Let’s Attempt Some Perspective - Who Are the Real Enemies?

A few strip mine workers, perceiving their jobs as threatened, responded with intimidation and even threats of bodily harm against Boone County resident Maria Gunnoe and her family. That, and the ongoing broader destruction of homes – and at times entire communities, and God’s mountains, forests and streams – calls for some perspective.

The enemy most certainly is not the miners trying to make a living. Neither is it the victimized people caught in the crossfire as they try to protect their homes and their children’s lives from the devastation of mining.

The enemies are the government and its overlord – the coal companies. The latter are fat, wily, and enormously wealthy, exporting fortunes from the mountains on the backs of the people and leaving toxic swaths of devastation in their wake.

It is a tragedy of huge proportions when miners’ bitterness and fears are used as a weapon against their neighbors. These harsh realities call for some harsh facts about the debilitating effects of coal. Every year more than a thousand miners die a slow, excruciating death from black lung disease. Across the U.S., every year between 24,000 and 40,000 Americans die from coal pollution spewed from electricity-generating plants. In total, it adds up to nothing less than government neglect or outright support of a form of terrorism against us all.

With more than half of our nation’s electricity generated by coal, at this time our country needs it. But we do not need, nor can we afford, to continue making hatchet men out of the few remaining miners in West Virginia, terrorizing our citizens, and brutalizing God’s environment.

Christian religious leaders oftentimes are caught in the middle of this longstanding melee. Their congregations have miners as well as throngs of those left in the economic lurches. Some religious organizations are overcoming this dilemma by speaking out. And some churches, particularly small ones, and their leaders are demonstrating their faith, evidenced by performing His work with great vigor as they try to stop the divisiveness and at times outright hatred of man turned against his fellow man.

Without doubt, much more work remains for Christian leaders. Any reasonable person knows that brotherly love – not hatred and manmade environmental devastation – is God’s will for us all.

The solutions are: To extract coal using only underground mining, to aggressively develop renewable sources of energy to replace coal, and to now, belatedly, develop private enterprise initiatives to diversify the economy of the Appalachian coal region.

West Virginians are a proud, hardworking people who need only one thing: the opportunity to work at a self-sustaining wage to support themselves and their children. Anything less is sinful neglect. Bud Fultz is from an multigenerational coal-miner family. He grew up in eastern Kentucky and southern WV and now lives in Tampa, Fl.