Thursday, June 30, 2011

Did you hear about the 2500 people arrested in W. Virginia protesting the destruction of their environment by coal?


From:Interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the director of 'The Last Mountain'
How has civil disobedience changed the discourse — if it has — in these smaller communities when it comes to coal?
It's the last thing we've got left. The press has been subverted. The judiciary has been subverted. The agencies have been captured. The politicians have been corrupted. Transparency has disappeared, and the zoning laws have been taken — local democracy has been taken away from them. When that happens, the only thing you have left is civil disobedience. They're doing it effectively.
There have been 2,500 people now arrested [in West Virginia]. That's four times the number of people who participated in the Selma march.

Massey owns West Virginia, and so West Virginia can't save itself. Massey is an out-of-state company — it's not a West Virginia company, and a large part of its workforce (its very small workforce in the state) is from out of state, too. But the communities that are being destroyed — two-thirds of the people of West Virginia by every poll oppose mountaintop removal, but not a single politician in the state [does]. That's because, one suspects, of the huge donations and just the political power wielded by King Coal.


An excellent graphical description of what mountain top removal entails and its effects from Mountain Justice 

Stop Mountain Top Removal petition to U.S. Senate from Change.org
Enhanced by Zemanta

No comments:

Post a Comment