It’s Getting Hot In Here

Sylvia is a great-granny living down river (and down wind) from Marsh Fork Elementary School on the Coal River in Southern West Virginia. Recently a book came out, Coal River, about the mountain community that has been fighting Mountaintop Removal, and other effects of coal — dust, blasting, toxic waste disposal, overweight coal trucks barreling down the road towards school buses — for years now.

When you fight for climate justice, it’s not just “to protect our future” — it’s also to protect our Grannies’ present day. Sylvia wrote this in response to a Charleston Gazette article critiquing the book.

Editor: The Gazette editorial called the great new book “Coal River” an “attack on the coal industry.” The Gazette has it backward. The coal industry is the one with the explosives. We’re the ones getting blasted. They attack Coal River and other communities with almost 4 million pounds of explosives daily. The poison water from sludge and valley fills is another attack on us. I am truly disappointed and insulted that this paper tries to twist and spin the destruction that the coal industry is heaping upon us.

The coal industry and the Gazette don’t seem to like how the outside world sees the destruction of mountains, streams and us mountaineers. If you don’t like the image you see in the mirror, don’t blame the mirror.We do offer alternative solutions, like wind and solar. Coal is finite and we must transition now. We want green jobs for our children.
Regardless the only solution and alternative to poisoning and blasting people is to stop it. This insanity is unacceptable. Stop blasting my home. -Sylvia Bradford

Naoma, WV

Want to learn more, and join tough, smart grannies like Sylvia? Come to www.mjsb.org to register for Mountian Justice Spring Break this March 1-9 and 22-30.