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Newsflash-Clean Elections Victory!
NEWSFLASH-CLEAN ELECTIONS VICTORY!
Thank you for those calls! This afternoon, the WV Senate Judiciary Committee voted YES on Clean Elections! Senate Bill 270, the Public Campaign Financing Act, now goes to the Senate Finance Committee. We'll need your help here, too, so stay tuned. Thanks again!
DON'T FRET-ORGANIZE FOR THE LONG HAUL
The Appalachian Institute at Wheeling Jesuit University and OVEC are co-sponsoring a one-day training--Face to Face: Organizing for The Long Haul--featuring nationally known organizer/musician, Si Kahn. Registration is limited, so apply now! Click here details or contact Todd Garland at tgarland@wju.edu.
Groups working to end mountaintop removal will need YOU and a big group of your friends from 6 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, March 30 in one of these locations: Charleston, WV; Hazard, KY; Greentree, PA; Haromen, TN or, from 2-4 p.m., in Washington, DC (DC date may change). Your presence will help stop yet another attempt by the Bush administration to legalize illegal mountaintop removal activities by gutting the Clean Water Act. We'll share more details soon, but for now, please save the date.
Come on out to the COAL RIVER VALLEY on Saturday, March 13, beginning at 11 a.m., at Marshfork Elementary School, State Route 3, Sundial, WV, for a day of education concerning the dangers of a new surface mining permit for this area--which includes an allowance to bury encapsulated toxic materials! The day's events include a 20-minute presentation (shown every hour) on the heritage and culture of Coal River, and the environmental tragedy of mountaintop removal. See maps of all the destruction in the area. A group of Native American folks are traveling to this event, and plan to hold a prayer vigil for our Sacred Mother Earth. Please bring your entire family. Let us make this a day to come together as a community to save our favorite fishing holes, hunting areas, ramp patches, berry patches, ginseng hollers, our beautiful way of life and these God - given mountains. Click here for more information or call Coal River Mountain Watch, 304-854-2182.
And in NEW YORK CITY from March 24 - 30, it's the West Virginia Film Festival at The Two Boots Pioneer Theater, 155 East 3rd Street (at Ave. A). As Graffiti's Film Nut Steve Fesenmaier says, "Bob Gates, WV's leading activist filmmaker and longest-working director, will conclude the series with his 1977 landmark film, 'In Memory of the Land and People,' a film that was shown in the US Congress and helped change American environmental history, and 'Mucked,' his latest expose of mountaintop removal mining, the most outlandish attack on the earth the human species has so far invented."
The festival will also screen a working copy of Robert Slayer's (Applashop) 'Sludge'-about the Massey Energy sludge disaster and featuring Jack Spadaro. Click here for the schedule. (Please check OVEC's events calendar page often.
Did you catch National Public Radio's Living on Earth radio program about Jack? If not, you can find this comprehensive story online. Go to www.loe.org. Click on Archives (left column), then click 2004 Archives or click here for the Feb. 13 show and scroll down to Kentucky Coal Investigation.
Jack is also mentioned in Robert Kennedy Jr.'s latest about Bush and the Junking of Science.
Jack sends a giant THANK YOU to each of you who have taken time to write on his behalf. Please keep the letters going to Sec. of Labor Elaine Chao (reply with Chao in the subject line if you need a draft letter). Our actions are not only bolstering Jack through these hard times, but they are also having an impact at the Department of Labor. In accepting the Chuck Chambers Public Service Award from the WV Environmental Council on E-Day!, Jack thanked quite a few people. To read his speech, go to OVEC's E-Day People in Action Gallery and click on the link to his speech in the left column.
The producer at "60 Minutes" says the segment on Jack is now likely to air mid-March.
As you will recall, Jack's public service career was launched when he was investigating the Buffalo Creek coal waste dam disaster, which happened 32 years ago, on Feb. 26, 1972 (Info on this on the OVEC website includes:
Winds
of Change article;
Press Release;
United
Mine Workers' Flier on Brushy Fork Coal Slurry Impoundment
Sure seems like there's a letter to the editor or two in there. As this terrible anniversary approaches, here's a guy who was fighting to expose the truth about that tragedy now under fire from the Bush administration for fighting to expose the truth at another coal sludge impoundment disaster. If you do write a letter to the editor, please send us a copy.
Thanks for all you do!
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