WV Environmental Council’s 15th Annual E-Day!

Kudos again this year to WV Environmental Council’s Denise Poole for organizing another fabulous E-Day! at the State Capitol. Since 1990, the WVEC has held E-Day! to focus attention on the state’s environmental groups and issues, and to support citizen lobbying on current legislation.

Janet Fout receives the \Mother Jones Award.

Congratulations to OVEC’s co-director, Janet Fout, who won this year’s Mother Jones Award, the WVEC’s highest award, given to one who, like Mother Jones, fights like hell for the living.

Now three OVEC staffers have won this award. In 2001, Laura Forman won the award posthumously, while Vivian Stockman had the honor in 1999. Last year. Dianne Bady won WV Citizen Action Group’s Thomas A. Knight Excalibur Award. In 2000, Laura, Dianne and Janet won the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for A Changing World Award. That’s one award winning team!

Hmmm. Laura relished soy products, as do Viv and Jan. Both especially love the tofu made in Spencer, WV, by Spring Creek Natural Foods, which received this year’s Green Entrepreneur Award from the E-Council. Is there something about tofu-powering your work to make it award winning? Well, maybe not. This year’s Linda Schnautz Environmental Courage Award winner, Patty Sebok, openly declared hostility toward tofu.

Jack Spradaro gets interviewed.

Other E-Council award winners Freda Williams, who won the Laura Forman Grassroots Environmental Activist Award, and Jack Spadaro, who won the Chuck Chambers Public Service Award, were not heard commenting on the tofu subject. Soy-crazy or not, congratulations to all the award winners!

Joining Ken Hechler during E-Day! are Sylvester residents, from left, Haline Thompson, Pauline Canterberry and Mary Miller. Their "Victims of Coal" T-shirts put forward the truth absent in Big Coal's latest propaganda campaign.