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Invasion of the Coal Thugs

By Eastan McNeal on July 7, 2009 at 9:01 AM in Current Affairs, Energy Policy, Environment

For 23 years Keepers of the Mountains has held an annual family picnic on Kayford Mountain, West Virginia to bring together supporters of the movement to end mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining. This weekend 20 or so drunken coal thugs charged over the ridge and tried to pick a fight with the festival goers. Mind you the video you are about to see has foul language and ugly humans. Thank Patchwork Films for the video.

Here is the debate. Heavy equipment operators and demolition specialists make a living by blowing the tops off of the mountains in four Appalachian states. The people who live in these areas would like to see the mountains and streams remain mountains and streams. They don’t want their well water coming out of their faucets blackened with sludge. They don’t want their foundations cracking under the earth shattering blast quakes. They want to enjoy the tourists, hunters and fishers who visit their beautiful woods and pump more money into the economy than all the coal operations combined. They want their children safe. A child was recently killed when a boulder from an MTR blast crashed through his roof and crushed him in his bed as he slept. So it is a battle between jobs for a few and the quality of life for the many.

Maybe West Virginia’s political leadership wants this to be fought out in the streets — or, rather, along narrow, two-lane roads that wind through Boone, Logan and Raleigh counties. Given that the issue has been on the front burner for more than a decade, with little movement toward resolution, it’s probably understandable that both sides have reached this point. – Ken Ward

Public Radio interviewed mountain keeper and CNN Hero Larry Gibson on Monday. You can listen to the interview here. Here is some of his interview:

“We’ll hold stead and we’ll hold back and the violence will not come from the keepers of the mountains and the people who live in them, we will win this war. We fought a battle this weekend and we won because they didn’t get any violence from us.”

Larry did point out that not all miners act this way:

“I really don’t think this is a mindset at all of people who work in the mining industry as far as working people,” he said. “I think it’s just a handful of rogue miners who refuse to understand that there’s a better way to do this.”

Brace yourself. This is not related to the festival event but the local man quoted below was at the picnic and there is always room for a reminder of just how horrid this industry is. He watched an MTR bulldozer willfully plow under bear cubs that just happened to be in the way.

“Now I’ve heard a bear die, and it depends how they’re shot. But there ain’t nothing like hearin that momma bawl, knowin her babies are dying as she gets dozed in. Those cubs don’t even have their eyes open. They might have been old enough to crawl, but they weren’t old enough to escape. What I witnessed that spring, it bothered me. It hurt me. I feel something needs to be done.”

Amen

See also:

Blogger and author Jeff Biggers (HufPo)Two weeks ago, when anti-MTR activists peacefully protested a mine site the police arrested thirty of them, including actress Daryl Hannah, NASA Scientist Dr. James Hansen and former Congressman and author of the Clean Water Act, Ken Hechler.

For background information on Mountaintop Removal visit The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OHVEC)

Doc99

Why is the nation which practically invented nuclear power still stuck on fossil fuel? Personally, I blame Jackson Browne.
choo choo magoo

A powerful post Easten.

Thanks for keeping a spotlight on this. We need to make big, bold changes to how we are do things. So it is doubly frustrating that congress and the president seem to waste so much time and energy on making incremental, cosmetic steps. That basically keep all the winners and losers in place and only manage to further cement attitudes in place.
Tricia Spiegel

Incredible post, Easton. The video is so chilling–just like being there. I was so proud of the people for not buying into it–there were babies there and bloodshed would have certainly been the result.

It feels sad when we go up against our own. But I agree that there has to be a better way to fuel America.
rw

Savagery, and for what, for some substandard of living…confront others with violence and kill any living creature in your way, like the cubs. The debate has been going on for a decade, kudos to those who want to save the integrity of the mountains for their perseverance.
Texas Playwright

Killing innocent children and animals who could not get away is evil. West Virginia and her sister states, their land, their people, their animals are being desecrated out of base ignorance and greed.

There are days I am ashamed to be American. This is one of them.

Blogging gives us ordinary, news-starved citizens information. We are moving into the activist mode, I hope, with boycotts of media and their sponsors and peaceful protest assemblies where others are hurting our people, animals and land.
Doc99

Junk Science On Par With WWII
Docelder

Al Gore won’t even debate “global warming”. Al needs to hire Axelrod, so Axelrod can tell him what to say. Gore is starting to look like Biden out there. Maybe he sees this carbon trading market slipping away? The way it stands… carbon is set to be the new gold. Currencies used to be based on the gold standard. Is this carbon market replacing that gold standard with a new carbon standard? Now that the world has been “globalized” is the best way to make money actually reinventing the concept of it by creating a market system where carbon is the ultimate currency?
http://sarainitalyblog.blogspot.com/ American Girl in Italy

When that big guy said *get off our mountain* i thought he was talking about himself… he was huuuge.

that was scary freaky. I hope these people get fired. Sure, they can be concerned about their jobs, but to attack a group of people peacefully protesting and picnicking was awful.
NomNomNom

Eastan, glad you’re back, there can’t be too muchs aid against MTR: check this out, it is totally cool:
http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/2815
jbjd

I listened to NQR the other night, describing the incredible devastation to the environment left by mountaintop blasting. The legal one-upsmanship exercised by the coal companies in collusion with our government is obscene. ‘The Clean Water Act would protect the polluting of the streams except that once these are filled with debris from the blasting, they are not really streams, anymore.’
Steve_in_KC

Coal thugs! Great imagery!

I think these guys need a taste of their own dynamite.
NoBamaNoWay

a couple things:
it is absolutely untrue that most people who live near mines want them closed. i’m sure a few do, but most are glad to have the mine because of the good jobs and benefit to the local economy. i used to live in a small mining town (Lead, SD), close enough to the mine to hear the shift change whistles and see everything going on in the pit, and i never had any problem with it. also, i can tell you that when that mine closed (Homestake), everybody in the town was in a panic, and the whole Black Hills was sad to see it go.

sure, there are some issues associated with mining, but most people in the affected areas would rather just see those issues corrected, instead of having the mine close. btw, if it can’t be grown, it has to be mined. think about it. mining isn’t going to stop anytime soon.

re the bear cub incident, there are definitely some major dicks in the mining industry; when i used to work in a quarry, there were guys who would go out of their way to hit animals on the haul road. unfortunately, in any “real man” industry these personality types are over-represented. that’s a problem with the culture, but it isn’t caused by mining per se, and more than likely that incident was a violation of the state’s environmental regs and hopefully it was reported.
tzada

Having been victimized myself, (along with my community) by the lies of Government officials,both Federal and State who were hand in hand with environmental groups I will say this.

I would put nothing past them including staging a video.
LisaB

These are exactly the sort of people our present administration is not likely to care about, and I mean either side.

Mining doesn’t have to be so destructive. And the people making the big money don’t live where the work is done.

When the mountain tops are gone where is beer belly going to work anyway?
Peggy Sue

As ugly as this video is, I fear we may see more of these clashes on a whole variety of issues. What popped out for me was the fat guy’s statement: “This is “our” mountain. We were here first.”

If that doesn’t portend a whole bunch of trouble, I don’t know what does. Add a few guns to the mix [along with the booze] and we quickly go from ugly to deadly.

Dangerous, dangerous times we’re living in. People are being pushed to the brink. It’s not pretty, not for anyone.
Ferd berfle

There are better ways to get at the coal, if one must get at it. I live in East Tennessee and we won’t stand for that sort of wholesale destruction. The problem we have downstream with the ash pile from TVA is nothing compared to the disaster that is looming for West Virginia when these denuded, blasted mountaintops start giving up their once-sequestered poisons to runoff. If you want an idea of the consequences of irresponsible mining, look no further than Tar Creek, Oklahoma. It was a zinc mine but the long-term consequences are much the same. What is being exposed to the elements should have remained below the surface.
Eastan

I don’t know about what happened to you. But I can assure you of this. I have met the festival goers. This video was not staged, and the State Police have opened an investigation.