Winds of Change Newsletter, September 2005     See sidebar for table of contents

	The Gang of 28, the Summit for the Mountains V participants.

Summit for the Mountains V Generates New Ideas

This spring, 28 activists from seven different organizations – including Friends of the Mountains regulars – met at Camp Virgil Tate for our Fifth West Virginia Summit for the Mountains. We gathered to develop long and short-term strategies to help end mountaintop removal. We especially focused on planning and coordinating actions and activities to help make Mountain Justice Summer a big success.

Theresa Gardella, our top-notch facilitator, whom OVEC staff met through the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World program, kept us on track and focused throughout the strategy portion of the weekend.

We came away with more ideas than fleas on a dog’s back. The West Virginia Mountain Defender, a newspaper all about mountaintop removal, was distributed throughout the coalfields before the July 30 rally at the State Capitol. This was just one of the many ideas that came out of the Summit.

Hillary Hosta (American Forest Alliance) was our enthusiastic and energetic trainer for the thought-provoking and highly participatory non-violence training. Have you ever thought about poverty as a form of violence? Words? Facial expressions? Hillary kept our minds and bodies active as we evaluated several different scenarios -deciding whether or not a particular action was violent or non-violent.

In an early-morning workshop, OVEC’s Vivian Stockman facilitated a discussion on how to frame our message. No Summit is complete without some time to have a little fun. Some folks blew off steam playing Frisbee, while others just relaxed.

On Saturday night Tonya Adkins, Scott Straight, Abe Mwaura and Danny Dolinger sang and played music while Viv ran a slide show highlighting many of our past actions.

We are blessed with some of the most dedicated volunteers and activists in the state. So at the closing circle, OVEC handed out some well-deserved awards:

• To Julian Martin we gave the Master of Coal Industry Bullsh*t Patrol Award.
• To Kathryn Stone, the Perpetual Hostess with the Mostest Award.
• To Larry Gibson, the Stick To It Award.
• To Theresa Gardella, the Bonafide Appalachian American Award.
• To Denver Mitchell, The Stamp Out Mountaintop Removal Award.
• To Bo Webb, Glad You Are on Our Side Award.
• And, to Michael Morrison, the Outstanding Volunteer in Defense of Mother Earth Award.

All of us came away with greater energy to do the work, a deeper relationship to our coalition partners, and many new ideas to tackle together as Friends of the Mountains. Several people told us that this was the best Summit they had ever attended.

OVEC enthusiastically thanks the Environmental Support Center for their generous support in helping to fund this event!