Do you know about Mountain Top Removal? Have you heard about the fight in Appalachia against major coal companies who are destroying the mountains and animal habitat, all the while making it unsafe for residents to live in their own homes?
Since 1991 Massey Energy has led the pack in the race to take all the coal available from the once-hallowed mountains of Appalachia. They have systematically led the charge and taken the lion’s share of profit in the most efficient form of coal mining available, Mountaintop Removal.
The EPA continues to grant the permits that allow this company to employ far fewer workers than ever before in the history of coal mining. An underground mine used to employ as many as 500 workers. Now these operations can employ as few as 19.
The West Va Department of Environmental Protection, the DEP or “Don’t Expect Protection” as they are known euphamistically, continues to allow this company to clearcut the forests in this incredibly rich biome, an area that has been identified as the oldest deciduous forest in North America and the literal source of the great diversity of forests North America once supported. The EPA continues to grant permits that allow the mountaintops to be pulverized with explosives, the coal seams gouged out and processed, and the remaining rubble to be pushed into the valleys, or “hollers”, which has so far led to the utter annihilation of 2000 miles of streams and waterways and countless plants and animals. Of the estimated 900 mountaintops in Appalachia, over half of them have been “dropped” and destroyed for the “cheap” coal that lies beneath.
Opposition has been growing, slowly over time, but that’s often how it goes with wars. And make no mistake, there is a war brewing in Appalachia’s mountains, and so far those who are stepping up do so to defend their homes, their families and the mountains that in many cases have been home to many generations of their families. This is a war that has the classic elements of a deeply oppressed people and a powerful overlord that has outright contempt for the people who have every right to continue making their homes here. And that contempt shows itself in many ways.
Climate Ground Zero is a name that has been given to a resistance movement of people who may not be displaced, for many of them aren’t from the area, but they don’t have as much to lose as the locals and can operate more freely. People have come from local areas, yes, but also from all over the country in response to the pleas for assistance from some of the locals who have chosen to stay and fight for what is right, what is theirs, and what should be inviolate. Some have just come because they see the injustice and they feel they must do something. And so they come.
And it’s a good thing they have. Those who grow up in this area know that laws that apply in the rest of the country don’t apply here. Justice in the Appalachian sense implies that the company will get what it wants, and that those who resist will be made to suffer, and that eventually fighting will only hurt them and those they love. And when the economies that once supported thriving communities that bore the names of the operations I mentioned above have dried up because of lack of work, poor wages, ill health, and the stress of living with constant explosions and continual heavy machinery traffic, then there really is no reason to stick around.
But there is every reason for those with the means and the passion for justice to come from without to help those who remain, and to stand up for the mountains and the voiceless life they support.
Under the direction, however casual but always effective, of RAN co-founder Mike Roselle, a staging area has been created that has seen a series of actions executed against the tyranny of King Coal’s reign. Non-Violent Direct Action has driven tyrants out all over the world; bringing peace and self-determination, gaining women the right to vote, saving species from commercial hunting, and so on. We have great leaders upon whose shoulders we stand; Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa and others.
Read more of the story here.
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