Background on MTR

Since King Coal first sunk it's shovels and auger-drills into the Appalachian coalfields a little over a hundred years ago, grassroots resistance to the industry's blatant disrespect for the land and people has been as much a part of life as hunting, fishing and old-time music. First the struggle was between the unions and the operators who paid workers in company-money known as "scrip." Only redeemable at the company store and other establshments owned by the operators (the school, the hospital, even the churches were all owned or influenced by the companies in those days), families were locked into paying every cent of their meager wages right back to the bosses that peddled them out. The time from 1912 - 1921 became known as the Mine Wars having seen a number of gunfights betweeen the companies and the workers. Tent-villages full of striking miners' wives and children were shot up by company thugs. One town's mayor and chief of police who stood up for the miners were both shot in the course of a long-standing union drive. The Air Force was even called in to drop bombs on 10,000 union miners who had armed themselves and were marching to Mingo County WV to free imprisoned union organizers by whatever force was neccessary.

The union is mostly quiet these days. After one last stand in the late eighties and early nineties, the United Mine Workers is pretty much stamped out in most parts of Appalachia. And now, the mining endangers everyone, not just the miners. It's called Mountain-top removal mining. The basic idea is that the mountains are blown up, the soil and rock dumped into the valleys, and the coal removed; shipped out to be burned some place to power our lights and refrigerators. It's ecocide and it's culture-cide. As you can imagine the forests (Appalachia is home to the most biodiverse temperate forest eco-systems on Earth) never can come back. The topsoil is mixed with the rest of the strata and dozed over down into the valleys without care. What surface remains is hydro-seeded. It's usually planted with Lespedeza, a non-native grass inedible to humans, wildlife and livestock. Occasionally the companies get a few scrubby little pines to live up there, or they build a super-maximum security prison on the rubble. The hills are so completely absent of vegetation and the soil so mixed up and moved around that when it rains folks living below the mountain-top removal strip mines get flashfloods and mudslides, destroying homes and sometimes taking lives. After the coal is mined, it must be cleaned for incineration. This process leaves behind it billions of gallons of toxic coal sludge. This sludge is dealt with one of two ways. It is either stored by daming up the open end of horse-shoe shaped valleys called hollars and flooding them, creating massive toxic lakes, one such lake is perched four-hundred yards above an elementary school; or the sludge is pumped down into abandoned underground mine shafts, a practice known as sludge-injection and resulting in the poisoning of the well-water that most mountain residents rely on.

Affecting the coal-bearing regions of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and Pennslyvania, grassroots community groups have been fighting mountain-top removal (MTR) and other forms of strip mining since the issue emerged in the seventies. In the summer of 2005, a new network of already existing groups fighting MTR, sludge waste and other offenses of the coal industry took center stage in the struggle for the lives and land of Appalachia. Since it's inception Mountain Justice has drawn from the energy of college students and others, young and old, near and far to stand in solidarity with coalfield residents and participate in efforts of community organizing, public education and non-violent direct action. Through consistent and creatively applied pressure, Mountian Justice has supported communities in delivering such tangible wins as halting plans to expand coal-processing and sludge storage operations behind Marsh Fork Elementary School in Raleigh County WV, a court order granting bottled water to coalfield residents whose wells are contaminated by sludge-injection in Mingo County WV, the establishment of a community resource center in Wise County Va. and positive media coverage in publications such as National Geographic, Orion, Vanity Fair, the American School Board Journal and the Oprah Magazine.

Now is your chance to join us in learning about, defending and celebrating Appalachian culture and ecology. The Southern Energy Network is teaming up with Coal River Mountain Watch, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, the Mountain Sustainability Project, the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, United Mountain Defense and the Mountain Links Resource Center to create Mountain Justice Spring Break in March of 2007. The above-listed community groups in Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia will be hosting young people from across the nation this spring for two educational and empowering weeks of community service and organizing projects, action and a good ol' Appalachian time. Please join us in our ancient, sacred mountains for this very special and important experience.

If you're interested in coming, visit the MJ Spring Break page of the Southern Energy Network at www.climateaction.net/mjsb and fill out our interest form. We'll stay in touch as we select dates that work for as many schools as possible.