Tree Sit Halts the Blasting on Coal River Mountain

Cross Posted from Climate Ground Zero
Tree Sit Halts the Blasting on Coal River Mountain
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
posted by sophie

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JANUARY 21, 2010
Contact: Kim Ellis – 304 854 7372
Email: news@climategroundzero.org
Note: http://www.climategroundzero.org and http://www.mountainjustice.org

“Coal River Mountain was the last mountain around here that hasn’t been touched and they could’ve been using it for windmills…But Massey wants to get that coal. It seems like they just don’t care about the populace. Just the land and their checkbook.”
– Richard Bradford

MARFORK, W.Va. – Protestors associated with Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice halted blasting on Coal River Mountain today with a three-person tree-sit.  David Aaron Smith, 23, Amber Nitchman, 19 and Eric Blevins, 28 are on platforms approximately 60 feet up two tulip poplar trees and one oak tree.  They are located next to where Massey Energy is blasting to build an access road to the Brushy Fork Impoundment on its Bee Tree Strip Mine.  Their banners state: “Save Coal River Mtn.,” “EPA Stop the Blasting” and “Windmills Not Toxic Spills.”

“Massey Energy is a criminal corporation with over 4,500 documented violations of the Clean Water Act, yet the government has given them permission to blast next to a dam full of toxic coal waste that will kill 998 people if it fails.” said Blevins. This action comes at the heels of a rigorously peer-reviewed study published in Science Magazine which states “Mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for the losses.”

The sitters are calling for the EPA to put an end to mountaintop removal and encourage the land-holding companies to develop clean energy production.  The lack of EPA enforcement in mountaintop removal encouraged Josh Graupera, 19, member of the support team, to take part in this action “I knew that until I took an active role in the struggle to end MTR, I was passively condoning the poisoning and displacement of countless communities and in the obliteration of one of the oldest and most diverse ecosystems on this continent.” Graupera said. Nitchman added, “I act out of personal concern for the safety of water from toxic sludge, air from smog, and mountains from annihilation.”

The Brushy Fork Impoundment is permitted to contain over nine billion gallons of the toxic coal waste, and currently contains 8.2 billion gallons.  Brushy Fork’s foundation is built on a honeycomb of abandoned underground mines. If the foundation were to collapse the slurry would blow out from all sides of the mountain.   According to Marfork Coal Co.’s emergency warning plan regarding the impoundment, in case of a frontal dam breach, a 40 ft wall of sludge, 72 ft at its peak height, would engulf communities as far as 14 miles away.

“Brushy Fork sludge dam places the downstream communities in imminent danger. The threat of being inundated by a wall of toxic sludge is always present.  Blasting next to this dam increases the risk as well as destroying the opportunity for renewable wind energy,” said Coal River Mountain Watch’s Vernon Haltom. According to the Coal River Wind Project, the wind energy produced by a turbine farm on Coal River Mountain could power 70,000 homes, provide more permanent jobs for local residents and annually bring over a million more dollars in tax breaks revenue to Raleigh County than coal currently does.

The sitters plan to remain in the trees as long as it takes to stop blasting on Coal River Mountain. Climate Ground Zero’s action campaign, begun in February of last year, has kept up a sustained series of direct actions since that time continuing decades-long resistance to strip mining in Appalachia.

Honest reflections on Riot Porn, Goals, Strategy, Hope and The Better World

From Ryan Harvey with RiotFolk 

By: Ryan Harvey – September 24, 2009

Original Link Here

My decision to release this writing took me some time to consider, but I think it’s for the best. If you disagree with this, that’s good. It means you are thinking critically at least. I want this to be taken seriously, it’s something that has been brewing in me for a very long time, and this is the first real attempt, besides my DNC/RNC writing last year, to convey my thoughts on this subject…

The G20 is upon us, and though BBC world news featured some of “the troubles” in Pittsburgh, on the ground reports hardly match up with the media-inflation, police-inflation, and activist-inflation of the actual thing.

As is often the case, the media makes things look a whole lot crazier than they actually are, if it’s in the interests of higher ratings. And though most Americans if surveyed would be against rioting, they love to watch it on TV. So the media is hyping the G20 protests up enough to get some extra points, but not enough to anger their parent companies.

The police of course have to inflate the threats posed by relatively small numbers of protestors to justify the gigantic amount of city, state and federal tax-payer money used to buy new weapons, vehicles, chemical munitions, and armor. They get to keep all these goodies to use against whomever crosses their path in the future. So little pebbles getting tossed at robo-cops become boulders and little marches becoming security threats.

To match these two forces, the protest groups, especially my own comrades in the anarchist groups, inflate their stories, numbers, and actions to try to gain support and build momentum, and to make them feel better. So a dumpster getting rolled down a street into an intersection will be heroized in well-designed pamphlets to come and talked about for years the way my generation still talks about the fence-chasing incident at A16, (World Bank/IMF protests on April 16, 2000 in DC).

What is so crazy about all of this, this inflation, is that it doesn’t seem to help. As an organizer with a decade of experience in all types of work, from anarchist organizations to peace groups to labor organizing, I don’t think over-hyping our actions does anything for us. In fact, I think it works to our disadvantage. It adds to a culture of dishonesty, of not addressing our short-comings, of not reflecting and refining our work.

Now Pittsburgh had a crowd of 4,000-10,000 people according to different reports. While this is a big number in general, it’s not so big compared to public opinions on such issues at the bailout, corporate executive bonuses, or the global economic order in general. Most folks in the U.S. are pretty angry, from the far left to the independent right/libertarians. Instead of congratulating ourselves on a “large turnout”, we should be asking why it wasn’t nearly size of most anti-war demonstrations that have happened.

Four Lock Down to Coal Truck on Kanawha County Strip Site

Climate Ground Zero Strikes Again!

QUARRIER, W.Va.- Four protestors locked down to a coal truck entering a mine site in the vicinity of Quarrier and Decota at 7 a.m. this morning. Four other protestors joined them on the Kanawha County site, hanging two banners; one across the haul road and another on the back of the truck. The first banner read “Stop,” the second “Stop Mountaintop Removal.”

The nonviolent protestors intend to remain locked to the coal truck until law enforcement removes them. They have taken this action to highlight the detrimental effects of mountaintop removal mining, including its lack of economic sustainability.

“By blocking this road, we aim to bring attention not only to Appalachia’s disappearing mountains, but also to its disappearing job market,” said Jonathon Irwin, 23.

The highly active site is near Cabin Creek and Paint Creek, an area rich in union history.

Update from Coal River Mountain Action

Coal River Valley Residents Declare State of Emergency, Meet with Governor Joe Manchin; Seven Sit-In at Governor’s Office

Coal River Valley residents and supporters associated with Mountain Justice and Climate Ground Zero delivered a letter to Governor’s Manchin’s office in the State Capitol building at 12:15 p.m. today. The statement from Coal River Valley residents calls on Manchin to use his executive powers to halt mountaintop removal mining operations on Coal River Mountain, one of the last intact mountains remaining in the Coal River Valley area.

Governor Manchin met the letter deliverers in the antechamber of his office and spoke with Lorelei Scarbro of Rock Creek and Chuck Nelson of Glen Daniel. As of 2:30 p.m. seven young people are sitting in the antechamber, refusing to leave until Manchin moves to halt MTR on Coal River Mountain or they are forcibly removed. Security guards conveyed to them that they have permission to remain until the close of normal business hours at 5 p.m..

“We are delivering this letter to our governor with residents of the Coal River Valley,” said Miranda Miller and Angela Wiley of Morgantown, W.Va., two of the seven sitters, “We are West Virginia citizens standing in solidarity with the people who submitted comments for this letter, voicing their concerns on the dangers of blasting on Coal River Mountain.

For years, local residents have expressed their concerns over the long-term health effects of their proximity to coal mining and processing operations, while scientists have stated that it devastates local ecosystems and contaminates groundwater with carcinogens and heavy metals. One of the most imminent dangers associated with the proposed Coal River Mountain operation

Footage and Comments from Folks On Massey Dragline Protest in Boone Co. Wv yesterday

Also check out mountain action for more updates and information and photographs from the action yesterday. Stay tuned for next weeks action at Marsh Fork with James Hansen and Mountain Justice

I especially want to send this to people who don’t know us personally and so may not be completely sure of our peaceful intentions and excellent preparations, so pls pass on.

First of all, I was there in the protest the whole time acting as “medic” and talked with several workers and police about the man who was ill. (I’m a qualified EMT by the way)

When we first noticed someone was sitting on the ground and being attended to, we had already been detained and were sitting in a group behind the drag line main body where the police cars were. Including the time before the police came and eventually put us into custody, this was already at least two hours from the start of the thing when we approached the machine and it’s workers.

I did my best to observe the man tho he was on the front side in front of the right foot which was up off the ground giving 3-4 feet of view under it. I saw a worker by him apparently checking the man’s vitals. That was the most of the care they gave him over at least an hour’s time, as far as I could tell.

I asked several workers over that time what happened to him and was told at least twice by different workers that he had had a stroke in February and wasn’t feeling good. I asked one of the sheriff’s about him and offered my help as an EMT if there was any need. They said they thought he’d be fine and refused my offer. Worker’s I asked how the man was doing also said he’d be fine.

After over an hour, as much as 1 1/2 hours I’d say, they put a blanket around him, brought an oxygen bottle to him and got him on a small stretcher and carried him into a van to drive off. I never got to see his face and did not see any oxygen being delivered. They said they were waiting on an ambulance but apparently decided to move him themselves since it was taking so long.

Sooooo, the very first time anybody said anything about him being assaulted and this leading to a hospital visit was from Massey’s PR people thru the media with support of a mine inspector who claims they saw it all but whose story has changed and won’t give their name and be interviewed by the press. We were not even handcuffed until the state trooper got there much later than the sheriffs.

I’ll leave y’all to your own conclusions but just say from my perspective that it’s pretty damned low to be using a person with a serious health condition as a propaganda tool. But then Massey is in the business of death. We just have to be prepared to deal w/ such scummy tactics forthrightly and w/ trust in our people.

14 arrested for shutting down massive dragline on MTR site in West Virginia

14 people were arrested today at the Twilight coal mine run by Massey Energy for shutting down the massive dragline on site. As dawn broke a group of 14 people approached the dragline. As part of the group gained the attention of the operator to get him to shut down the machine, a 4 person climb team ascended the 200 foot boom.

Suspended hundreds of feet in the air the climbers began to unfurl an enourmous banner reading, “Stop Mountaintop Removal”. On the ground the rest of the team was ensuring the safety of the climbers and everyone on site as well as unfurling other banners. After about an hour police came in and arrested those on the ground.

The climbers managed to hang on for another couple hours until workers climbed the draglines boom and began to threaten the safety of the climbers by approaching their climb gear. At this point the climbers decided to come down rather than risk their lives at the hands of aggressive workers.

Alabama coal mining company sued over slain Colombian unionists

Original article:
http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/06/alabama-coal-mining-company-sued-over-slain-colombian-unionists.html

In a case that gives a whole new meaning to the term “dirty coal,” a federal lawsuit filed last week against the Drummond Co. of Birmingham, Ala. alleges that the coal company paid millions of dollars to a Colombian paramilitary terrorist group responsible for the deaths of 67 people in an effort to disrupt union activities at its South American mine and railway operations.

This is the third lawsuit the privately held company has faced over charges of being involved in human rights abuses in civil war-torn Colombia. A similar suit filed in 2007 by a Colombian labor union and families of murdered miners ended with a verdict for Drummond. Earlier this year, the company was also sued by children of three slain Colombian miners.

Brought by the Conrad & Scherer firm of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the latest lawsuit accuses Drummond of paying the right-wing United Self Defense Forces of Colombia — known by its Spanish acronym AUC — to protect its business interests by terrorizing and killing union supporters. The suit offers details on a meeting between Drummond and AUC representatives during which the company allegedly ordered the execution of two union leaders.

“The 60-page complaint outlines allegation after allegation of brutality, describing how hundreds of men, women and children were terrorized in their homes, on their way to and from work, and often murdered by AUC paramilitaries acting on behalf of Drummond,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney Terry Collingsworth. “These are innocent people being killed in or near their homes or kidnapped to never to return home, their spouses and children being beaten and tied up, and people being pulled off buses and summarily executed on the spot.”

The civil action was filed on behalf of 252 plaintiffs who are relatives of the 67 victims; the plaintiffs’ names are being withheld to prevent reprisals against them. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama’s Western Division.

Teaching the post-carbon youth, a curriculum

This is cross posted from the Energy Bulletin. Ive been talking with a few friends since we were about 15 about starting an intentional community some day that would also be a school to teach community, to teach the holistic world of knowledge, to teach liberation, self-sustainability, and to teach change.

My vision for such a thing is to be a whole-life learning center. K-12, and 18-70. The teachers would be students, the teachers would be community members, the teachers would be friends from far away who come to share a unique piece of knowledge when they can. The cirriculum would be history, anthropology, wind mill set up and how to cook a venison meal for 50, after you have learned to spiritually connect with, hunt, skin, tan and store the corporeal manifestation of a deer. Below is curriculum for “K-5” or the youngsters of a community. I think its a cool resource. What do you think?

A K-5 Curriculum for Students in the Post-Carbon Era

by Sarah Rios and Jaime Campos

From the authors:

Will education be important in the post-carbon era?
What will need to be taught?
What skills need to be acquired?
We hope to provide one alternative for educating students, after the fall of empire.

From the Introduction

…Though we base our curriculum off previously established standards, we organized this curriculum based on the ideas set forth by Howard Gardner’s concept of multiple intelligences. Subject areas such as math, reading, writing, music, physical education, and science had preexisting standards that we adapted to fit the ideals of a post-carbon era. These existing standards correlated well to Gardner’s multiple intelligences of mathematical/logical, linguistic, musical, and bodily-kinesthetic. Others, such as interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and visual/spatial had no preexisting standards that could be adapted and thus were created from scratch to suit the needs we felt important for that intelligence.

Based on the authors’ statement here, I have pulled out the curriculum for those chapters as I thought they would be the most informative for an EB audience. See below. KS

Gardner stated that these essential differences “challenge an educational system that assumes that everyone can learn the same materials in the same way and that a uniform, universal measure suffices to test student learning. Indeed, as currently constituted, our educational system is heavily biased toward linguistic modes of instruction and assessment and, to a somewhat lesser degree, toward logicalquantitative modes as well.” Gardner further argues that “a contrasting set of assumptions is more likely to be educationally effective. Students learn in ways that are identifiably distinctive. The broad spectrum of students – and perhaps the society as a whole – would be better served if disciplines could be presented in a numbers of ways and learning could be assessed through a variety of means.”

Howard Gardner’s ideas of intelligences emerged from cognitive research and “documents the extent to which students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways,” according to Gardner2. According to this theory, “we are all able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of ourselves. Where individuals differ is in the strength of these intelligences – the so called profile of intelligences -and in the ways in which such intelligences are invoked and combined to carry out different tasks, solve diverse problems, and progress in various domains.”

For our purposes each learning style is mentioned in detail prior to each section, but a short description of them follows:

• Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence deals with the physical experience
• Interpersonal Intelligence deals with the social experience
• Intrapersonal Intelligence deals with empathy and reflection of self
• Linguistic Intelligence deals with the use of words and language
• Mathematical/Logical Intelligence deals with numbers and logic
• Musical Intelligence deals with music
• Naturalist Intelligence which deals with an experience in the natural world
• Spatial Intelligence which deals with the manipulation of objects in space

Interpersonal Intelligence

Rising Tide Disrupts Coal-to-Liquid Conference in DC

Rising Tide strikes again. Coal to liquids is a disgrace, and a last ditch effort by the coal industry to save its dying corpse. Let the fossil fools pass, their time is up.

Activists expose coal-to-liquids as a false solution
DC Rising Tide disrupt and denounce coal conference

Washington, DC. – Local activists with DC Rising Tide and their allies interrupted a coal industry conference today to denounce coal-to-liquids as a corporate scam that would continue the destructive path of the fossil fuel industry.

“ We have had enough of corporations trying to keep us hooked on polluting fossil fuels. They seek to profit from climate change and the destruction of Appalachia.” said  Amanda Duzak of Rising Tide.

Activists stood in the audience and loudly presented speeches to refute the statements of coal and oil executives from Chevron, World Coal Institute, World Petroleum Council and Consol Energy.  The advocates of clean energy called for an end to the use of fossil fuels and for adoption of clean, renewable, community-based energy sources. Protesters deployed banners in the conference to highlight that “Coal kills” and “Coal takes lives” and we need “Renewable energy now.”

“Pound for pound coal produces more CO2 than almost any other form of energy production. If we’re serious about tackling climate change, we absolutely must stop mining and burning coal. Coal to liquids technology is a step in the wrong direction for our air, water and climate.” said Michael Weber of Rising Tide

The activists explained that even if the unproven, expensive, and dangerous carbon capture and storage techniques were in place, coal-to-liquids technology, which would convert coal to oil for transportation, would generate twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as oil.  It would also lead to an increase in coal mining that destroys rivers and mountains and threatens community health.

“Its time to stop investing in false solutions. We are facing a climate crisis. It is time to stand up and fight for a sustainable future.”  said Emma Cassidy of DC Rising Tide.

Rising Tide DC is a grassroots group of activists working towards climate justice by debunking false solutions and advocating a community-based, clean energy future.

Going Up Against Big Coal in West Virginia On Cherry Pond

Mike is one of the co-founders of Earth First!, Rain Forest Action Network, and The Ruckus Society.  He is now standing with the people of Coal River, Mountain Justice, and Appalachia to say No More! to Mountain Top Removal.’

By MIKE ROSELLE

On Cherry Pond.

The first time I was on Cherry Pond it was ramp season, and I joined Judy,
Bo Larry and Ed for the much anticipated spring ritual, in which the tasty
wild onions are harvested and cooked in butter with potatoes. It was a
steep hike through rugged country, and from the ridge you could see Coal
River Mountain, the highest peak around, all the way up to Kayford
Mountain, which is no more. Kayford Mountain is now a huge pit, where
bulldozers, trucks and dynamite can be heard for miles around.

Larry Gibson, one of the most vocal opponents of mountain top removal coal
mining, used to look up at Kayford Mountain and thank god that he was
lucky enough to live in West Virginia. Now, on must be careful when
looking the top of a high wall; a man-made cliff that is perfectly
vertical.

Larry lives on the top of the cliff and Kayford Mountain is two hundred
feet below Larry’s House. His property line is at Kayford Mountain by
default. Larry refused to sell out to the coal companies and has been
fighting mountain top removal for the last twenty years of his life.
Thousands of people have come to Larry’s to see how coal is really mined,
and few are prepared for the site they will see when they peer over that
high wall.

If you drive a few miles north of my house on Highway 3, you can look up
Clay’s Branch, the creek that leads to Cherry Pond. It is famous among
turkey hunters, mushroom hunters, ginseng pickers and bird watchers. The
people who live along Clay’s Branch are used to people driving by their
houses, some of which sit so close to the road that they could hand you a
beer as you drove by without getting off their porches. This is because
the holler is steep, and what little land is flat enough to put a house on
is usually right near the road by the creek. You can still see Clay’s
Branch today if you drive by, but you won’t see Cherry Pond Mountain.

Cherry Pond is gone.