Outsiders??? Yeah, Right!

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, 3-year-old Jeremy Davidson was crushed to death in his bed in Appalachia, Va., 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, every single day.