"What do we want"

"CLEAN WATER!"

"When do we want it"

"RIGHT NOW!"

"What do we want"

"CLEAN AIR"

"When do we want it"

"RIGHT NOW"

After a 3 day sit in, the I heart mountains demonstration

took place today lead by author, Wendell Berry.

“Massive destruction is taking place and this is permanent destruction”

“When you destroy a mountain, when you destroy a watershed, when you open the earth so as to permit the escape of trace minerals, acids and other harmful substances into the watershed it permanently affects people’s water supply downstream. That isn’t going to stop within anybody’s lifetime and probably the lifetime of several generations. We would say that that is massive destruction. It involves the oppression of the people who live in the proximity of the mines. Furthermore, it involves a permanent threat to the people who are dependent on these watersheds for drinking water. There is a high incidence in the coal fields of various kinds of cancer. This is oppression," Berry said

“Civil disobedience is all we had left,” he said.

“We are not at present being civilly disobedient, but this event we are carrying on now in Frankfort required our willingness to be civil disobedient and to be arrested. In our opinion this was the last resort. We had tried everything in our power to get attention to our problems and to have the existence of the problems even acknowledged in state government in a public way and we had failed year after year. There simply came a time when on the part of a number of people this readiness occurred. And so we are now where we are.”

"Show me what democracy looks like!"

"this is what democracy looks like!"

"SAVE OUR MOUNTAINS SAVE OUR WATER!"

"THE WORLD IS WATCHING!"

"SAVE OUR MOUNTAINS SAVE OUR WATER!"

"THE WORLD IS WATCHING!"

"SAVE OUR MOUNTAINS SAVE OUR WATER!"

Mom, dad and little sister Lori

Mountaintop removal mining

Steps and Effects

1. Forests are clear-cut; often scraping away topsoil, lumber, understory herbs such as ginseng and goldenseal, and all other forms of life that do not move out of the way quickly enough. Wildlife habitat is destroyed and vegetation loss often leads to floods and landslides. Next, explosives up to 100 times as strong as ones that tore open the Oklahoma City Federal building blast up to 800 feet off mountaintops. Explosions can cause damage to home foundations and wells. “Fly rock,” more aptly named fly boulder, can rain off mountains, endangering resident’s lives and homes.

2. Huge Shovels dig into the soil and trucks haul it away or push it into adjacent valleys.

3. A dragline digs into the rock to expose the coal.These machines can weigh up to 8 million pounds with a base as big as a gymnasium and as tall as a 20-story building. These machines allow coal companies to hire fewer workers. A small crew can tear apart a mountain in less than a year, working night and day. Coal companies make big profits at the expense of us all.

4. Giant machines then scoop out the layers of coal, dumping millions of tons of “overburden” – the former mountaintops – into the narrow adjacent valleys, thereby creating valley fills. Coal companies have forever buried over 1,200 miles of biologically crucial Appalachian headwaters streams

5. Coal companies are supposed to reclaim land, but all too often mine sites are left stripped and bare. Even where attempts to replant vegetation have been made, the mountain is never again returned to its healthy state.