Senior citizens from around the nation are stepping up their efforts to end mountaintop removal.
Roland Micklem is an 81-year-old military veteran from Richmond, VA. State police arrested Micklem and three others for blockading Massey Energy’s regional headquarters in an act of non-violent civil disobedience on the morning of Wednesday September 9. In his statement, Micklem announced his intent to lead a five day, 25 mile march for senior citizens, ages 55 and older, in a protest against mountaintop removal (MTR). Micklem and other participants will depart on the morning of Thursday October 8 from the state capital in Charleston, W.Va.. The march will conclude at the gates of the Massey-owned Mammoth MTR site in Kanawha County on Monday October 12, where those who choose to will engage in an act of non-violent civil disobedience against mountaintop removal.
In Micklem’s open letter, he states, “No substantial gain in our efforts to continually evolve into a more humane and caring society has been made without the willingness of individuals—with non violence as both a creed and a strategy–to step outside the framework of law and tradition in order to correct wrongs when conventional measures had failed. The abolition of slavery, the enactment of civil rights legislation, the right of women to vote, the termination of the Vietnam war could not have come about without the help of the same kind of non violent, direct, and sometime unlawful action that we are using here to stop mountaintop removal. And as a Christian as well as one who basically respects the laws of the land, I see the growth and maturing of my Faith to be in direct proportion to my readiness to stand for truth, and to embrace causes that will contribute to our moral and spiritual uplift as the dominant species on the planet.”
Click here to listen to Micklem’s radio interview excerpts
Click here for more information on the march on the Climate Ground Zero website
Regardless of our faith, we can all learn from Roland’s determination. Send your parents and grandparents to the coalfields October 8-12!
y’all should get 84 yr. old former president Jimmy Carter to join this march. he endorsed the coalition of imokolee workers a few years ago, and many other progressive cause. he signed SMCRA but has since spoken out that he regrets it. i bet he’d get on the anti-MTR bandwagon and join the march.
this actually might be a good verizon-esque online campaign to get going.
The could walk and push tubines and generate electricity to replace cheap coal.
Ground Zero for climate………give us a break. What is this now, the new WMD scam? Are we going to war against another false enemy by the name of Climate Change.
Please, just give up this CO2 witch burning mentality and concentrate on real pollution and yes we CAN be motiviated to be responsible environmentalists without being motiviated by fear and fear alone. Let’s leave the moralzing and fear mongering to the neocons shall we?
Why don’t you be real activists and question this false authority declaring the planet earth dead instead of being such politically correct sheoples?
What a loser generation of climate pansies and Greenzis you all are and I promise Rachel Carson is rolling in her grave.
What other time in history would you like to live? The days of smoke filled mud huts? We are living longer now than at any time in human history as a species despite access to quality health care and this so-called pollution and all you whiners can do is complain and declare the earth heading to doom soon! Life is great and getting better so why do you sheople wish for this misery?
If you hysterical false do-gooders really loved the planet, try experiencing it and appreciating it instead of throwing it under the bus every chance you get by calling it dead, dieing, sick and toxic.
Preserve, protect and respect the environment, not spread this needless fear of a 23 year old and failed CO2 theory.
As a soon-to-be 65 year older, I am proud of my “elder,” Roland Micklem’s moroal courage and his willingness to act and speak out on one of the most critical issues of our time or any time. The young and the old will make a powerful coalition and one worth forming. Count me in as a member. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for possibilities in furthering such a coalition in the northeast. To Meme Mine, I would just say that, by now, there is plenty of documentation by main stream scientists available to get up to speed on the reality of climate change as most people in our country and around the world know. I would challenge you to do read some articles and books by by scientists you don’t think you will agree with.
WHY DO YOU WARMIES WISH FOR THIS MISERY?????
This is from a liberal newspaper and the authority is a lead IPCC climate modeler.
Sept.15/09
“Scientists pull a temporary about-face on global warming”
Prof. Mojib Latif is one of the leading climate modelers in the world and a lead author for the (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC’s last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.
Yet last week in Geneva, at the UN’s World Climate Conference, Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering “one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.”
-* It’s all over the news services so don’t blame Exxon for this one. *
Latif pointed out, the Atlantic, and particularly the North Atlantic, has been cooling instead. And it looks set to continue a cooling phase for 10 to 20 more years.
“How much?” he said before the assembled delegates.
“The jury is still out.”
This is the latest science, from the IPCC itself and from one of their leading scientist to boot.
Are you warmies still in line despite this?
Meme Mine,
I’d like to point out that regardless of what you believe regarding global warming/climate change/CO2 emissions, mountaintop removal is poisoning drinking water (which comes out all shades of black and orange), giving asthma to children, destroying coalfield communities economically and upping the cancer rates. Large sludge dams threaten flooding and mining destroys the most biodiverse forest in North America. You don’t need a fancy scientific study to plainly see any of this.
D