Why I decided to try and fund this blog....

Portrait of Judy Bonds by Robert Shetterly for his project, Americans Who Tell the Truth, used by permission of the artist. (0rdering info). To read my July 23 blog post on Judy's having to take a medical leave of absence, see: "Judy Bonds: "Fight harder and finish them off."

Want to know more?

Shoot me an email at communitypoweredreporting@gmail.com Or you can ask to join the group community-powered-reporting@googlegroups.com.


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An experiment in "community powered reporting"

I'm experimenting with what my friend David Cohn, who started Spot.us, calls "community powered reporting."

Writing about politics and culture, I'm often linking to books and films. When Newstrust readers rate one of my posts high on the list I get a lot of hits. For instance, my post of 7/16, "PBS: Can you say, unlevel playing field?" (reviews here).

Here are some others that were reviewed:

• PBS: Can you say "unlevel playing field?"
• Are Electric Co-ops All So Different?
• How will Roberts Rule on Clean Water?
• Foreshadowing the Bush Legacy on Coal
• New FBI Guidelines: More COINTELPRO?
• Ecoterrorism, not
• Mr. McCain goes to Inez (KY) and tells us what women need

But traffic doesn't translate to money. So here's the experiment--my readers can help fund this blog if they used my referral code to open up the webpage for Amazon when they want to shop there. I'll also be adding links to Powell's Books and perhaps E-Bay--if you have any other suggestions for places you shop online which have affiliate programs, let me know. (I've added a handy widget to go there on the right side of the blog.)

I would have loved to have already found someone to fund my writing

Say, if Spot.us had brought crowd-funded journalism to Appalachia. (And it may happen yet. Until then, you can still help me and David, if you want to be a sponsor of his community centered advertising on mtr or other topics you care about...but that's a topic for another post.)

Or if I had a day job in new media. I had more time to write when Newstrust.net to had enough money to budget my salary as community developer. Even a few stints as paid editor, a position I held for three news hunts this year, helped. (The last funded by a donation from a friend who wanted to support my coverage of energy issues)

So, while I wait, this is one small step

After all, Jonathan Greene of Gnomon Press explained to Meredith Sue Wilson for her September 10, 2007 Books for Readers Newsletter,

Small Press Distribution and Consortium that distribute books for many small presses return even less to small presses that Amazon: they normally sell books to stores or chains at 40% - 55% then take half of the gross receipts of any payment and put the amount due the publisher in escrow for three months. And Consortium charges the publisher a re-stocking fee for any books stores or distributors return [sometimes in unsellable condition.

Why Amazon?

After a brief trial, I refused to use Google Adsense (with its odd matches from folks like Friends of Coal or ambulance chasers following disasters). Not to mention its odd notion that folks need to click through, rather than read a display ad.

And I loathe camouflaged paid-product endorsements masquerading as independent assessments.

So here's the disclosure

Amazon pays a cut, if folks buy from its site, after clicking on my link. I get to pick what I'm endorsing, and it's based on my opinion, not revenue from the producer to flack a product. So, it's kind of like a merchant selecting an item for a store, although, nowhere near the profit.

If you buy the soft cover version of Bob's book for $7.99 (Puffin, 2008, 48 pages) using this link, 4% will go to support my writing on mtr, renewable energy and energy efficiency. I'm not sure what Amazon is paying authors and publishers, but once I find out, I'll share it here.

So, spread the word on Bob's book? http://amzn.to/coa6km.

That's a buck for each $25.01 order

I'm using that amount because, with it, you get free shipping. You can even order together with friends, as long as it goes to one snail mail address. That's a great deal or I wouldn't suggest it.

I checked. You can order it few places for 27 cents less, but Amazon has a 4-for-3 sale going on. When you order any four eligible books under $10, you get the lowest-price book free. (http://amzn.to/bBbUAM).

BTW, Dutton's 2005 hardcover edition of Bob's book is available for $14.81--part of the $25.01 free shipping deal but not the 4-for-3 special. This is marketed as a juvenile book because of the reading level, but I promise you, it's inspiring to adults.

You can also get the companion volume to the movie Coal Country... Rising Up Against Mountaintop Removal Mining was edited by Shirley Stewart Burns (http://amzn.to/cZL1YT Mari-Lynn Evans (http://amzn.to/ad27Vx) and Silas House (http://amzn.to/dkPVwv). In paper (http://amzn.to/aROM0X), it's $17.10. In hardback, $30. (http://amzn.to/cd6GBb.) And there's the dvd of the film and the cd of the score.

For any month where I earn more than $1000, I'll share with activists

I need to pay part of my rent and utilities, my health insurance, groceries and car expenses, since the research, linking and writing takes time.

But I'd rather write on things I view of import than hawk "to-do" articles to airline magazines.

Since I'm not clear on what "units" means , let's assume the worst--that "unit" means an order. (I'll update this post when I do find out the answer.) So, if 616 folks order $25.01 during the month, after that, I'll start sending checks to the activists associated with the post--Coal River Mountain Watch, Robert Shetterly and the filmmakers behind Coal Country in the case of this post.

So which other books are eligible for the 4-for-3 deal?

I was happy to see Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina (http://amzn.to/c1rR9Y), also $7.99 (http://amzn.to/d38ycu) Or her sequel Unquiet Earth for $6.99 (http://amzn.to/ct0VbU . Also Borrowed Children by George Ella Lyon (http://amzn.to/cmyBiz) for $9.95 (http://amzn.to/bqxC5C). Couldn't find any other Appalachian books, right off hand, but The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (http://amzn.to/baRFCq), who lives in SW Virginia, features a KY native as the protagonist who travels elsewhere. It's $7.99 (http://amzn.to/9ed7nU). No books by Pearl Buck (http://amzn.to/dgzOVz). Sigh.

Of course, if you pick two for $7.99 @, one of the books has to cost at least $9.03 to get to discount to work. So if you don't order George Ella's book, there's The Epic of Gilgamesh for $9.95 (http://amzn.to/bhBlrw) or Travels in Alaska by John Muir for $9.75 http://amzn.to/bxdV08 or Swann's Way ( the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past) by Marcel Proust for $9.95 (http://amzn.to/9XjBwB).

Or check out the choices for yourself

For instance:

• Literature and fiction here (http://amzn.to/btopTA)
• Memoirs here (http://amzn.to/cpnQMr)
• Cooking and wine books here (http://amzn.to/cvowZR)
• Graphic novels here (http://amzn.to/cRkxwt)
• Children's books here (http://amzn.to/aoWdP7)
  

Or pick out your favorite category here. (http://amzn.to/a1CxgO)

You can also help by ordering Kindle downloads

The affiliate share is 10%. David Rothman and I have this on-going debate. Hey I love beautiful paper books, but some prefer e-books. He started Teleread (and has sold it to someone who has a business model to pay its writers.)

Kindle seems to be helping authors (to its own business model), offering 70% in royalties after delivery costs (about 6 cents) compared to publishers who offer 15% for hardcovers, 7.5% for trade paperbacks, and 25% for e-books. (And I suspect that this is after expenses, which will be higher than 6 cents.

So, if I run across a kindle version of a book I recommend, I'll include it, despite my preferences.

You get the idea. Can you help?

As folks know, I always advocate for ordering from the author, small press, or locally-owned bookstore to keep these folks in business. But, as Jonathan tells it, Amazon is pretty good for small publishers. So if you're ordering from Amazon, ...why not support coverage of the fight against mtr? And if you'd rather not order from Amazon, it's still a great site to research the book...before you head out to the brick-and-mortar store, if you're still lucky enough to have one near you.

Judy Bonds: "Fight harder and finish them off."

Portrait of Judy Bonds by Robert Shetterly for his project, Americans Who Tell the Truth, used by permission of the artist. (UPDATE 7/29: Ordering info--more details see the bottom of this entry.)

Vernon Haltom, Judy Bond's co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch, just sent me the bad news that Judy has found out that she is battling stage three cancer. Vernon writes that "She said that some people have asked her before, "What do you want us to do if anything ever happens to you?" Her answer is "Fight harder." She repeated that today, to fight harder. " Her words:

We've got them on the ropes and smell blood. Don't let up, fight harder and finish them off.

I'm sharing this by permission. When I asked to what extent I should share the news, Vernon answer, "I asked how much of that she wanted me to let folks know, and she said there's no point in keeping it from people."

Treatment will take at least 3 months, and she doesn't expect to be back at work for several months. Judy had been sick for several weeks when her doctor sent her to the hospital in Charleston, after antibiotics didn't work on what had been diagnosed as pneumonia. Vernon wrote,

Judy has always been a fighter, never giving up. This is her big fight now; the only one she's able to do right now. ...Please, keep her in your prayers.

Judy won the prestigious Goldman Prize in 2003, for her work in fighting mountaintop removal. I also love the quotation on the page I've linked to.

The right to mine coal here ends where it endangers our health and safety. You may have your job tomorrow, but what do you tell your kids? That you wasted the future of these mountains?

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Did you know you can support this post?

I'm putting this on a separate page, so as not to mix my discussion of how to crowd-source my journalism with news of Judy. But if you're interested, see my July 29 update: "Why I decided to try and fund this blog." (And, I might mention, if the experiment goes well, to also provide a way for me to fund support for activism in the coal fields and others' media coverage thereof. Too bad I didn't have the idea before I launched this page--for a while it was getting over 300 out of the last 500 hits, according to statcounter. If this works, I might also pitch in for something other than a free account and have better data.

Wendell Berry: Speech Against the State Government (and MTR)

Portrait of Wendell Berry by Robert Shetterly for his project, Americans Who Tell the Truth.

Poet and essayist Wendell Berry was the big draw for a breakfast this morning at the Society of Environmental Journalist's final day of conferencing at the Hotel Roanoke. He chose to read his "Speech Against the State Government" first delivered on February 14, 2008 at the "I Love Mountains" protest in Frankfort, Ky.

Mr. Berry said during the reading that it was okay to reprint it, so I give it to you here in full. Here, too, after you finish reading is Mark Engler's piece from Grist on the occasion of Mr. Berry's seventieth birthday, August 5, 2004.

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Speech Against the State Government

In 1996, when Ellen Davis, a scholar of the Bible at Duke Divinity School, was taken to a mountaintop removal site in Kentucky, she remembered Jeremiah:

I have seen the mountains, and here, they are wavering, and all the hills palpitate. I have seen, and here, there is no human being, and all the birds of the heavens have fled. I have seen, and here, the garden-land is now the wasteland . . .

If you take seriously the knowledge that humans are capable of neighborliness and caretaking, are capable of caring well for the earth for the earth’s own sake and for the sake of their neighbors now and yet to come, and if you know that according to our greatest teachers this neighborliness is expected of us, then you will grieve in knowing that we humans are destroying the earth. You will be offended in knowing that we are doing so with governmental approval and with governmental encouragement. If you are at all a normal human, you will find that hard to swallow. You may find it, in fact, a putrid lump that will gag you somewhat before you can get it down.

And yet to Kentucky state government, a wholly owned subsidiary of the coal corporations and of any other corporations that bid high enough, earth destruction is a normal economic enterprise. Earth destruction by strip mining has been an officially accepted practice in the eastern Kentucky coal fields for nearly half a century. In the Knott County Court room on the night of July, 15, 1965, confronting, as he had and would, the already catastrophic damage of strip mining that was going to get worse, Harry Caudill spoke of “the gleeful yahoos who are destroying the world, and the mindless oafs who abet them.”

Forty-three years later, bad has come to worse, and worse has come to worst, the gleeful yahoos still reign supreme in the coal fields, and the mindless oafs who abet them still hold dominion in Frankfort. This is not because money talks, as Sen. Mitch McConnell seems to think. It is because money votes, and money buys people who vote. It is because might, with enough money, does not have to worry about right. It is because, in the magnetic field of money, the flags and crosses on certain political lapels turn into price tags.

I must hurry to say that I am not talking about all Kentucky politicians. There has always been in this capitol a “saving remnant” of women and men who are not for sale. It is because of those people that we, the powerless, have never yielded to despair, but have continued to come here with the hope that at last this government will see the truth and do its duty.

Over the last forty years, with other powerless people, I have been here many times. We have come, moneyless into the magnetic field of money, trying to stop the mindless destruction of the land and people of our state. We have made our protests and our arguments, presented our facts, appeared before committees, spoken to those willing to speak to us. And virtually always we have failed. The destruction has continued. Nothing has changed.

Newly reminded of our political nonentity, we have gone home to await another chance to try again. Meanwhile the destruction has gone on. When I return from one of these tours of the capitol, if the Kentucky River is raised and running, I can see the land of our mountain counties flowing past my house. And I know that that river, vital to the future of our state and its economy, is seriously impaired at its headwaters and degraded in all its length by pollutants, and that the most powerful among us simply do not care.

What are we to do? Well, to begin with, there is no “we” that I can confidently speak for. I have been speaking for myself so far, and I will continue to do so.

Human nature, which I fully share, tells me that in the face of great violence it is easy to think of retaliatory violence. I reject that entirely. I do not believe in violence as in any sense a solution to any problem. I am willing also to take the further step into Scripture and say that we should love our enemies – or at least act toward them as if we love them.

The next temptation is to do as our enemies do, to say, “If they do it, so must we.” And I have in fact spent some time on the argument, which can be logically made, that Kentucky conservationists ought to start a fund drive and apply for grants in order to buy our fair share of state government. I reject that also. Even a good cause cannot justify dirty politics.

But thinking of that argument, I convinced myself of a proposition that is more difficult: If current governmental practice affords no apparent recourse but to become as corrupt as your opponents, you have got to become more radical.

Kentucky conservationists are not the first people to have to confront their own helplessness before an alien government. Others have done so, and you know some of their names. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are two of them; there have been many others. Their solution to the problem of powerlessness is to make of powerlessness a power. The name of this solution is non-violent resistance or insistence, including civil disobedience. If your government will not rise to the level of common decency, if it will not deal fairly, if it will not protect the land and the people, if it will not fully and openly debate the issues, then you have to get in the government’s way. You have to forbid it to ignore you. You have to provide it with two new choices: either it must grant you the consideration that it rightfully owes you, or it must expose itself openly as a government not representative of the people but owned by the privileged few.

And here yet another temptation asserts itself. Why not wait until our cause becomes vivid and urgent enough, and our side numerous enough, to vote our opponents out of office? Why not be patient?

My own answer is that while we are being patient, more mountains, forests, and streams, more people’s homes and lives, will be destroyed in the Appalachian coal fields. Are 400,000 acres of devastated land, and 1,200 miles of obliterated streams not enough? This needs to be stopped. It does not need to be “regulated.” As both federal and state governments have amply shown, you cannot regulate an abomination. You have got to stop it.

Speaking for myself still, I will say that I don’t like the idea of resorting to non-violent obstruction, and I don’t feel very brave about it. It involves more time and trouble than I want to donate; the penalties can be unpleasant, and they can be much worse than that. Furthermore, as I am now out of patience with useless protesting and lobbying, I have no interest in useless civil disobedience. You are not going to catch me making a merely symbolic gesture. But I began my opposition to strip mining on that July night in the Knott County court room in 1965. I have been patient for forty-three years. And there are now enough of us who are concerned – there are enough of us here today – to require our government either to accept its responsibility or, publicly, and to its everlasting disgrace, refuse to do so. Surely the members of this government who represent coal corporations will be impressed by the tenfold increase in our numbers from February 14, 2007. Surely they will notice, more to their dismay, that many of this increase are young people.

If this General Assembly and this Administration give notice as usual that they are blind by policy to the ongoing destruction of the land and the people they are sworn to protect – and if you, my friends, all other recourse having failed, are ready to stand in the way of this destruction until it is stopped – then I too am ready.