I Just Pledged to End Mountaintop Removal in 2010, Will You?

I spent last week in Wise Virginia with 100 Appalachian coalfield residents, students and youth from up and down the east coast, direct actionistas living in WV, TN, KY and VA and retired union coal miners at Mountain Justice Spring Break.  The theme of the camp focused on mountaintop removal (MTR), coal, local communities and Appalachian culture and what we’re doing to turn around this highly destructive fossil fuel economy.

Last Thursday, my RAN comrades set up two tripods outside EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s window in Washington D.C. and occupied that space for over 32 hours calling for an end to MTR.

Last Sunday, Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping returned a mountaintop to a Chase bank in New York City.

Over the last year, over 140 people working with Climate Ground Zero have been arrested in the Coal River Valley of southern WV taking direct action to end mountaintop removal.

Over the past five years, Mountain Justice and a coalition of Appalachian groups have combined grassroots organizing and direct action to challenge the coal companies and end this horrible practice.  Every month, coalfield residents and allies are going to Washington D.C. lobbying for legislation to abolish MTR.

This now a national issue.  (Hell, Time magazine just did a feature piece on it last week.)

Over 500 mountains destroyed, thousands of miles of rivers and streams buried, millions of acres of forest clear cut and lots of Appalachian communities harmed or destroyed.  Massive amounts of resistance has occurred across the country and in Applachia, yet it still exists.  Greedy coal companies are still blowing the tops off of our Appalachian mountains.

I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about Ed Abbey lately.  This quote has really stuck in my head: “At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoroeau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behavior.“

Let’s misbehave and let them know we’re not going to settle for a kinder, gentler form of mountaintop removal.  Or it’s end in 5, 10 or 20 years only once the coal has run out.  Let’s end it now.

RAN and allies are calling for people to take a pledge to end MTR. Whether you go to DC, NYC, the coalfields or just do something in your own community, we need you to take the pledge and join us.

Please get involved.  Take the pledge.  End mountaintop removal!