Welcome to Appalachia Rising

The Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia by Kat Wallace (ToplessAmerica.org)

By Kevin Gosztola | Cross-posted at OpEdNews.com

What organizers are calling “an unprecedented gathering of Appalachian people and their allies in the movement to abolish all forms of surface mining” for coal, particularly mountaintop removal mining, will take place over the weekend. The organizers hope this weekend will be an opportunity to “build solidarity not only between Appalachians and their allies, but also between communities impacted by similar issues all over the nation.”

Saturday and Sunday will be about hearing from “Voices of the Mountains,” people who have felt the impact of surface mining in their communities and people who have engaged in activism to bring surface mining to a halt.

Attendees will hear stories from individuals like Matthew Sherman, a Blackfoot Indian of the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia and someone who has served as a Federal Native Americans Spiritual Advisor for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and an opponent of mountaintop removal mining. They will hear stories from leaders like Mickey McCoy, who will talk about experiencing a toxic coal sludge breach that occurred in Massey Energy’s Martin County sludge dam. And, they will hear stories from people like Vickie Terry, who lives in the Clearfork Valley in Tennessee and can look out from where she lives and see mountains being blasted in a ridge nearby.

Sessions will be dedicated to education on the issues and tactics that this growing movement to end surface mining employs and will employ in the future. Coal combustion waste (or coal ash), coal-fired power plants, natural gas hydrofracking, climate change, resource extraction, monoeconomies, slurry and sludge, post-mining land use, and, of course, surface mining will be discussed. Participants will also be introduced to the tactics of nonviolent direct action like civil disobedience, permitting/regulation, economic diversification, field work, lobbying, corporate campaigns, land reform, community organizing, telling the movement’s story through media, and using art to tell the story of Appalachia’s coalfields.

A “Day of Action” will take place on Monday, September 27^th. It will involve a rally at Freedom Plaza, a march to the White House, and then a protest to demand the Obama Administration make the abolition of mountaintop removal mining a national environmental policy. These are the events on the agenda, but there may be some nonviolent direct action as well.

Resident of Boone County, WV, Maria Gunnoe, who lives in a house that now sits below a mountaintop removal site and will be sharing her story with attendees, wrote an editorial that was published on Common Dreams.

Gunnoe writes:

“Coal speaks its truths in what it leaves behind for the people that sacrifice so much for the coal companies’ bottom line. The people get nothing in return but destroyed ancestral, historic lands and communities such as Blair, the battleground for today’s United Mine Workers Association. “We the people” get the poisoned water, the polluted land, the silica-laden air, the bad health, and the diminished hope of ever having a future. This is what we have to show for 200 years of mining coal. Where is the preached prosperity? We have no desire to bash coal. Coal speaks for itself.”

On the movement to end mountaintop removal, she declares:

“There are nearly 3.5 million pounds of explosives used EACH DAY in West Virginia alone. People throughout Appalachia couldn’t find the political support to stop the attack on our homeland and we began to organize. While our county, state and federal leaders turned a blind eye and deaf ear to us”We formed a movement. Appalachians have depended on our democracy (the American people) to help defend us as our politicians and regulatory agencies have not.”

Kari Fulton, a young D.C. resident who organizes around environmental justice issues, says of this event, “I’m really excited to see Appalachia Rising come,” to D.C. “Before it even started, we saw the street art they have posted everywhere.”

“A lot of people don’t know about mountaintop removal, and it would be good to see this end,” Fulton says. “This is one of those issues that we could see come to an end soon. Hope we continue to build solidarity.” She works for PowerVote.org, the latest campaign of the Energy Action Coalition, and hopes to hold leaders accountable by getting them to support a nationwide transition from coal and oil to clean and renewable energy like wind and solar.

I will be posting on this great event all weekend and on Monday before and after the “Day of Action” takes place. Stay tuned.

Cynthia McKinney Unsaddles in D.C. After Cross-Country Bike for Peace

Photo by Patricia Lake
By Kevin Gosztola

This week, Polidoc continues its production of Seriously Green. Yesterday, Cynthia McKinney was interviewed in front of the White House after she and others rode from Capitol Hill to Pennsylvania Avenue to mark the end of their biking trip with Bike4Peace from California to D.C.

McKinney compared her trip to running as a Green Party presidential candidate in 2008. She talked of what it was like to bike across the country when she had no idea how to bike at all. And, she discussed the need for Americans to establish a Peace Lobby that could combat policies of war.

The trip had its rough spots. McKinney fell and busted her lip on the first day. She had to return to her home in Georgia when she found out her house had been broken into. She missed part of the trip but rejoined Bike4Peace before the trip ended in D.C.

Later that night, Polidoc attended a National Press Club event with McKinney in the Sarah McClendon Room. The experience provided an opportunity for McKinney to show her spirit of perseverance to 30-40 people there who had packed into a room to eat dinner with her and celebrate the end of the bike trip.

She touched on her work as a congresswoman and mentioned how she was the only Democrat to lose in 2006 because, as Rahm Emanuel said, she was not a “team player.” She told of her travels with peace envoys that made attempts to break the siege and deliver aid to Gaza. She talked about how, on one of her trips, the Israelis rammed the ship she was on and also how the US Embassy could not be bothered to help her when she ended up in an Israeli prison except they did give her underwear.

McKinney also spoke of the way her family is constantly being spied on. She talked about her son being outside and a van rolling by with the side door open and people inside taking pictures.

There was an opportunity for Cynthia McKinney and Ingrid Betancourt, who ran on the Green Party ticket for president of Colombia, to meet since Betancourt was doing a book signing of her new book “Even Silence Has an End” at the National Press Club. Had they crossed paths, it would have been a rare opportunity for two former presidential candidates to meet each other.

The production continues through the weekend at a D.C. convergence of anti-mountaintop removal activists called Appalachia Rising.

Small Town Mayor Boosts Plastic Bag Ban

Fairfax just enacted its ban or plastic bags in retail locations on May 4, 2009.
Larry Bragman, Mayor of the northern California town of Fairfax, discusses the need for and commercial benefit of banning plastic bags in this video.

Advocates of the ban, including fellow city council member Lew Tremaine (Green Party) and lifelong resident Andy Peri, first brought the resolution forward to the city council last June. However, two bag manufacturers threatened to sue the town because the council had not conducted an environmental review. The council decided to make the ban voluntary. By the fall, an anti-plastic bag measure was on the ballot and passed with 79 per cent of the vote, thus evading the need (and expense) of an “environmental review”.

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Dozens Arrested at Protest Against Duke Energy’s Coal Policies.

With the crowd chanting “Arrest Jim Rogers,” referring to Duke’s CEO, several dozen protesters lined up to cross a pink spray-painted line that defined Duke’s property and were cuffed by police and placed in waiting vans.

read more | digg story

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Michael Krasny, Host of KQED’s Forum, Talks with Winners of the Goldman Environmentalist Prize

In the second half hour of this radio show, host Michael Krasny opens the Forum to two grassroots activists who received this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize. Maria Gunnoe, a West Virginian talks about her people’s battle against King Coal and mountaintop removal, and attorney Rizwana Hasan her work to regulate the dangerous ship breaking industry in Bangladesh.

Go 24 minutes into the show to reach the second segment.

Largest Protest Against Coal in Front of D.C.’s Power Plant

“I think any time you have 2,500 people willing to take action and risk going to jail to stop a coal plant, it’s a good thing,” Michael Brune of the Rainforest Action Network told Grist as the protest wrapped up. “And I think what’s quite clear is that we have more momentum than ever to start shutting down coal plants around the country.”

read more | digg story

Cabot Says No More Growth Hormones in its Milk

Cheese sales on the line, makers of Cabot brand of cheeses, cooperative owner Agri-Mark has informed its member farmers that if they want to continue using bovine somatotropin to boost production their milk they will have to go to sell their milk to the New York region. Trucking the milk that distance will increase the costs of production so much that the writing is on the wall, making the use of rbST unprofitable.

“I’d say most have seen it coming for quite a while, and feel if it impacts everybody the same way they can accept it,” said Bob Wellington, senior vice president of Agri-Mark, the largest producer cooperative in New England. “Some will wait right up to the very end, because they believe it makes them money.”

The author suggests that the New England dairy industry will be “rbST-free” by the end of summer 2009.