Moving Mountains: Mountaintop-removal mining is devastating Appalachia
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-1om/Reece.html
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In West Virginia, citizens battle against the mining companies carving off their mountaintops
Sunday, February 26, 2006
*By Diana Nelson Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette*
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06057/661362.stm
Informant: Teresa Binstock
--------
We Won: Saving West Virginia mountains
http://www.stopmountaintopremoval.org/
--------
Mountain Justice Summer III the mountains strike back!
**PLEASE FORWARD AND POST FAR AND WIDE**
Do you love Appalachia?
MOUNTAIN JUSTICE SUMMER MAY 20-28 2007
THE MOUNTAINS STRIKE BACK!
It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.
Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth.
The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space…
You are cordially invited to the Mountain Justice Summer 2007
(mountainjusticesummer.org) at the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center
( http://www.narrowridge.org/ ) in Tennessee. Greedy soul-less corporations are blowing up highland watersheds in order to rip coal from the earth. We are the people fighting to stop them, and we need your help!
Mountains and highland watersheds are still being blown apart for short term profit. As the general assemblies of Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia play a game of "its better than it used to be" countless acres of Appalachian forest are being clear-cut, blown apart and dragged off. The mining is WORSE than it has ever been and we need your help to wake everyone up as to this fact.
Coal companies want people to believe that Appalachian rivers are "better than they have ever been" without standing by chocolate streams as they pour sediment into navigable rivers. There is a silent environmental menace which is the often uncounted cost of fossil fuel energy production, strip mining. Strip mining and coal not only strips the land, it often sucks the aquifer beneath it dry and clear cuts any forest.
Global climate change has caught the worlds notice—and energy companies are frantically trying to adjust using doublespeak like "clean coal". Everyone in the energy industry is working to provide solutions like carbon sequestration to global warming—put hope people don't look behind the curtain and see strip mining. Coal can never be "clean"—coal has never been clean—its very acquisition is destructive. Where ever men have ever ripped coal from the earth human misery and suffering has followed. Blowing up watersheds to burn "clean coal" is clearly unacceptable and not "clean."
All four states in the MJS network need you to fight strip mining this summer. We need people to do water testing, lobbying, demonstrating, painting, drawing, writing and in general helping us to resist strip mining.
Have ever enjoyed being alone in the forest? Pay your rent! The magnificent planet humans are abusing so terribly is our source of life on this planet. This is a call to folks who have sat on moss covered boulders watching it rain under a forest canopy. This is a call out to those who love streams, forest and mountains. If you hunt, fish, camp, hike, and love mountains and forest this is a call to you. This is for you if you have ever jumped in a mountain stream or like clean drinking water.
WHAT IS THE MJS TRAINING CAMP?
The MJS camp is the time that folks from the states fighting get together to train. This year's camps emphasis will be field training. Volunteers will get both field and class room training in water testing, oral history recording, strip mine documentation, map reading, guerilla theatre, Appalachian cultural sensitivity, demonstrations, and other skills that MJS volunteers will using this summer.
This is our third camp, and our third summer of resistance against strip mining—we won't quit till they quit.
We use the camp to train everyone we can who is going to help fight strip mining that summer. Its like a basic training in strip mining—and the end of the camp participants should basically have the broad skills needed and a good idea of what going on in the broader campaign against strip mining.
We are also looking for volunteers to travel the world as emissaries to other movements in the world fighting strip mining. Currently peoples fighting strip mining world wide! If you can travel this summer come to our camp before you go! We need you to talk with people in other countries fighting strip mining to tell them they are not alone! In Columbia there is a mining conference for community groups in August we need to send representatives to.
If you can draw, take pictures, drive, take water samples, live in a town near or in the coalfields, write, have an off road vehicle, can post video to youtube, edit videos, cook, can give a talk, are self sufficient, we can use your help this summer.
PLEASE REGISTER TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CAMP!
This part MJS III is really serious about. We have to know how much food, space, transport, water we have to provide for in advance of the camp. Goto our website and follow the links to register. Let us know if you're thinking about coming. It's disturbing to find you someone goes into show when they get stung in the field.
We really really need to know about allergies, if you're diabetic, etc. The camp is a field camp and though we can accommodate folks on field work we really would prefer to know that yellow jacket stings put you into anaphylactic shock BEFORE you go out on one of the field trips. Please call or email mountainjusticesummer.org prepared to provide two people who will vouch for you we can call.
PLEASE COME PREPARED TO CARE FOR YOURSELF
The Appalachian counties which have been impoverished by the "benefits" of king coal (and clear cut logging) are as a direct consequence poor. As a result many of the organizations fighting strip mining in the Appalachians are poor. Come prepared to be self sufficient and to camp for a week. The land has fields and is by a lake so you can swim. But in general if you come to help us for a summer please do your own dishes and come prepared. In short, autonomy.
WHAT TO BRING
Something to swim in, towels, toothbrush, soap, snacks, bug juice—oh yes, about the bugs...
Come prepared to stay clean in the field. Ticks, chiggers, (snakes to!)—the southern Appalachians in the spring are not for the entomologically challenged. There will be classes in how to survive in the field—but come prepared. Long pants tucked into your socks may make you look weird—but it keeps ticks and mosquitoes off your skin. The best mosquito and tick repellant known is patchouli. Garlic is a lie mosquitoes love the stuff—ddt is ok if you don't mind cancer.
Raingear—you will be camping in a rainforest for a week. Think about rain allot as you prepare to come to Tennessee. Those plastic bags they give you at grocery stores are great for chambering off your clothes. It could go for days without rain...or it could rain for days. With some basic preparation whether it is raining or not won't affect your fun. Actually it's recommended you sit under a tarp alone in our forest while it is raining at least a few times.
Tent and tarps—bring them, they are your friend. Also bring a knife, boots, plate, bug spray, water bottle, hat, umbrella, and personal meds.
Bring a book or two was well—and documentation tools. Bring cameras, pens, paper—come prepared to document what you see in the field.
Instruments—any music you can make please please bring. If you're a musician you are vitally important to our campaign. Come and play music.
Cars—oh hell yes if you have your own transport that helps allot!!! We really really really need off road 4 wheel vehicles and trucks. If you can show up with gas and a licensed and insured off road truck we can use you 24/7 in the field. If you're a science field geek and you want to put your boots in the dirt bring a Subaru outback. Water testing, photography, scouting—its all about how we get people to the field. The dream vehicle would be a diesel off road which we could run veggie oil in. You can cover up hippy stickers with clear masking tape, then a layer of duct tape after that—peels right off when you're out of the field.
Soccer balls and Frisbees are encouraged.
WHAT WE NEED:
You.
Cameras (both still and video), GPS units, CB radios, Tarps, food for an army, Compasses, cars and trucks (see above), gas, gas cards, houses where people can stay, people who live in these states to get involved. If you live near any of the areas where strip mines are active
Houses. trailers and barns where people can stay.
WHAT NOT TO BRING:
Dawgs, no dogs please! Please if there is anyway you can avoid it do not bring your dogs.
Drugs. Do not bring or transport drugs to any of our MJS events. Police occasionally set up checkpoints in some coal communities as a harassment tactic. Additionally no one under the influence of anything should be driving where there are coal trucks. The coal drivers have enough speed and drugs in their own systems to more than make up for what you might lack.
Drama. Too few people are doing too much work in the campaign to stop the geologic annihilation of one of most ancient mountains and watersheds on Earth. For many organizations fighting strip mining a day of drama can lose a mountaintop. Mutual aid presupposes mutual respect.
That's it. Come prepared to have fun and train hard. The camp is a tool we have developed to fight back against the strip mine companies and the damage they are doing to our earth.
Give a summer for watersheds!
MOUNTAINJUSTICESUMMER.ORG mountainjusticesummer@yahoo.com
Organizations fighting strip mining in Appalachia:
Links about Mountain Top Removal
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4902852916257526734&pr=goog-sl
http://www.ILoveMountains.org is a resource and action center in the fight against surface mining in Appalachia. This website has lots of great Google Earth maps and videos.
West Virginia
http://www.crmw.net/ http://www.ohvec.org/
Tennessee
unitedmountaindefense.org
South Western Virginia
http://www.samsva.org/
Kentucky
http://mountainjusticesummer.org/kentucky/
ELSEWHERE
Arizona
MJS stands in solidarity with Black Mesa Indigenous Support - Dine residents living near Black Mesa in Arizona are actively opposing the destructive mining practices of Peabody coal company at the Black Mesa Mine.
http://www.blackmesais.org/
Utah
http://altoncoalmine.com/
New Zealand
http://www.savehappyvalley.org.nz/
http://www.ILoveMountains.org is a resource and action center in the fight against surface mining in Appalachia. This website has lots of great Google Earth maps and videos.
Yall come!
--------
In West Virginia, citizens battle against the mining companies carving off their mountaintops
Sunday, February 26, 2006
*By Diana Nelson Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette*
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06057/661362.stm
Informant: Teresa Binstock
--------
We Won: Saving West Virginia mountains
http://www.stopmountaintopremoval.org/
--------
Mountain Justice Summer III the mountains strike back!
**PLEASE FORWARD AND POST FAR AND WIDE**
Do you love Appalachia?
MOUNTAIN JUSTICE SUMMER MAY 20-28 2007
THE MOUNTAINS STRIKE BACK!
It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.
Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth.
The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space…
You are cordially invited to the Mountain Justice Summer 2007
(mountainjusticesummer.org) at the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center
( http://www.narrowridge.org/ ) in Tennessee. Greedy soul-less corporations are blowing up highland watersheds in order to rip coal from the earth. We are the people fighting to stop them, and we need your help!
Mountains and highland watersheds are still being blown apart for short term profit. As the general assemblies of Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia play a game of "its better than it used to be" countless acres of Appalachian forest are being clear-cut, blown apart and dragged off. The mining is WORSE than it has ever been and we need your help to wake everyone up as to this fact.
Coal companies want people to believe that Appalachian rivers are "better than they have ever been" without standing by chocolate streams as they pour sediment into navigable rivers. There is a silent environmental menace which is the often uncounted cost of fossil fuel energy production, strip mining. Strip mining and coal not only strips the land, it often sucks the aquifer beneath it dry and clear cuts any forest.
Global climate change has caught the worlds notice—and energy companies are frantically trying to adjust using doublespeak like "clean coal". Everyone in the energy industry is working to provide solutions like carbon sequestration to global warming—put hope people don't look behind the curtain and see strip mining. Coal can never be "clean"—coal has never been clean—its very acquisition is destructive. Where ever men have ever ripped coal from the earth human misery and suffering has followed. Blowing up watersheds to burn "clean coal" is clearly unacceptable and not "clean."
All four states in the MJS network need you to fight strip mining this summer. We need people to do water testing, lobbying, demonstrating, painting, drawing, writing and in general helping us to resist strip mining.
Have ever enjoyed being alone in the forest? Pay your rent! The magnificent planet humans are abusing so terribly is our source of life on this planet. This is a call to folks who have sat on moss covered boulders watching it rain under a forest canopy. This is a call out to those who love streams, forest and mountains. If you hunt, fish, camp, hike, and love mountains and forest this is a call to you. This is for you if you have ever jumped in a mountain stream or like clean drinking water.
WHAT IS THE MJS TRAINING CAMP?
The MJS camp is the time that folks from the states fighting get together to train. This year's camps emphasis will be field training. Volunteers will get both field and class room training in water testing, oral history recording, strip mine documentation, map reading, guerilla theatre, Appalachian cultural sensitivity, demonstrations, and other skills that MJS volunteers will using this summer.
This is our third camp, and our third summer of resistance against strip mining—we won't quit till they quit.
We use the camp to train everyone we can who is going to help fight strip mining that summer. Its like a basic training in strip mining—and the end of the camp participants should basically have the broad skills needed and a good idea of what going on in the broader campaign against strip mining.
We are also looking for volunteers to travel the world as emissaries to other movements in the world fighting strip mining. Currently peoples fighting strip mining world wide! If you can travel this summer come to our camp before you go! We need you to talk with people in other countries fighting strip mining to tell them they are not alone! In Columbia there is a mining conference for community groups in August we need to send representatives to.
If you can draw, take pictures, drive, take water samples, live in a town near or in the coalfields, write, have an off road vehicle, can post video to youtube, edit videos, cook, can give a talk, are self sufficient, we can use your help this summer.
PLEASE REGISTER TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CAMP!
This part MJS III is really serious about. We have to know how much food, space, transport, water we have to provide for in advance of the camp. Goto our website and follow the links to register. Let us know if you're thinking about coming. It's disturbing to find you someone goes into show when they get stung in the field.
We really really need to know about allergies, if you're diabetic, etc. The camp is a field camp and though we can accommodate folks on field work we really would prefer to know that yellow jacket stings put you into anaphylactic shock BEFORE you go out on one of the field trips. Please call or email mountainjusticesummer.org prepared to provide two people who will vouch for you we can call.
PLEASE COME PREPARED TO CARE FOR YOURSELF
The Appalachian counties which have been impoverished by the "benefits" of king coal (and clear cut logging) are as a direct consequence poor. As a result many of the organizations fighting strip mining in the Appalachians are poor. Come prepared to be self sufficient and to camp for a week. The land has fields and is by a lake so you can swim. But in general if you come to help us for a summer please do your own dishes and come prepared. In short, autonomy.
WHAT TO BRING
Something to swim in, towels, toothbrush, soap, snacks, bug juice—oh yes, about the bugs...
Come prepared to stay clean in the field. Ticks, chiggers, (snakes to!)—the southern Appalachians in the spring are not for the entomologically challenged. There will be classes in how to survive in the field—but come prepared. Long pants tucked into your socks may make you look weird—but it keeps ticks and mosquitoes off your skin. The best mosquito and tick repellant known is patchouli. Garlic is a lie mosquitoes love the stuff—ddt is ok if you don't mind cancer.
Raingear—you will be camping in a rainforest for a week. Think about rain allot as you prepare to come to Tennessee. Those plastic bags they give you at grocery stores are great for chambering off your clothes. It could go for days without rain...or it could rain for days. With some basic preparation whether it is raining or not won't affect your fun. Actually it's recommended you sit under a tarp alone in our forest while it is raining at least a few times.
Tent and tarps—bring them, they are your friend. Also bring a knife, boots, plate, bug spray, water bottle, hat, umbrella, and personal meds.
Bring a book or two was well—and documentation tools. Bring cameras, pens, paper—come prepared to document what you see in the field.
Instruments—any music you can make please please bring. If you're a musician you are vitally important to our campaign. Come and play music.
Cars—oh hell yes if you have your own transport that helps allot!!! We really really really need off road 4 wheel vehicles and trucks. If you can show up with gas and a licensed and insured off road truck we can use you 24/7 in the field. If you're a science field geek and you want to put your boots in the dirt bring a Subaru outback. Water testing, photography, scouting—its all about how we get people to the field. The dream vehicle would be a diesel off road which we could run veggie oil in. You can cover up hippy stickers with clear masking tape, then a layer of duct tape after that—peels right off when you're out of the field.
Soccer balls and Frisbees are encouraged.
WHAT WE NEED:
You.
Cameras (both still and video), GPS units, CB radios, Tarps, food for an army, Compasses, cars and trucks (see above), gas, gas cards, houses where people can stay, people who live in these states to get involved. If you live near any of the areas where strip mines are active
Houses. trailers and barns where people can stay.
WHAT NOT TO BRING:
Dawgs, no dogs please! Please if there is anyway you can avoid it do not bring your dogs.
Drugs. Do not bring or transport drugs to any of our MJS events. Police occasionally set up checkpoints in some coal communities as a harassment tactic. Additionally no one under the influence of anything should be driving where there are coal trucks. The coal drivers have enough speed and drugs in their own systems to more than make up for what you might lack.
Drama. Too few people are doing too much work in the campaign to stop the geologic annihilation of one of most ancient mountains and watersheds on Earth. For many organizations fighting strip mining a day of drama can lose a mountaintop. Mutual aid presupposes mutual respect.
That's it. Come prepared to have fun and train hard. The camp is a tool we have developed to fight back against the strip mine companies and the damage they are doing to our earth.
Give a summer for watersheds!
MOUNTAINJUSTICESUMMER.ORG mountainjusticesummer@yahoo.com
Organizations fighting strip mining in Appalachia:
Links about Mountain Top Removal
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4902852916257526734&pr=goog-sl
http://www.ILoveMountains.org is a resource and action center in the fight against surface mining in Appalachia. This website has lots of great Google Earth maps and videos.
West Virginia
http://www.crmw.net/ http://www.ohvec.org/
Tennessee
unitedmountaindefense.org
South Western Virginia
http://www.samsva.org/
Kentucky
http://mountainjusticesummer.org/kentucky/
ELSEWHERE
Arizona
MJS stands in solidarity with Black Mesa Indigenous Support - Dine residents living near Black Mesa in Arizona are actively opposing the destructive mining practices of Peabody coal company at the Black Mesa Mine.
http://www.blackmesais.org/
Utah
http://altoncoalmine.com/
New Zealand
http://www.savehappyvalley.org.nz/
http://www.ILoveMountains.org is a resource and action center in the fight against surface mining in Appalachia. This website has lots of great Google Earth maps and videos.
Yall come!
rudkla - 18. Feb, 13:46
