Mountain Justice Summer Kick-Off Rally & Concert

March 31, 2005
Photos by Vivian Stockman

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Coal River Mountain Watch Hosts Event at State Capitol

Pro-mountain folks from Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and, of course,  West Virginia gathered at the State Capitol in Charleston, WV, as Coal River Mountain Watch hosted a rally and free concert to announce the Mountain Justice Summer campaign.

This event started less than an hour after the Astroturf group "Friends of Coal" (AKA FOC; FIENDS of Coal) held a rally on the Statehouse steps. Miners were given the day off and bussed in to hear about the joys of coal, extolled upon by the likes of Gov. Manchin and Rep. Shelly Moore Capito (AKA Shelly More DeCapitate) as they stood beneath a giant American flag. Later, at the Mountain Justice Summer rally, speaker Matt Sherman pointed out this tried and true marketing technique: if something isn't selling, wrap it in the flag.

The Gazette article on the FOCers rally reported: Secretary of State Betty Ireland also spoke at the FOC rally, as did former Marshall football coach Bob Pruett.

Pruett, a Raleigh County native and paid FOC spokesman, said coal mining played a big role in his life.

He said his father died of black lung; his father-in-law died in a slate fall...

“I truly do understand what coal has done for us in the past,” Pruett said.

Those FOCers sure know how to buy some swift spokespeople! (See Don Nehlen's quote here.)

After the FOCer rally dispersed, a few miners stuck around to listen to the Mountain Justice Summer rally.

"Mountain Justice Summer is a campaign to bring regional, national, and international attention to the human rights abuses and environmental devastation caused by this most destructive form of mining," said Coal River Mountain Watch volunteer Bo Webb. He and other Coal River members, as well as several folks from other Appalachian states, worked extra-hard to organize the rally, which featured fiery speakers and talented singer-songwriters. (See the list of speakers and musicians here.)

The Mountain Justice Summer campaign consists of a very loose coalition of individuals and groups from across Appalachia and beyond, all of whom share the common goal of ending mountaintop removal coal mining.

Katúah Earth First! didn't want to just watch as mountaintop removal encroaches into Tennessee, so the group conceived Mountain Justice Summer (MJS). The campaign is meant to be something that any group or individual can support in whatever way they feel comfortable, as long as there is no violence or property destruction.

Deserved or not, Earth First! has a reputation that causes some to worry. Your photographer was quoted in the Charleston Gazette:  “Frankly, OVEC is wary, as we don’t know all the groups and individuals involved,” said Vivian Stockman, project coordinator for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “We are very relieved to see this note on the [Mountain Justice Summer] website: ‘MJS is committed to nonviolence and will not be engaged in property destruction.’”

Several angry, click-and-send e-mails circulated in response to this quote. Fortunately, there was one really thoughtful response: Here's my experience of reading the MJS article - I was trying to imagine how I'd respond to the article if I lived in the coalfields & was concerned about MTR & reading the language from the MJS website was making me feel kinda nervous... Then I came to your quote & thought "if I was a coalfield resident, reading this article, and here's a quote from Vivian & OVEC - both familiar names in the press on this issue - I'd feel reassured by what Viv said." You articulated common concerns - potentials for violence, property destruction, & outside hooliganism - and then you addressed it, reassured folks by quoting the non-violence blurb on the MJS website. Well done!

Grist Magazine picked up on the Gazette article and played up the idea that monkeywrenching could happen when it sent around its daily e-mail environmental news summary to its massive list of e-subscribers. 

In response, john johnson wrote to the Grist editor:

Thanks for runnin' a blurb on Mountain Justice Summer on your fine website. The only thing is that the groups involved with Mountain Justice Summer, which include Katúah Earth First! and Coal River Mountain Watch, have specifically said we will not be engaging in property destruction (aka monkeywrenching) this summer. Coalfield residents (and other activists) don't want to deal with the backlash from property destruction. Y'all know that EF! is not afraid of that kind of thing, but we are respecting the views of the folks on the ground and in the thick of this fight. We are not going to complain if any of that happens, but we are not going to do it or promote it. Just wanted to clear that up.

OVEC is 100 percent committed to non-violence and can not endorse Mountain Justice Summer, because of the uncertainty we perceive surrounding the campaign. However, this summer, we can and will continue all our usual roles, one of which is disseminating information on mountaintop removal, so we will certainly be sharing information on MJS rallies and protests.

OVEC sees and understands people's building outrage over the destruction of home and homeland that is mountaintop removal. Coalfield residents are under assault. They (we), and their (our) supporters, have tried to work within the system, but mountains continue to fall, streams and forests continue to die, regulators continue to turn a blind eye, and politicians continue to bow to the bucks of King Coal.

OVEC, WV Highlands Conservancy, Coal River Mountain Watch, Kentuckians For The Commonwealth and other groups have brought mountaintop removal into the regional, national and even international spotlight. This attention was bound to rouse others to action.

Already, some pundits are labeling the Earth First!ers as "outsiders." Now, more than ever, there simply is no such thing as an outsider. All life is connected. We are all sisters and brothers. We are all relations, be we two-legged, four-legged, multi-legged or no-legged.  Each of the two-legged types who are committed to ending mountaintop removal will continue to do the best we can.

In response to the State Journal editorial, "Don't We Have Problems of Our Own?" (see sidebar), OVEC's co-director Janet Fout wrote:

Chris Stirewalt’s recent commentary trivializes the concerns of people organizing Mountain Justice Summer with its goal to raise awareness to mountaintop removal coal mining.  He resorts to personal attacks referring to the activists and their “traveling eco-circus,” their “Birkenstocks, and patchouli oil”—cheap shots meant to deflect from truly serious issues.

People organizing the events this summer are seeing mountaintop removal in their home state of Tennessee.  Unlike the silent masses, they are not content to stick their heads in the sand, while mine companies have their way; instead, they are moved to defend that which they love—not just the mountains, but the people who have lived among them for generations.

If the writer’s concern is about “outsiders” coming into West Virginia to save us from ourselves, he’s about a hundred years too late, given that coal and timber barons stole our resources and land and are now leaving us with their legacy of blasted mountains, repeated flooding, contaminated or dried up water wells, annihilated communities, deforestation, and loss of culture to name a few impacts—costs seldom counted in the economic equation.

Recently, three year old Jeremy Davidson was crushed to death in his bed in Appalachia, Virginia, when a boulder rolled off a mountaintop removal site.  The coal company was illegally expanding a road.  Although Stirewalt refers to the “need for cheap, abundant electricity,” the true cost of coal is anything but cheap.  Just ask Jeremy Davidson’s parents or others who continue to pay the price.

On the following pages are pictures of the Mountain Justice Summer Kick-Off rally and concert.

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