Appalachia Rising

September 25-27 marks a HUGE gathering of amazing people from all over the Appalachian Mountains to come together against mountaintop removal (MTR). MTR is a devastating practice of extracting coal that was invented to effectively cut coal miners out of the process.

Instead of digging out a mine and having miners go in there and extract coal themselves, huge coal companies (ie Massey, those douchebags/penis pumps) just blow up the mountain, layer by layer, taking the coal out each time. This is a really terrible practice because the idea of it is to just cut the tops of mountains off, then fill the hollers (read: hollow, valley) with all the rock and rubble from the blasts. This leads to toxins in water sources, flooding because streams have just been buried underneath leftover mountain, and scars all over the earth. Furthermore, it is a highly unsustainable practice because all the coal is extracted with a few blasts, whereas traditional mines take years and years and years to empty. So even though this might be a cheaper way of doing things, only HUGE corporations and CEOs (I hate Don Blankenship) are the ones who profit, no one else. This video explains everything better, although it has the feel of something made in the early 90s.

What we're doing at Appalachia Rising is a number of workshops focused on things from community organizing to field work and corporate campaigning to media work. Our work together is really unique because it combines skills from all walks of life. I'm from California, I now live in DC, and I'm committed to the environmental movement and will rejoice when the day comes that we stop destroying our planet. Countless other people I met yesterday were from all across Appalachia, some from Kentucky, some from West Virginia, some from Georgia, all being directly affected by MTR. Other people were from Utah, New York, even San Francisco, there to show their solidarity with the movement. What we learn will culminate in a day of action, where we will rally together as one, march to the White House, and ask that MTR is stopped.

You can find out more about Appalachia Rising by checking out their website, and I also encourage you to take a look at Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, I Love Mountains, and Appalachian Voices. There are a lot of other organizations out there, but those are some good ones to start with.

For the Mountains,

Harmony