appalachia

This is the introductory blog post from the Build it Up! West Virginia Summer of Solutions program!  Grand Aspirations is sharing blog posts from our local programs to keep the powershift community updated on our work.

One of Build it Up West Virginia’s program coordinators says it best when he describes community development in West Virginia: “I eat more hot dogs than any other vegetarian I know.”  Some of the things that make organizing in central Appalachia so special are also what makes it so frustrating.  The above quote from Joe references the fact that much of what you do here is centered around food.  Church dinners, little old ladies inviting you in for cookies and tea, going to do a presentation in a school and being “treated” to school lunch- it’s all building community through FOOD.  And if you are a vegetarian, then just prepare yourself emotionally to get used to the taste of a slaw and chili hot dog- to not eat this delicacy is considered blasphemy and will get you tossed out of a community meeting faster than anything else.

In the aftermath of RAMPS' Mountain Mobilization in WV on July 28, the participants in the action and our movement as a whole have been reeling from conflicting feelings.  We’ve felt empowerment from our direct action that shut down the largest mine site in West Virginia, the Hobet 21 mine owned by Patriot Coal.  We’ve felt anger and betrayal at the police who exercised undue repression and failed to protect our safety during the action.  We’ve felt sadness for our comrades who were imprisoned under unjust circumstances, especially for Dustin Steele and others who were brutally beaten while in police custody.  We’ve felt joy when the Hobet 20 were finally released from jail yesterday.  We’ve felt triumph at successfully confronting and speaking truth to this powerful industry through executing this action.

Most of all, many of us have been conflicted about the community response to our mass mobilization.  Although RAMPS facilitated several informative workshops on de-escalation that included role-plays and clearly outlined their mandatory policy of respectful engagement of dialogue with miners and community members, I was personally emotionally unprepared for the level of antagonism we received. 

As we mobilized to protest MTR, the industry-funded nonprofit Friends of Coal also mobilized its members to meet us with resistance.  Miners and community members lined the road that led protesters away from the mine site, encouraged to shout their angry words by police who let them through checkpoints while blocking RAMPS vehicles that attempted to bring them home to safety.  Our caravan was aggressively chased down the highway and folks in my group were pepper sprayed at a gas station.  People showed up at our base camp to confront us and blocked the road leading in with fallen trees.  These were incredibly stressful experiences that many of us have had to process – the difference is through what lens we are processing these experiences with.

But the reaction from miners and the Friends of Coal is not the real story of the action we took on July 28 at the Hobet Mine.

Written by Kate Aranoff and Will Lawrence of Swarthmore Mountain Justice.

Students from Swarthmore and Earlham College will be traveling to Appalachia this week as part of the Divest Coal Frontlines Listening Tour, which is the latest effort in a broader campaign calling on all colleges and universities to divest from the largest and most destructive U.S.-based fossil fuel companies. Arriving in West Virginia in time for the Mountain Mobilization — a regional gathering July 25 through August 1 that will culminate in direct action on a proposed mine site — the tour is meant to facilitate collaboration by connecting the divestment campaigns with groups that have been organizing against mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia for the past several decades.

It’s time to escalate our resistance.

This summer young people and community organizations are stepping up the fight against mountaintop removal with a major Mountain Mobilization in West Virginia, July 25 - August 1. Organized by the RAMPS Campaign, the mobilization will bring hundreds together in nonviolent direct action — occupying a strip mine to do what politicians, regulators, and the courts have been unwilling to do: defend the land and the people.

We’re counting on you to help get the word out by joining today’s Mountain Mobilization Day of Social Media Outreach! Please share the call to action on Facebook and Twitter so that we can reach friends, family, coworkers, and beyond.