Stand Up, West Virginia!

In Charleston, West Virginia, Judge Irene Berger has handed down a verdict banning protesters from Massey Energy Company’s property. Massey is trying to make the ban permanent. The protesters have been protesting the company’s surface mining projects on company property.

Americans have the guaranteed right to free and peaceful protest. People have been protesting surface mines, also known as strip mines, for decades. Massey Energy doesn’t like the protesting because it delays their project, and slows their profit. Strip mining has been shown to ruin wildlife habitat, ruin drinking water by pollution and contamination with chemicals, and industrial waste, and cut coal mining jobs. It takes more workers to mine coal properly- from underground- than to strip the tops of mountains. Strip mining companies claim they repair the environment after they have removed all the coal from the ground, but all they do is plant trees. They do not clean up the industrial waste, thereby leaving groundwater contaminated forever. Animals that have been forced from their habitat by the strip mine don’t return because they know the ground is contaminated.

Times are hard, men are begging for work. Strip mines use only one third of the men it takes to mine coal. Underground mines need twelve men per section, per shift. Strip mines need four men per area per shift, and underground mines run three shifts per day, where strip mines run two or three, depending on the size of the company. Traditional mines are not affected by weather, where severe weather can impact strip mining, temporarily halting operations that would otherwise not be affected in a traditional underground mine. An injunction should be issued against Massey Energy, stopping them from surface mining permanently, and forcing them to use traditional, underground mines. Men have mined coal and other rocks from the ground for centuries. All of them know how dangerous mining is, and that is hazardous and eventually detrimental to their health. They are more than willing to ride that man-trip underground to take out the coal in exchange for a decent living for their families. Massey Energy only cares about its profits. It cares nothing for the environment, especially in West Virginia. Senators Byrd and Rockefeller are in Washington; they could care less about the lives of the people whose backs they walked on to get there. No one is paying attention to the coal fields of Appalachia at all. Massey owns every judge in the state, and most of the Mine Inspectors, as well, and every coal miner and his family know it. Massey is the most politically and financially powerful coal company in the Eastern U.S. And Massey owns Irene Berger.