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Mountain Justice Part 2 - Creature Comforts and Contradictions

5/26/2012

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This is for Sophie, Julia, Carol Judy, Matt and Billy P., Wendy, Rachel, Dave, Lou, Patty, Joe, Matt Landon, Stacey, Larry, Jason, Gabby, Junior, Sid, and Dana, and many many others. Thank you for sharing your ideas hearts and minds with me and so many others over the last week.

Creature Comforts - oh so important 
  • Accomplishment - I pitched my tent in 20 minutes! It was tight and tidy. Slept great the first night. Second day, around noon, I headed back into the tent to grab my notebook, and found a carpet of ants - crunchy icky wiggly ants - under my sleeping bag. See, we had been warned not to have food in our tents (because of bears - ants were not mentioned) but I decided to sneak in a Pop-Tart before snuggling into my sleeping bag. I thought I had put the wrapper in a zip-loc bag, but had accidentally left a tiny one inch square piece of foil that the ants just could not resist. Plus, I had pitched the tent right on top of a giant ant hill. So... swept it out and moved it to a new location. Got to sleep a couple of nights later through a great thunderstorm but stayed dry. 
  • Porta-potties are not too bad, as long as they are emptied and cleaned regularly. And as long as you can figure out the whole latch system - had one brief period where I was locked in and couldn't figure out how to release the door. Whew. Or pee-yew.
  • GREAT food - Lots of tofu and tempeh - and eggs and apples and bread and also fresh veggies from the farm nearby. Much more food than I needed. 
  • MUSIC! Monday night we were gifted with the music of The Missing Parsons Report - headed by brothers Matt and Billy - mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle - old old old folk songs. The highlight - Matt singing Dark as the Dungeon  mining dirge, a cappella. 
  • The best part of it all - the people - hugging, serving food, washing dishes side by side, sharing ideas frustrations and plans, singing.
  • True confession - headed to the Pipestem State Park Lodge after the fourth night in the tent where I had a ceramic toilet, shower, and, more importantly, a little space on my own just to think.
Contradictions - stretched my mind...
  • Tuesday morning we spent several hours digging into anti-oppression talk. We began with what initially seemed to be a pretty simple small group exercise with two questions - When have you felt excluded? When have you excluded others? Okay. Not so simple, it turns out. There was lots of pain evident as folks recalled times when they had very actively and blatantly or even subtly been excluded - as young children, in high school of course (lots and lots of those stories), as adults. More surprising - many people talked about how they isolated or "excluded" themselves from groups or activities, often from fear of being rejected or misunderstood. And there was pain in the memories of times when we had not been so kind - either deliberately or unintentionally - and in our efforts to understand why this had happened. 
  • Oppression? Related to physical, mental, intellectual abilities. To race, class, ethnicity. To sexual orientation or gender identity. To religious beliefs and practices. To military status. To educational status or work life.... too many ways that we sort people out and put them into categories, weighing their value in such odd and unimportant ways, resulting in so much damage.
  • Talking about this stuff was important as we moved into talking about how we can work with others in respectful ways in our efforts to stop mountain top removal - members of the mountain communities, politicians, miners, other activists who think or act differently. We put mega-buckets of energy and effort into talking and thinking about this. It was hard but necessary - and uncovered parts of my mind and heart that had not seen light for awhile.
  • Early afternoon on Tuesday, I took a ride into town, needing a little time by myself to process all that we had talked about. I turned on the radio, by happenstance tuning into an American Family Radio station. Within ten minutes, I heard two brief stories that kind of blew my mind. One, a talk show guest, who represented himself as a Christian attorney, took a call from a pastor who described a troublesome situation at his church - a man had recently started attending the church, sometimes accompanied by a service dog and sometimes alone but using a cane to help him navigate. The caller's question - was the church legally obligated to allow the man to attend with the service animal? The parishioners found the man "odd" and thought it was "strange" that he sometimes had the dog, and sometimes didn't. The attorney assured the caller that the church was within its legal rights not to allow the service dog in the church, in effect leading to the exclusion of the new church-goer. Well. Second, two talk show hosts voiced anger and disgust that a Macy's employee had been disciplined for not allowing a transgendered individual to use the women's restroom - "I would have said, 'Dude, use the dude's bathroom.' HE's the sick one - HE is the one who should be in trouble." This conversation was presented in sarcastic, snarky tones.
The world is full of contradictions, isn't it? Hurtful contradictions - hard to fathom - divisive - counter-productive - hateful - ignorant. But it is so so so very important to face these contradictions and to dig down deep for the courage both to unearth our own cruelties and to  speak up - respectfully and firmly - when we observe the cruelties of others... to speak up about the value of every human being, about their rights to live in a home, a natural environment that is protected from the life-killing toxins related to particular industry practices.

Our natural world breathes - miraculously alive, ever-growing and changing.
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Mountain Justice, Part 1

5/24/2012

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What a week. I am not sure where to start - or even if I should start. My week at the Mountain Justice Summer Camp has been - inspiring, confusing, disturbing, mind-stretching, soul-feeding, humbling.

I have been trying to figure out how I ended up at the camp, what led me to sign up for this week in Pipestem, WV. The best that I can recall - about a year ago, I read the Post-Gazette reports about the investigation into the Upper Big Branch mining disaster, and it made me ill - the callous disregard of coal mine owners, particularly Don Blankenship, for the health and well-being of the miners and the mining communities and the "look the other way" practices of publicly funded regulatory bodies made me ill. Shortly thereafter I decided to participate in the March on Blair Mountain, wanting to understand the issues better, wondering if and how they might connect to Western Pennsylvania's own fracking controversies. So I went to Blair Mountain, and then continued to read and listen, and somehow ended up at the Mountain Justice camp in the heart of the Appalachians.

My parents grew up in Harlan County, KY, in the small US Steel-owned coal-mining town of Lynch. They shopped at the company store, and lived in company-owned homes on the clearly socially-stratified main street of town (an old story - it was a little scandalous that my mother, who lived in the No. 6 block, married my father, whose family lived in No. 5). As a child, we visited Lynch often - the smell of the mountains this week took me back immediately to Lynch. 

None of my grandparents or uncles worked in the mines, but my dad's cousins and uncles did. I remember stories about black lung disease, and mine injuries. I also remember what I heard a lot about this week - the boom and bust cycle of being a miner. Boys I knew became miners as early as possible - this was in the boom years - and had big cars and married young. A few years later, they were poor. Back and forth, up and down.

My parents lived in Lynch for awhile after they married, then left when my dad decided to go to the University of KY to study engineering. But to my mom, Lynch was "home." So learning - or re-learning - about mountains and mining has pulled at me over the last year in ways that I can't quite understand or explain.

The camp took place at the Appalachian South Folk Life Center - a pastoral setting looking out on breathtakingly beautiful mountains. Each morning, I sat at the top of a hill looking out over the misted mountains, listening to the birds. And all day into the evening I attended workshops about mountain top removal from all angles - Appalachian culture and history, rural vs urban activism, facilitation practices, solidarity economics, non-hierarchical organizing. I was one of only a few folks older than 40 (okay, I was probably the oldest person there), and I had the privilege of learning from much younger people who were either born in some part of Appalachia or have chosen to live and work there, all serving as social justice activists. I don't know what I expected - I don't know that I had any particular expectations - but what I experienced was unexpected. 

The people in Mountain Justice, and related groups such as Radical Action for Mountain Peoples' Survival, Coal River Mountain Watch, Larry Gibson's Mountain Keepers, and others, work with community members to understand, monitor, plan, and act to stop the practice of mountain top removal. The movement to stop MTR is based upon the devastating destruction to the ecosystem of the mountains and related long-lasting harm to the physical, communal, social, and emotional lives of community members. There is a substantial body of research documenting the damage done to water systems, wildlife, human health, economic stability, community life.

And yes, the opponents of MTR are allies with others involved in fighting extractive industries, those involved with extracting coal, gas, and oil - with a particular focus on opposing the manner in which the industries operate, again with little regard for the immediate and long-term damage to human life and the ecosystem. So yes, this movement to end MTR is related closely to the efforts in Western PA and elsewhere to stop hydraulic fracturing for natural gas - better known as fracking.

What else did I learn? I got to spend time with people who defined themselves variously as radicals, activists, and anarchists, who question and are committed to swimming upstream against mainstream ideology and against business as usual, when this business hurts people. Today, two groups of campers participated in direct actions - one involving five people who chained themselves to a coal-carrying barge in Charleston, WV (yes, they were arrested) and another involving dozens of people who blocked a road leading up to an MTR site, making it impossible for the trucks that transport coal and other materials to pass through. 

And I also learned that I have a whole lot more to think about. Not sure where I fit into this whole scenario, or where I go with what I learned. More later... about people, and food, and music, and stories...

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Back in touch

6/22/2011

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Whoa. It has been too long since I have written. Even though I was in West Virginia for only a few days, it took many more than a few days after I returned to absorb all the experiences I had and to get back on track.

As you can see from my picture, the march on Blair Mountain was both exhausting and exhilarating. Friends have asked questions about the march and issues related to it, so I have tried to continue my own education.

For example, I have been learning more about what the process of mountain top removal (MTR) actually involves - how it is done and what happens to the nearby environment and people during and after the MTR. There are several steps to the MTR process: 
  • clearing all topsoil and plants - that alone sounds painful and bleak
  • blasting through 500-800 feet of mountain surface to reach the seam of coal 
  • digging and removing coal and debris with a huge machine which actually does the work that in the past was done by people
  • dumping waste, known as overburden or spoil, into valleys and stream beds - typically filling or burying the streams
  • processing - or washing and treating - the coal, creating waste water, known as slurry or sludge, which is then stored in impoundments that are often open, poorly supported and unstable ... slurry is made of a mixture of water, coal dust, clay, and toxic chemicals including arsenic, mercury, lead, copper, and chromium
  • reclamation which is supposed to involve stabilization of the land and revegetation ... a not very closely monitored or regulated process
Below is a photo of an Appalachian mountain - followed by a photo of the mountain post-MTR - followed by a different "reclaimed mountain." What do you think?


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photo from Graham Mountain Foundation
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photo from Graham Mountain Foundation
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photo from ilovemountains

What are the effects of this devastation, really? 

The drastic changes to the landscape increase flooding (which includes runoff that contains toxic chemicals). The ongoing blasting associated with MTR damages the foundations of homes, property values, and quality of life. Blasting also randomly sends boulders and debris down onto yards in the communities below the MTR sites, creating safety risks. Slurry and sludge poison drinking water and increase realities of disease in nearby communities. These are immediate and short-term changes.

Let's look to the past, then far into the future. In 2009, the Smithsonian Magazine reported that...

Since the mid-1990s, coal companies have pulverized Appalachian mountaintops in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Peaks formed hundreds of millions of years ago are obliterated in months. Forests that survived the last ice age are chopped down and burned. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that by 2012, two decades of mountaintop removal will have destroyed or degraded 11.5 percent of the forests in those four states, an area larger than Delaware. Rubble and waste will have buried more than 1,000 miles of streams.

The rate and scope of this destruction is incredibly short-sighted. Centuries of work by Mother Earth gone and, on top of that, toxic substances introduced into what is left. Without extensive intervention, this threatens much needed biodiversity (all of life is interconnected and interdependent for survival) and causes harm to the health and well-being of plants, humans, and other animals for hundreds of years to come. 

And no intervention can truly re-create what has been destroyed - particularly the culture of the mountain people in the communities affected by MTR. I witnessed the strength and integrity of the people from Appalachia at the march - outspoken, impassioned, but respectful and honest.

Hazel Dickens fought MTR - she was one beautiful voice rising from Appalachia. She was to have performed at the Blair Mountain March but, sadly, passed away in April before the March.


More later... in the meantime, let me know what you think.
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March on Blair Mountain - June 11, 2011

6/13/2011

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From March on Blair Mountain:

We march to preserve Blair Mountain, abolish mountaintop removal, strengthen labor rights, and an investment in sustainable job creation for all Appalachian communities.The March on Blair Mountain is a peaceful, unifying rally involving environmental justice organizations, workers, scholars, artists, and other citizens and groups. The march commemorates the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, when 10,000 coal miners rose against the rule of the coal operators and fought for the basic right to live and work in decent conditions. Currently, Blair Mountain is threatened with obliteration by mountaintop removal (MTR) mining, and it is here that a new generation of Appalachians takes a stand.

In the spirit of the original march–which consisted of mountain peoples, African-Americans, and immigrants from all over Europe–we reach out to a diversity of groups to march in solidarity for the workers, communities and mountains of Appalachia. If you stand with us, you are one of us — a true mountaineer.
Lessons from the Mountain ~
  • In late summer 1921, over 10,000 miners marched the 50 miles from Marmet to Blair Mountain to protest work conditions and to call for unionizing
  • The miners were met with strikebreakers, the police, and, eventually, the US Army
  • Over a million rounds were fired - 50-100 men were killed and hundreds more wounded
  • Almost 1000 miners were arrested
  • The Battle of Blair Mountain was one of the largest civil uprisings in our nation's history, matched only by the Civil War - the immediate effect was diminished union strength, but in 1935 under FDR the unions became strong and continued through the 1970's
  • Nevertheless, the 1921 march drew attention to the horrid conditions facing miners every day
  • Beginning June 6, 2011, several hundred citizens from many states and even different countries began the fifty mile march from Marmet to Blair Mountain, replicating the 1921 event - the stimulus was the threat of mountain top removal by coal companies - I will write more about the effects of MTR on the health and well-being of individuals, families, communities, the mountain and its environs, and the mountain culture
  • The marchers walked several miles a day - the main glitch came when camp sites that had previously agreed to host the marchers at the end of a day's march reneged - some acknowledged that they had been asked/told not to support the marchers
  • On June 11, 2011, a truly diverse group of people came - over 1000 came together for the morning rally at the base of the mountain and almost 800 climbed the mountain to the battlefield of the miner's 1921 struggle - union members, students, retired miners, Quakers, ordinary citizens who have become activists - all races, educational levels, and income levels were represented - all ages, from in utero to 90 years +
  • Marchers included at least three Chatham University faculty - Lou Martin from History who walked the entire 50 miles, Greg Galford from Interior Architecture, and me - Lou and Greg both have West Virginia roots and I have eastern KY roots
  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an environmental attorney, spoke - he noted that, if a corporation were threatening to chop off the top of a mountain and to dump the dirt and rocks into streams in the Catskills or Adirondacks, this would be called criminal activity and the corporate heads would be held accountable for the destruction
  • Kathy Mattea, singer and activist, spoke and sang - and urged the marchers to hold all people in their hearts, even those who were supportive of surface mining and mountain top removal
  • Many many amazing citizens from West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia spoke from the heart
  • In early afternoon, the long march up the mountain started - first, three abreast, then single file, uphill for over two miles in temperatures in the high 80s
  • Marchers sang, shared water, chanted, and helped one another
  • Many state police units were present, ensuring the safety of the event
  • As hoped and planned for, it was a peaceful, inspirational, and respectful activity - there were very few counter protesters on the day of the march - there were no confrontations or ugly scenes 
  • Check out the Inspiration page in the next few days for some cool songs, pictures, and speeches and the Blog for more stories
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    Author

    Mary Beth Mannarino is a licensed psychologist who provides coaching in the areas of leadership, career, life, and parenting. She is also an environmental and climate educator and activist. Dr. Mannarino is professor emeritus at Chatham University where she continues to teach courses to students in health professions related to environment and well-being.

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    Follow MBMannarino on Twitter
    My Bloggy Rules...
    I write about my own experiences, opinions, dreams, and ideas. I invite you to share your ideas, and to be part of a dialogue. I will make mistakes! But it is great to take the risk to put this out there and, more importantly, to hear from you.

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