residents of Appalachian communities. I don’t think that’s the case either.
Of the blogs on your Blogging for Appalachia blogroll, 10 are members of the Outdoor Bloggers Summit, which doesn’t count the OBS blog which would make 11, that’s over half of the blogs on the blogroll. I don’t think any of those writers live in West Virginia. Some of the bloggers who were first introduced to the topic by the OBS, Albert is the prime example, have gone on to investigate the topic in more detail and to write for your Stop MTR blog.
Does that sound like uncaring, uninterested people to you?
You know Kristine – I’m sorry that you take offense to this – it is not intended that way. Yes I am well aware of what the Outdoor Bloggers Summit has done for this cause. To think this post is aimed anywhere in your direction is just wrong. This post was actually aimed and specifically for people in the mountains. I am very aware that we are receiving help from outside WV – the point of this post is that we should be receiving more help from inside the state. If we don’t defend our rights why should somebody outside the state have to do it.
Mountaintop removal is bigger than the BackWoods Drifter or the Outdoor Bloggers Summit. For some reason you make it sound like I am targeting the OBS specifically when in fact the OBS is an exception to the rule. I guess I will have to amend my posts to make sure everybody knows I’m not talking about the OBS. And to be honest – if those posts were written for me about mountaintop removal then they were written for the wrong reason.
I really hate going on the defensive here when I meant you or the OBS no offense. I would think you would know I’m not talking about the OBS.
As far as the email thing – I thought I made it quite clear who that was about and it wasn’t you – as a matter of fact this post reiterated that because the offensive email came from Hawaii.
If the statement about everybody’s lights be damned ruffled your feathers – lets don’t forget I have lights in my house as well. As far as the rest of this post, somebody has to get these people fired up.
BJ – sorry I’ve meant to reply to your first comment a couple of times but as you can see it is a little hectic here at the moment.
After writing this post and then reading your comment the thing that jumped out at me and is actually one reason I wrote this post – the silence in the wilderness. Sometimes it can be too quiet in the mountains. Right now is one of those times.
Average Joe has a sort of fatalistic view of the way things are, I think. Like bad things happen to us because we live here — it’s the price we pay. It’s hard to overcome that to bring about any kind of change. I noticed that in the Parkersburg area, it took a lot just to get a few people to come out against the C8 in the Ohio river. Even when they came out saying that it might be in the water, it was like pulling teeth to get people to get tested and to have their water tested for the cancerous chemical.
I don’t know what it’s going to take.
Rebecca – I think if people that don’t have the opportunity to see an MTR site could see the view I had today their attitudes would change. Mountaintop removal is a big problem that has already gotten way out of hand. If anybody needs proof of that – they should visit Drews Creek, West Virginia. I wouldn’t have to write another word.
Besides that, I don’t know what it is going to take either.
At the end of this post where it says Rise Up Appalachia – I had to overcome an overwhelming urge to write at the end of that simple statement the words – for crying out loud.
Denny,
I do apologize if my previous posts sounded to you as though I thought you were targeting the OBS. That was not my intention. What I was trying to point out was the fact that there were people outside of Appalachia that were trying to help, and I was using the OBS as an example, since it was the one that I knew best.
As to the e-mail thing, I never thought you had meant me before.
I certainly wasn’t intending to put anyone on the defensive. I just wanted to point out that everyone from other parts of the country is not ignoring or uncaring about the plight of the Appalachian mountains or the people who live in those mountains.
It sounds like maybe your intent and my interpretation of your post just crossed purposes. I do know that you are working very hard to correct a great wrong, and I hope you know that I support what you’re working to do.
It’s all good Kristine – you can take my word for it that in a battle with so few allies I definitely know who my allies are and the OBS sits near or at the top of the list.
Hey guys!
Well, I’m glad I finally found this post!
And I see it’s all sorted out, so no worries.
I go to the Stop MTR site, so I was a little confused at first…
I’m good, I knew where Denny was going with his “Rant” so I didn’t take offense.
Regards,
Albert A Rasch