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COVER GIRL
OVEC Co-Director's MTR Fight Featured in Alumni Magazine
The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalitions founder and
co-director Dianne Bady is now a cover girl! Shes on the Winter-issue cover
of University of Wisconsins alumni magazine, On Wisconsin, which
has the largest circulation a quarter million of any such magazine.
Dianne graduated from UW in 1972, with a double degree in
social work and psychology.
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The photo team gets ready for a shot
amid what used to be the majestic West Virginia
mountains. |
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The excellent cover story (theres a link to it at the top
of OVECs homepage, www.ohvec.org), Moving Mountains, by Erik Ness,
focuses on Dianne, OVEC, Coal River Mountain Watchs Maria Gunnoe and
mountaintop removal:
"So often, their well-laid plans were scuttled:
theyd lose key members to intimidation, or a state or corporate maneuver
would change the entire strategic landscape. OVEC responds with what they call
radical trust. "We noticed that so often when we didnt know what to
do, something would happen," explains Bady. "Wed get new people;
wed get a source of money that we hadnt counted on; wed make a
crucial contact with people inside of state or federal agencies who could
point us in the right direction and feed us all kinds of information under the
table."
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Above and below, amid the rubble of
Almost Heaven, West Virginia, or is it an OVEC moon
landing? |
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"You cant argue with the results
"Shes faced off against powerful industries that
nobody else would tackle," says (OVEC co-director, Janet) Fout, who calls
Bady a spiritual companion and OVECs visionary. "Its like going into
the lions den, and shes done it over and over."
New York City-based photographer Nina Kowaloff Barnett and
her assistant, Rob Kinmonth, flew in to take the cover shot. Both were utterly
shocked and angered about the destruction, of which they got quite an eyeful as
OVECs Vivian Stockman escorted them and On Wisconsins art director
around the coalfields. Stockman supplied nine of the 10 photos used in Diannes
story.
"For Bady, the extreme degradation of mountaintop
removal is symptomatic of larger problems. There are very, very few ordinary
people involved in our democracyMany of the fundamental changes we need in
this country are not going to come from federal politicians They come from
people in communities and neighborhoods working together to get things better.
Then the change will filter upward. "
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The site for the photo shoot. Blasted,
gutted mountaintops are not hard to find in southern WV. |
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Ironically, this vista of green trees and
rolling hills was on the other side of the road from the
photo shoot ... a poignant comment on what we have, and what
it is too fast becoming. |
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