We don’t discuss specific activist campaigns much here and I need to do a better job of it. I’m particularly interested in smaller movements that are doing amazing work to create change. We can talk about Occupy (and I have from time to time) but the different groups that make up the faces of protest […]
Tag: Coal
A couple of weeks ago, I slammed United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts for attacking the Environmental Protection Agency. I have a piece up at Alternet exploring this issue in greater detail. An
On April 20, 1914, members of the Colorado National Guard, along with a strikbreaking militia employed by the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, a corporation owned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., opened
UMWA President Cecil Roberts embarrassed himself and his union on a West Virginia radio station: “The Navy SEALs shot Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington,” Cecil Roberts, president of the powerful union, said during an interview Tuesday on the West Virginia radio show MetroNews Talkline. Roberts blasted Jackson, the […]
Building on my post from the other day about what the decline of coal is going to do to the already horrible economy of southern Appalachia, Brad Plumer weighs in on the matter. Like myself, he notes
It seems so. Essentially, the easy to reach coal seams are disappearing, creating the necessity for extremely destructive methods like mountaintop removal in order to reach what is left. With increasi
On September 17, 1989, 98 miners and one minister conducted a peaceful takeover of the Pittston Moss 3 Coal Preparation Plant. The Pittston strike was one of the most brutal and hard-fought of the last three decades. The sit-in was part of a 10 month strike that pitted the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) […]
The coal industry is so incredibly loathsome: In response to a recent study connecting mountaintop removal coal mining to birth defects, coal industry lawyers noted: The study failed to account for co
As I expressed last week when thinking about the Huffington Post boycott and its broader implications for the blogosphere, I noted that we are long past the time when the blogosphere was the relative
Miners experienced awful conditions in the coal regions of West Virginia in the early 20th century. Coal companies ruled the region like a fiefdom. Impoverished workers had few connections with the outside world and could be thrown out of their homes or off their land at the whim of the company. Miners died from from […]