It\’s Getting Hot In Here

Guest post from Chuck Belmont Keeney, Ph.D. the descendant of famed UMWA organized Frank Keeney.  The March on Blair Mountain is currently happening in Southern WV.  For more information and to support the march visit www.marchonblairmountain.org

Nothing like this has happened to me before.

Walking the road to Blair Mountain, we pass an elementary school. Several of the teachers have taken their classes outside. The children and the teachers cheer us as we walk by.

Minutes later a man slows by the protesters in his pickup truck. He gives us the middle finger and yells, “Get a job, tree huggers!”

A few more paces and we witness an elderly couple on their front porch. They clap and nod. I notice that the old woman is crying. She tells us to keep going.

Others drive by and hurl obscenities in our direction. One sign on a house reads, “Thank You Marchers.” Another sign on a telephone pole warns, “Go Back To Where You Came From.”

Behold the road to Blair Mountain, where another civil war looms in the hills of Appalachia. Ninety years before, 10,000 armed coal miners marched to secure a decent living and to be treated as human beings. They fought an army paid for by the coal operators at the Battle of Blair Mountain. Miners bled and died to provide a better future for their children and, consequently, lay the groundwork for the privilege of weekends off, forty hour work weeks, and many of the other benefits that workers today enjoy. To date the Battle of Blair Mountain is the largest labor uprising in the history of our country.

Today there is a Second Battle of Blair Mountain. The coal companies want to destroy this historic ground with mountaintop removal and we are trying to save it. Marchers brave the heat, intimidation of the coal companies, and the ugliness of some who oppose us. When we originally planned the five day march we arranged to stay at various parks and campsites along the way. While many of these places initially welcomed us, they have all, within the last few days, told us that we can no longer stay at their sites. We then found alternative camp sites. These places too, have since withdrawn their support. Some of them have refused us because of threats from the coal companies; others have not given us specific reasons. What we do know is that many of the owners of these campsites were very hospitable at first, but have since said with regret that we cannot rest on their property. Therefore, we are forced to shuttle marchers back and forth from our headquarters at Marmet each day.

Continue reading ‘The Second Battle of Blair Mountain’

Guest post regarding the upcoming march on Blair Mountain

The March on Blair Mountain is a unifying rally involving environmental justice organizations, workers, scholars, artists, and other citizens and groups. Visit appalachiarising.org or marchonblairmountain.org for information. See you in June 4 – 11!

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The striking miners rode on boxcars, flat cars, on the roofs and in the cow catchers of commandeered trains. They wore red neckerchiefs around their collars and on their arms, and held guns in their laps. Some were laughing, spitting, smoking; others were silent, their eyes fixed on the mountains that unfolded before them. It was August of 1921, and the forests were lush and green.

Along the train tracks sat rows of coal miners’ cabins, and the occasional town street, with several stores and a saloon. Some folks on the sidewalks tipped their hats as the trains passed, while others stood cross-armed, scoffing. The hats that were tipped were mostly worn down and cheaply made, while the crossed arms were clothed in the tailored jackets of professionals and businessmen.

“Ya ready?” said a thick-necked older miner to the younger, slimmer man next to him. Let’s call the older one Buddy. Actually, let’s call them both Buddy, the name the miners used for one another during the duration of the mine war centered on Blair.

“Yup,” said the younger Buddy, “Got my gun polished up and everythin’. Time to get those Baldwin-Felts men.”

Both men had worked underground since they were teens, hauling precious bituminous coal from mines tunneled deep in to the mountains. The work was dangerous and important– this coal played a crucial role in allowing American industry to grow and expand. Still, miners were poorly paid, had their lives controlled by the coal industry and were subject to the whims of company guards and private detectives. But that’s all over and done with, thought both Buddies, we’re not gonna stand to be treated as less than men anymore.

As the train entered Logan County, it began to pass empty streets and rows of houses with shuttered windows. Smoke, escaping from several chimneys, was the only evidence of human inhabitance. From the silence, the miners knew that they were getting close, and would soon being pulling in to the train depot at Blair.

Continue reading ‘Bound for Blair: Then & Now’

Guest post by Wilma Steele (Meador, WV, Mingo County) regarding the upcoming march on Blair Mountain

The March on Blair Mountain is a unifying rally involving environmental justice organizations, workers, scholars, artists, and other citizens and groups. Visit appalachiarising.org or marchonblairmountain.org for information. See you in June 4 – 11!

Guns are now silent! The blood stained earth, spent shell castings, and unmanned cannon stand as the silent evidence of what happened on old Blair Mountain.  Ninety years now she’s kept the past a secret. Her story is only whispered now and then among poets and scholars, or retold by a few of the miners’ sons & daughters.

Blair Mountain stood strong as the world changed. Don Chafin and President Harding thought their victory would bring them lasting fame, but few remember them, and those who do only remember their shame. Roosevelt, instead, took center stage. He brought in a New Deal and made way for a new powerful union.

King Coal no longer owned his workers!  With the UMW, the miners stood united. At the company store script had no value and miners’ pockets jingled with copper and silver.  The miners even bought their own houses. They carried in the few precious things that hadn’t been destroyed when Baldwin Felts pitched them out on the streets.  Upon their walls they hung pictures of FDR and John L. Lewis in the place of honor – beside of Jesus and their old banjo.

Sounds of music and the whistle of the train drifted in the wind.  Blair Mountain stood quietly above the new road and cars. It seemed as if she was watching as big new machines were brought up the mountain.  King Coal no longer needed so many workers!  Blair watched as many miners packed up their families, their red bandannas, their ginseng hoes, and their banjos: they left their mountains.

It seemed like they took some of the mountaineers’ heart and soul with them. Money was rolling in the hills now but only a few were getting rich. Coal operators were still doing well. Miners’ wages were much higher. The UMW owned 75% of their own D.C. Bank, as well as their own journal. This new UMW president had his wonderful accomplishments printed in their paper.

The miners had new hospitals, and they really needed them. The new machines roll out the tonnage, as well as the black clouds. The miners’ faces looked as if they had been sand blasted with coal dust. Wise doctors saw miners that were old men at age forty and identified the cause as black lung. Our union, which fought so hard for rights of workers, was now as silent as Old Blair on the subject.

The death rattle of the coal miners’ lungs brought Dr. Buff and Dr. Rasmussen to champion their cause. They were joined by Ken Hechler, Nader and his Raiders, and other honest men.  The powerful were silent: where were our senators and where was our strong union? The miners marched to Charleston with only a few champions, but they had the truth that would not be ignored. Their wisdom reached across party lines to Cleo Jones. It was a good thing, too, because his sharp eyes caught the sly change of one word that would have made the bill powerless. The bill became the law.

Continue reading ‘The Wisdom of Old Blair Mountain’

Community leaders, union members, celebrities and conservationists will honor labor struggles and call for an end to surface mining during a fifty mile march through southern West Virginia.

Spokespeople:

Denise Giardina, – Award winning West Virginia novelist

Terry Steele – Mingo County WV, Retired UMWA underground coal miner, member of Matewan Local 1440

Wilma Steele – Mingo County, WV, Elementary school art teacher and member of Friends of Blair Mountain

Erica Broach – Big Stone Gap, VA – Member of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards

Blair Mountain Coalition and Appalachia Rising Media Phone: (304) 518-0696
Email: blairmarchmedia@gmail.com
Website: marchonblairmountain.org, appalachiarising.org

CHARLESTON, WV –  A mass march against mountaintop removal (MTR), preceded by a benefit concert in tribute to the late Hazel Dickens, will take place June 6 through 11 in southern West Virginia.  Hundreds of participants of “Appalachia Rising: March on Blair Mountain” are expected to peacefully walk fifty miles from Marmet, WV, to Blair Mountain, WV, where a culminating rally and concert will occur.

Marchers will follow the same route that union miners took on their historic march to Blair Mountain in 1921.  The ensuing battle between 10,000 coal miners and the coal industry’s hired gunmen is remembered as the largest armed uprising in United States history since the Civil War, and a landmark event in the labor struggles of the early 20th century.

Currently, Blair Mountain is under threat of destruction by mountaintop removal.  It was briefly placed on the National Register of Historic Places, until it was removed due to coal operator pressure on state agencies.

Grammy award-winning musicians Emmylou Harris, Tim O’Brien, and Kathy Mattea are all   expected to perform in support of the march.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will speak at the final rally in Blair, WV, on June 11th.

“We are announcing a new march on Blair Mountain in early June, and we invite our fellow citizens to join us. We call for protection for Blair Mountain from mountaintop removal; indeed, an end to all mountaintop removal. We call for protection of our streams and our drinking water. We call for our politicians to protect people and the environment”, said WV author Denise Giardina.

Community members, religious leaders, union members, environmentalists, and others will honor the history of the Battle of Blair Mountain and call for an end to MTR; the preservation of Blair Mountain; a strengthening of labor rights; and a transition to a sustainable economy.

Terry Steele of Mingo County, WV, cited statistics demonstrating that MTR actually reduces the number of mining jobs available to West Virginians, while increasing corporate profits. He stated, “To make the argument that we’re costing people jobs is an argument that can’t be made to me by any intelligent human being.” Steele, who worked twenty-six years underground as a UMWA miner, explained that in Boone County, WV–the largest coal-producing county in the state–underground mining supplied 2,053 jobs and produced ten million tons of coal, while surface mines provided 1,086 jobs and twelve million tons of coal.

Fundraisers, concerts, and rallies are planned for the weeks leading up to the march.  Residents of Mingo County, WV, are organizing a bluegrass concert to raise funds for the march, to be held in the Matewan, WV, UMWA Local Hall on the evening of May 14th.  The Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS) a Wise County, VA, grassroots community group, will hold a march and rally on May 27th in opposition to a 1200 acre surface mine permit located in the center of Appalachia, VA.

Chuck Keeney, great-grandson of Frank Keeney, the UMWA District 17 leader during the original march on Blair Mountain, called on his fellow Appalachians to join him in Marmet in June, stating, “If you stand for more jobs instead of fewer jobs, you stand for Blair Mountain. If you stand for preserving our cultural heritage instead of destroying it, you stand for Blair Mountain. If you stand for honoring the memory of the miners who fought and died there; educating our children; and building a better future for West Virginia and all Americans, then you stand for Blair Mountain. We stand to preserve the Blair Mountain Battlefield for all of those ideals, and we ask that all of you stand with us.”

For a complete schedule of events, list of spokespeople, and other information, please visit: marchonblairmountain.org or appalachiarising.org

– Guest Post by Denise Giardina regarding the upcoming March on Blair Mountain –

The March on Blair Mountain is a unifying rally involving environmental justice organizations, workers, scholars, artists, and other citizens and groups. Visit appalachiarising.org or marchonblairmountain.org for information. See you in June 4 – 11!

Ninety years ago, in 1921, thousands of coal miners marched from Marmet, West Virginia to Blair Mountain in Logan County. They were West Virginians from a variety of backgrounds, standing up against coal companies for their freedom and basic human rights. They tied red bandannas around their necks and marched to throw out local politicians who had aligned themselves with coal companies. They marched because they were dying from unsafe working conditions, because they were being cheated out of their rightful pay. They marched because they were being denied the right to join a union, because their families were living in terrible conditions and dying from ill health, because coal company thugs subjected them to violence, because the companies and state government were taking away their basic civil liberties.

When these brave miners reached Blair Mountain, they found coal company forces and state police arrayed against them with rifles and machine guns. The standoff lasted for several days and ended when federal troops with not only machine guns, but also poison gas, and airplanes with bombs, arrived on the scene. The Battle of Blair Mountain was one of the most stirring and important events in labor history in the United States. For several days it commanded the top headlines in newspapers such as the New York Times. The immediate aftermath was the crushing of the United Mine Workers throughout the region for the next twelve years, but with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, the hope of Blair Mountain was realized. The United Mine Workers of America began the long process of improving the lot of American coal miners.

How far we have fallen in the last thirty years! Coal companies like Massey (now Alpha Energy) have stripped union protection from miners who are dying in devastating accidents. Because of coal company intimidation, basic civil liberties like freedom of assembly are infringed. Coalfield residents are again dying because of the poisoning of the environment from valley fills, slurry injections, and coal ash. West Virginia politicians continue in the pockets of the coal companies, where they attempt to deprive their citizens of their state of even the basic protections that the fed government provides. And mountains across the region are being destroyed. Even Blair Mountain, that most important peak in West Virginia’s history, is not safe.

Our ancestors who marched on Blair Mountain understood some things that we would like to remind our fellow West Virginians, Appalachians and Americans about. The coal miners who marched on Blair Mountain understood that they were not friends of coal. These coal miners deeply understood that the West Virginia coal operators and the international coal industry were not their friends. They understood that they must stand against coal companies.

We are here to announce a new, peaceful march on Blair Mountain in early June, and we invite our fellow citizens to join us. We call for protection for Blair Mountain from mountaintop removal; indeed, an end to all mountaintop removal. We call for protection of our streams and our drinking water. We call for our politicians to protect people and the environment. We call for coal to be deep mined by union coal miners who are protected by their union and by strong government regulatory agencies. We call for West Virginia to become once again the Mountain State, to proclaim the beauty of the summits of the West Virginia hills and to insist that mountaineers are always free. We call for Americans to stand up again for our freedoms and our land, and against those corporations who would destroy both.

DENISE GIARDINA is a writer who was born and raised in the small coal camp of Black Wolf in McDowell County, West Virginia. Her novels, fictionalizing historical characters and events, have been critically acclaimed and recognized with a number of literary prizes. Her novel Storming Heaven portrays life in southern West Virginia in the period during and preceding the coal mine wars, and culminates in the Battle of Blair Mountain. Giardina is an ordained Episcopal Church deacon, a community activist and a former candidate for the WV state governorship. She is active in social justice issues in the Appalachian coalfields, working for land reform in an area that is largely owned by absentee corporations, demonstrating with striking miners, and speaking out against mountaintop removal. She is currently writer-in-residence at West Virginia State University.

As David Aaron Smith, 23, Amber Nitchman, 19, and Eric Blevins, 28 protest mountaintop removal in two oak trees  and one tulip poplar on Coal River Mountain in southern West Virginia, Don Blankenship (CEO of Massey Energy) and Robert Kennedy, Jr. (Founder of Waterkeeper Alliance) debate the same issue farther north in Charleston.

Liveblogging of the debate: (Juliana Williams, Becca Rast & Nora Graubard will be liveblogging.  Juliana from within and Becca Rast & Nora Graubard from Rock Creek, WV)

8:00 – Thanks for tuning in, we welcome dialogue about this debate on the blog – please let us know what your impressions were!!

7:59 –   We are disappointed by lack of reference to Climate Ground Zero “enviros”. Check out further updates on our brave friends in the trees and their struggle with Massey at www.climategroundzero.org.  Learn more and show your support! Continue reading ‘LiveBlogging: Youth in Trees, Kennedy on the Ground – Everyone v. Massey”’

www.climategroundzero.org

This morning, five individuals took direct action against Mountaintop Removal (MTR) by halting work at an MTR site. Sitting in barren oak trees and a poplar are Eric Blevins, 28, Amber Nitchman, 19, and David Aaron Smith, 23.  On standby at the trees’ base are the direct supporters Josh Graupera, 19, and Isabelle Rozendaal, 22. The trees’ location on Coal River Mountain directly impedes on Massey Energy’s attempt to build an access road to an impoundment where the toxic leftovers from coal processing (or, “slurry”) are being held back from the communities below. Their banners state: “EPA: Halt the Blasting”, “Windmills Not Toxic Spills”, and “Save Coal River Mountain.” Blevins expressed disbelief at this careless action, pointing out that “Massey Energy is a criminal corporation with over 4,500 documented violations of the Clean Water Act, yet the government has given them permission to blast next to a dam full of toxic coal waste that will kill 998 people if it fails.”

Continue reading ‘Youth Occupy Trees, Blasting Halted on Coal River Mountain’