Appalachia marches against MTR
By John Lapp
Asheville, North Carolina, Sept. 28 (AGR)—
Denis and Cindy Davidson, of Appalachia Virginia, were awakened by a
terribly loud noise in the middle of the night on Aug. 20. They found,
to their horror, that a half-ton boulder had broken through their mobile
home and landed in the bedroom where their three year old son Jeremy
was sleeping. The boulder that killed Jeremy Davidson had fallen from
an A&G Coal Corporation mountain top removal (MTR) mining site on
a mountain 600 feet above the family’s home.
A&G Coal was forced to pay three $5,000 fines for each violation
the coal company committed that led to Jeremy’s death. According
to an investigation by Virginia’s Department of Mines Minerals
and Energy (DMME), an A&G bulldozer operator who was working at
night dislodged the boulder that crushed the three year old boy in his
sleep.
A march for Jeremy and the mountains
At around noon on Saturday, Sept. 25 a group of just under 100 people
gathered in a Payless parking lot in downtown Appalachia, Virginia.
The group was coming together on that warm early autumn day to march
through the streets of Appalachia to show their regards for Jeremy Davidson
and express their outrage at the practice of MTR, which has devastated
the environment and communities all over the southern Appalachian Mountains.
The crowd consisted of a wide array of people, ranging from ex-coal
miners (veterans of the legendary 1980s coal strikes) to dreadlocked
environmentalists to the local middle school football team and even
a state representative. They hailed from all over the southern Appalachians,
with protesters from Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky
and North Carolina. A large contingent from Katuah Earth First! (KEF!)
was present and they carried a banner that read “Justice: For Jeremy,
For the Land. Earth First!” and waved black and green flags. Children
held signs that said “$15,000 dollars isn’t worth a boy’s
life.”
Before the march kicked off, local organizer Pete Ramey stood in the
middle of the crowd and led them in a prayer. The protesters marched
through downtown Appalachia waving flags and banners with the KEF! banner
in the very front. Behind them was a group of ex-coal miners who all
had canes and reminisced about the coal strikes and picket lines.
As the group passed a visible MTR site, John King, a local environmentalist
got on a bullhorn and announced that only a year or so ago the gaping
hole had once been a mountain. The crowd began to chant “King coal,
off with his head!”(King coal is the generic term used to describe
the coal industry).
After marching about two miles, the crowd gathered under a pavilion
in the Inman neighborhood, just a short walk down the road from the
mobile home where Jeremy was killed. Ramey called for a moment of silence
for the toddler as the crowd settled down. People filled the picnic
tables in the pavilion and watched about a dozen speakers rail against
MTR. The crowd was glued to the speakers and every now and then applauded
and shouted “amen!” Many people were teary eyed. During a
short speech by KEF! activist Chris Erwin in which he said that the
people of Appalachia should be driving Mercedeses due to the amount
of profit that is made at the expense of the region, a local woman yelled
“We don’t want Mercedes, we want out mountains!”
“Mountain top removal is another act [by the government] against
our freedom,” said Ramey, who started off the rally.
State representative Bud Phillips also spoke to the crowd, saying that
“it’s a sad day for the Commonwealth of Virginia when we have
to march to protect the citizens of the Commonwealth and Wise county.”
Phillips urged residents to call their congresspeople and demand better
regulations against MTR.
Another KEF! activist, John Johnson, made the crowd go wild when he
yelled “We don’t need kinder gentler mountain top removal,
we need no mountain top removal!” A woman yelled out “Tell
em John!”
Johnson also declared October to be “Hell Month” for the coal
industry. He urged the crowd to stop being polite and harass the coal
companies involved in MTR. “It is our human right to defend the
land. And when the laws fail us, we have the right to take justice for
the land ourselves!”
Vernon Holton, who wore a shirt that said “Stop Destroying My Mountains
-- God” told the crowd that “this is a war; they’re [coal
companies and the government] trying to depopulate you; it’s genocide!”
He talked about how rich people think that the people of Appalachia
are all ignorant inbred hillbillies, and he said that they are actively
trying to destroy Appalachian culture.
Judy Bond of Coal River Mountain Watch in her speech yelled “We
have 70-year-old women who are ready to lie down in front of coal trucks
and bulldozers for their children and grand children… There’s
no turning back now!”
The rally ended with KEF! leading the crowd in a howl, while old coal
miners and elderly women raised their clenched fists. And then Ramey
led the crowd in a short prayer.
KEF! strikes A&G
Just two days after the march for Jeremy, workers of A&G Coal found
that they were not able to access their headquarters in Wise county,
Virginia on the morning of Sept. 27, a few miles from Appalachia, because,
according to a communiqué, all their gates had been locked shut
and the locks had been glued. Along with the locks workers found a sign
reading, “We won’t stop until you do.”
This action was claimed by Katuah Earth First! via a communiqué
that was sent out to indymedia.org. The letter claims that MTR “results
in the forced displacement of people who have inhabited these areas
for hundreds of years, folks who now go to sleep at night wondering
if rocks will fall on their homes, if their water is safe to drink,
if their air is safe to breathe. As has occurred recently in West Virginia,
due to mountaintop removal mining, mild rains can cause the loss of
dozens of nearby homes.”
The communiqué also claims that the struggle against MTR is “just
another chapter” in the struggle of workers and environmentalists
of the Appalachians. KEF! urges others to take such steps to stop “this
horrific rape of the Earth and its people in the name of profit.”
Katuah Earth First! has a long history of working with the people of
southwestern Virginia, in the summer of this year they hosted (with
the support of the local environmental group Clinch Coalition) the annual
Eastern Forest Defense Camp in Bark Camp, in the Jefferson National
Forest, just miles from Appalachia.
