Movie Poster from Side Effects. First published 4/21/2013 at 6:09 pm. To be continued...
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Tonight, I'll get to watch Side Effects, Steven Soderbergh's noir psychological thriller and satire on big pharma. It's also his swan song, at least for now.
Steven Soderbergh explained why would be leaving the film industry to
novelist Kurt Andersen, host of the public radio program Studio 360 in
an interview February 20, 2011 benefit for Omaha's non-profit movie theater, a project of Film Streams.
The tyranny of narrative is starting
to really weigh on me. I’m convinced that there’s some other way of
organizing images and ideas that can create an emotional response in an
audience. I can’t figure out what it is. I certainly don’t think I could
get somebody to write a check to let me go off and take however long it
takes to figure it out. I just need to step out. I’ve been running
really fast in a certain direction for awhile. I want a change.
Photo by Michael Nagle (website) (from
left) of Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana
and Kharey Wise at the premiere of a Ken Burns documentary on their case at the 2012 DocNYC Festival. *
The serial rapist finally confessed. Crime scene DNA proved a perfect match. With their convictions vacated--the five Black and Latinos--Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Antron McCray--have yet to get any restitution from the City of New York which refuses to own up to what happened. And many think they must have "gotten off" on a technicality, rather than serving full prison terms which robbed them of their childhoods.
In 1989 it seemed like everyone knew about the sensationalized rape case
of the Central Park jogger, but as Ken Burns points out, far, far less
attention was paid when the convictions of the five teenagers, based on
what they say were coerced confessions, proved to be a miscarriage of
justice.
Tonight thanks to PBS we have the opportunity at 9 pm, not only to view archival footage, but to hear the five in new interviews--Richardson, Salaam, Santana and Wise speak on camera, while McCray participates in a voice-over, as per his wishes. We also get to hear from the late mayor, Ed Koch, although prosecutors and police refused to participate. And, according to David Bianculli (email, website, twitter), the city demanded, unsuccessfully that the "filmmakers
release outtakes of their interviews, as possible evidence in the
ongoing civil trial brought by the former defendants."
The Central Park Five--directed and produced by Ken
Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns--is based on Sarah Burns earlier book, The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding (240 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. 2011). A paralegal at the firm which was mounting the 2003 suit, she convinced the five to let her tell their story.
Salaam, according to Sarah Burns, prior to the accusations, had been accepted at LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, "a highly
selective public school that requires the submission of an art
portfolio for admission." In 1997, when he was released from prison at the age 23, as he explained to Allison Samuels (twitter)
I remember going
to a few publishing houses and talking to some people about writing a
book about what happened to me,” he said. “But I was told my story
wasn’t compelling. That was hard to hear.
After viewing the movie tonight, tomorrow you can participate in a New Times Talk with the filmmakers and the exonerated men tomorrow at 6:30 pm and ask questions via twitter.Afterwards the video will be available on Livestream.
The above map is from "Stanton" (email), which Erica Peterson (website, email, twitter)says is le nom de net of the CEO Weenie Wonk at WVHotDogs.com. It came to my attention via Frank Jacobs and his strange maps website...Here's a PRI interview with Jacobs, who lives in London (UK, not KY) which highlights some more of his maps. *
In West Virginia, they are WV Hot Dogs, according to "Stanton.". And evidently the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council says WV dog has beat out all its competitors on the hot dog side (H/T to my WV friends Shirley and Matthew Burns...)
If you didn't know, the WV dog features chilli, mustard, onions and
slaw, folks, just like we eat 'em in this part of Virginia. I'm guess "Stanton" corrected Hawk Krawl's original poster with its misnomer, "West Virginia Slaw Dog."
The West Virginia Division of History and Culture has no record of the following marker at milepost 111 in its database for Harrison County, but I'm thinking maybe the slaw line correlates with the sweet tea line.
Oh, and evidently, according to "Stanton," the WV Leg (as Molly Ivins might have called it) considered a pepperoni roll power play just last month...
This Föhrenwald Displaced Person (DP) camp sedar plate (1948) from Holocaust Museum kind of breaks by heart.
The Hebrew says in part "עבדות לחירות " (from slavery to freedom) and the camp stayed open until 1957. Worse, the DP's were living in facilities built in 1939 to house the construction workers for the IG Farben chemical conglomerate which then held laborers during WWII.
It's from the museum's exhibit which I found on twitter from NPR's Scott Simon (twitter, website, email ), who had first attracted my attention with a lighter message:
Happy Passover. Gonna hide the afikomen (matzoh hidden for children to find) where they'll never find it--in their homework.
Many of the camps had the horrible slogan "arbeit macht frei" (labor makes you free) but the only freedom was death, often in the death chambers after workers were too sick to be of use to the Nazi war machine.
And now the chilling phrase is being used again on a bridge overlooking the decaying industrial complex of the Packard Plant in a dying city "lord[ing] over the hulking plant that once created luxury cars and now serves as a decrepit 40-acre squatting grounds for the homeless..." as reported by CBS news on 2/5/13.
To read about Föhrenwald at Remember.org here's a Shoah lecture from the late Henry Cohen who managed the DP camp and went on to become an urban planner, a prominent New
York City official in the Wagner and Lindsay administrations and a dean at a retired dean at the New School for Social Research (bio from Cohen's NYT obituary.)
Image: Screen shot from Meg Wheatley's slide on how those in charge want to force us to do more with less from a video of her talk, "Whatever the Problem, Community is the Answer."
Community Voices will host her followers Kathie deNobriga and Melanie Hammet speaking on :The art of (small) Government & the (small) art of governance" at Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg on March 28 from 7 to 8. Both are elected officials in Pine Lake Georgia.
I've admired Kathie deNobriga's work since her founding of AlternateROOTS , which artist Margo Miller-- who also heads up the Appalachian Community Fund--participates.
Here's a short essay deNobriga wrote on her thoughts. I love the idea that Pine Lake, pop 700+, has these two as elected officials! I might not be able to attend, but have invited my friends who are fans of @AlternateROOTs, as well as folks nearby, who are involved in making Princeton, WV a better town...
Photo by Paul Corbit Brown (bio, website), copyrighted and used by permission.
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I've asked Paul Corbit if he wants to add a note about the background of how he took this picture, which he used as an illustration for the following essay, found at the bottom of this post, which he published on facebook on Sunday, after attending the 40th Annual West Virginia Mining Symposium at the Civic Center in Charleston, WV March 7-8. .
According to the sponsor, the West Virginia Coal Association, the event provides:
an opportunity for the
industry to discuss current domestic and international marketing and
production trends and to showcase new mining and mine safety
technologies. Attendees will participate in mine safety and
environmental workshops and state mining companies will be honored for
mine safety performance and environmental quality
Paul Corbit says that the Congress members, who were there as featured speakers, told him they hadn't heard of the studies about the health effects of mountaintop removal. They are:
*Nick Rahall (D-WV3, elected 1976--website, email for his chief of staff, David McMaster) *Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV2 elected 2000--website, , email for her chief of staff, Joel Brubaker ) *David McKinley (R-WV1, elected 2010--website, email for his chief of staff, Mike Hamilton).
Also speaking were Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin,
and Attorney General Patrick
Morrissey. Wonder if Jay Rockefeller who has now chastised the coal industry spoke in the past and if he was dis-invited this year.
As I write this Alpha Natural Resources is holding a legislative reception at the Marriot in Charleston WV. You know, Alpha--the folks who bought out Massey, of the Upper Big Branch mining disaster fame and are still defending selenium pollution. Wonder if it was one of the companies honored for "environmental quality?"
Here's Paul Corbit's essay from March 10, 10:33 am:
Before Halliburton, before pharmacuticals, before tobacco, and before the bank crisis; The story of WV remains as one of our nation's oldest and most enduring conspiracies perpetrated by an industry and the government against its citizenry.
This is a conspiracy so broad and so deep it could only be hidden in plain sight. The history of WV, our true identity as a resource colony, is literally a story as black as coal.
Here is the home of a people fierce enough to carve out a birthplace for organized labor and a mere four generations later to become a people fearful enough to quite likely lay that one hope for the working individual to rest.
Here are the people who have come to live in the shadow of a scarcity mentality while abiding in a land that is the second most bio-diverse ecosystem on the planet and a state that has exporting untold billions of dollars in natural resources such as coal and natural gas.
For the entire 150 year history of our state we have struggled against the delusion of Democracy, the rule of law and equal protection under that law. Never understanding, until now, that the government that was promised to protect us, was in fact created to control and enslave us.
By the end of the Civil War it was clear that we could not be bound by ropes and chains so the coal industry created an even more devious means of subjugation: dependency. Just as one who is kidnapped depends on their captor for survival, we have been lured by promises into a dead end dark alley of dependency on the coal industry. After generations of brilliant propaganda we have become the largest mass case study of Stockholm's Syndrome in the history of our nation.
The evidence has been abundantly clear all along that the industry is only here for its own need - profit- and when that need has been met, we have consistently been left with nothing more than hollow promises, an environmental disaster of epic proportions and the broken pieces of our illusions of freedom, democracy and prosperity.
While the politicians and corporations that own and control WV roam freely and profit from the blood on their hands, we who have been asked to give all, will not be free until we make our final sacrifice and once again leave our Blood on the Mountain.
When the White House posts in celebration of Sunshine Week, you've got to wonder whether the event has gone the way of Earth Day. Is Sunshine Week is now an occasion for yellow-washing, or whatever the analogous term is for greenwashing. As Jack Gillum (twitter, email, ) and Ted Bridis (twitter, email ) of AP's Washington investigative team note,
In a year of intense public interest over deadly U.S. drones, the raid
that killed Osama bin Laden, terror threats and more, the government
cited national security to withhold information at least 5,223 times - a
jump over 4,243 such cases in 2011 and 3,805 cases in Obama's first
year in office. The secretive CIA last year became even more secretive:
Nearly 60 percent of 3,586 requests for files were withheld or censored
for that reason last year, compared with 49 percent a year earlier. Other federal agencies that invoked the national security exception
included the Pentagon, Director of National Intelligence, NASA, Office
of Management and Budget, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal
Communications Commission and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce,
Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, State, Transportation, Treasury and
Veterans Affairs.
The photograph accompanying the article cites Cryptome.org cofounder John Young as saying regarding government secrecy, "The scale is tipped so far the other way that I'm willing to stick my neck out and say there should be none."
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/11/3279060_p2/us-citing-security-to-censor-more.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/11/3279060_p2/us-citing-security-to-censor-more.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/11/3279060/us-citing-security-to-censor-more.html#storylink=cpy
Obama is even more secretive than George Bush, despite criticizing his predecessor and promising transparency. He has also invoked the Espionage Act against whistle blowers. As Chris Hedges wrote March 3 in "We Are Bradley Manning," the trial (Manning's redacted statementreleased March 11 by his attorney, analysis of trial by cryptome.org) represents
a
concerted effort by the security and surveillance state to extinguish
what is left of a free press, one that has the constitutional right to
expose crimes by those in power. The lonely individuals who take
personal risks so that the public can know the truth—the Daniel
Ellsbergs, the Ron Ridenhours,
the Deep Throats and the Bradley Mannings—are from now on to be charged
with “aiding the enemy.” All those within the system who publicly
reveal facts that challenge the official narrative will be imprisoned,
as was John Kiriakou, the former CIA analyst who for exposing the U.S.
government’s use of torture began serving a 30-month prison term the day
Manning read his statement. There is a word for states that create
these kinds of information vacuums: totalitarian.
And just as I'm concerned about the environment all year long, I'm concerned about government secrecy and domestic surveillance. Despite the recent spate of stones on Rand Paul's filibuster about domestic drones illing of American citizens a, how much attention was paid to the hasty renewal of FISA, for instance? Here's a video that I came across today from Julian Sanchez (twitter, email) of the Cato Institute.
And by the way, here's a letter
today from House liberal Democrats to Obama complaining about the
partial release even to Congress of information about justification for
the targeted killing of American citizen.
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Sunshine Week is a project of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Bloomberg, the American Society of News Editors and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Photo composite from left to right: Anne Neal, Teresa Sullivan, Helen Dragas.
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The University of Virginia (UVA) Board of Visitors (BOV) received widespread--and I'd guess unwanted--attention when Regent Helen Dragas seemingly forced the resignation of UVA President Teresa Sullivan on June 10, 2012 without a vote. The conflict centered on money and mission. Dragas criticized Sullivan for not moving quickly enough on reforms Sullivan said
involved deep cuts in education. Siva Vaidhyanathan (email, bio), a cultural historian and media scholar at the University described the events for Slate as "robber barons try[ing] to usurp control of established public universities to
impose their will via comical management jargon and massive application
of ego and hubris."
Attention might have faded after June 26, when the BOV voted unanimously to reinstate Sullivan. But UVA's accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) found that the BOV failed to include the faculty and issued a warning on December 11. On December 31, Anne Neal, American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), complained to the Department of Education (DOE) that SACS acted without authority. The Governor and General Assembly reappointed Dragas over protests. Continuing tension surfaced March 1 when the Washington Post 's Jenna Johnson (email, blog, twitter) published a February email by Sullivan, ("made public without [her] consent or knowledge”) protesting that Dragas had issued goals which " set [her] up to fail." The Faculty Senate responded that Dragas appears to have “not yet learned the governance lessons from last summer’s crisis. This kind of behavior must end.”
Giving new life to the controversy March 8, ACTA wrote Education Secretary Arne Duncan appealing DOE's February 11, 2013 determination that SAC did not violate any federal laws. ACTA promotes core courses
in composition, U.S. government or history, economics, literature,
college-level math, science and intermediate-level foreign language. It claims to support academic freedom, academic, greater transparency and accountability. Not not exactly ends achieved by the UVA BOV in the forced resignation. Why, I wondered, is ACTA going to such lengths against SACS and, by extension, the UVA faculty?
One answer may lie in ACTA's founder, its funders and their political agenda. ACTA got its start 1995 from Lynn Cheney, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. One major funder is the conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Another, before it zeroed out its endowment in 2005, was the John M. Olin Foundation, which disbursed over $370 million, primarily to conservative think tanks, media outlets, and law programs at influential universities.
ACTA has a long-going war with accreditation organizations Doug Lederman (email), founding editor of Inside Higher Educationdescribed it as advocating for "more or less junking the current federal system of academic quality review," when writing about the Bush adminstration's appointment of ACTA co-founder Anne D. Neal to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity. While the current DOE letter to ACTA limits its oversight of SAC to matters of law, under Bush, according to Lederman,
Department officials have come to view accreditation, higher
education's system of self-regulation and quality control, as an
important pressure point for carrying out many of the recommendations of
the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education.
That's because accrediting agencies have influence over the vast
majority of colleges and programs, and because the department, through
the NACIQI panel, has the ability to judge the performance of
accreditors. That approval is crucial, because without it, an
accreditor’s stamp of approval of a college does not carry with it the
all-important right for the institution’s students to receive federal
financial aid... [At] a federal negotiating session...
political leaders in the Education Department...sought to give NACIQI
significantly more power to investigate accreditors, and to do so more
regularly.
But there's a wider political agenda. Emily Eakin (email), at the New York Times wrote about ACTA's November 23, 2001 publication "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It," a report no long available on the ACTA's website. In the guise of protecting free speech for students and faculty, ACTA , criticized other faculty for being "''the weak link in America's response to the (9/11 attack.'' Eakin described ACTA as "a conservative nonprofit group devoted to curbing liberal tendencies in academia."
"The first post-September 11 expression of the link between the neo-conservative political agenda and the attack on critical thinking about the Middle East was a report...maintain[ing] that criticism of the Bush administration’s war on Afghanistan on campuses across the country was tantamount to negligence in ‘defending civilization’ and proof that ‘our universities are failing America’. ACTA alleged that American universities were brought to this sorry state by inadequate teaching of western culture and American history. Consequently, students and faculty did not understand what was at stake in the fight against terrorism and were undermining the defence of civilization by asking too many questions...
"The original version of ‘Defending civilization’ named and quoted comments by 117 university faculty members, staff and students in reaction to the September 11 attacks. ACTA’s ire was aroused by my statement that, ‘If Usama bin Laden is confirmed to be behind the attacks, the United States should bring him before an international tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity.’ Other remarks in the report’s list of unacceptable speech included ‘Ignorance breeds hate’ and ‘[T]here needs to be an understanding of why this kind of suicidal violence could be undertaken against our country’."
And lest you think it stops there, Craig Smith (email), Director of Higher Education at American Federation of Teachers, critiqued ACTA's legislative agenda in 2007, saying its “Intellectual Diversity” agenda advocated censorship. The 2005 report on that agenda IS available on ACTA's site, as is a 2007 report on accreditation "reform."
Untitled digitally manipulated giclee print
18"x20" of Tynesea Watts by multimedia artist and activist Angel Clark (email link, website link hopefully to come), part of The Thirteen, a collaboration with Affrilachian Poet and multidisciplinary artist Bianca Sprigg (email, website), which opened today in Lexington, KY.
I met Bianca Spriggs at the Affrilachian Symposium in Lexington, KY thanks to fellow poet Frank X Walker. That memorable event also marked my first live concert with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and a dinner and reading with the Affrilachian Poets reading thanks to Crystal Good. This was first posted at 8:00 pm on January 16 and will be updated, so come back.
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During the late 19th-early 20th centuries, thirteen Black women and girls were lynched or otherwise violently murdered in Kentucky. The connection between political conflict and violence against women as a mode of ethnic cleansing is unmistakable. In remembering these women and calling out their names, we can now include their deaths as a recognizable part of the pattern of xenophobia which persists today worldwide. Ultimately, we wish to pay homage to these thirteen women and girls by celebrating their lives and their role in our shared state and national history. —Bianca Spriggs
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The Morlan Gallery at Transylvia University in Lexington Kentucky presents The Thirteen, a visual art exhibition and live musical/spoken word performance paying homage to thirteen black women and girls who were lynched or otherwise violently murdered in Kentucky.
The Thirteen feature photographs and video by Angel Clark as well as pieces by Bianca Spriggs including original poetry, pen and ink drawings, and resin skulls.
The performance takes place January 23, 7:30-9 p.m. in the Carrick Theater, located in the Mitchell Fine Arts Center on campus. It feature performances by an ensemble of twelve Kentucky musicians and vocalists paired with spoken word poetry by Bianca Spriggs and is free and open to the public thanks, in part, to the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Thirteen Cash donations will be accepted after the performance.
On November 29, 2012, the courts handed Qatari poet Muhammad al-Ajami a
life sentence for “insulting” the Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and
“inciting to overthrow the ruling system” after a video was posted on
the internet of Ajami reciting his poetic tribute to the Arab Spring,
"Tunisian Jasmine."
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now reported on the conviction here,
including a copy of the video , along with a translation and an
interview with Muhammad al-Ajami's attorney.
Ajami’s lawyer says he has filed an appeal to be heard December 30th. The Emir, however, has the power to pardon Ajami.
As a poet, as an activist, as a citizen, I value freedom of speech, human rights and social justice. I call on my own government to right its course, when it falls short. The Quatari government, like ours, loses respect when it abuses power. That's why I urge Qatar to immediately release Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami from prison in conjunction with other Split this Rock poets such as Alice Walker, Philip Levine, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sam Hamill, Chris Abani in signing a petition organized by 100 Thousand Poets for Peace.
December 4, in a release dated December 4, 2012, Joe Stork,
deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch had said:
Qatar, after all its posturing as a supporter of freedom, turns out to be determined to keep its citizens quiet...Ibn al-Dheeb’s
alleged mockery of Qatar’s rulers can hardly compare to the mockery this
judgment makes of the country’s posture as a regional center for media
freedom.
It's a bit ironic for a U.S. poet to use a Japanese form to protest the suppression of an Arabic poet, but Code Pink, in conjunction with those groups asked for haikus to be read at a demonstration outside the Qatari embassy on December 19. Here's mine:
Rulers pen poets
Dammed words flood. Rising rivers
wear mountains to sand
A screenshot of the auto-tuned version of Mr. Rogers, "Garden of your Mind" commissioned by PBS Digital. Editor's Note: I updated this post 2/19/18 at 6:17 pm to include links to the TedX videos, which weren't posted yet when I wrote this post.
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John D. Boswell (email) aka Melodysheep on Youtube is the wit behind this video (Boswell also made one on Julia Child for PBS, among others). Symphony of Science, launched in 2009, is Boswell's project aiming to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public, in a novel way, through the medium of music. Fast Company has an article on Boswell's process here. What I want to know is, who were the 136 curmudgeons (out of 1,877) who voted against this at the Boston Globe poll after the vid went viral, saying "it ruins the integrity of the original series." I learned about the video when Jason Seiken, Senior Vice President of PBS Interactive, gave his talk at TEDx MidAtlantic the same day as photographer Antrim Caskey gave her presentation on mtr...
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According to Rogers, during his mother's lifetime, she
knitted all the trademark zip-up cardigans he wore on tv. She gave him
one each Christmas, as she did the other members of her family (He recounts this in the first part a series of nine videos of a four and a half hour long interview with Karen Herman (twitter) in Pittsburgh, PA on July 22, 1999. (h/t Chris Higgins (twitter) of Mental Floss for his post there.)
Photo (unattributed) of Ashley Judd, speaking out against mountaintop removal in 2009 accompanied an editorial on Judd by Kentucky writer Silas House.
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I have friends in Kentucky, such as a magazine editor and bookseller (I'll tell you who, if I get permission) who are speaking favorably of Ashley Judd as a possible opponent for Mitch "I Want To Be Senate Majority Leader In Order To Make Obama A One-Term President" McConnell, noting her experience and education. It serves as an antidote for my irritation.
Irritation when folks cite Newsbusters as a source instead the the actual interview (video, transcript) with Howard Fineman on The Chris Matthews Show. And although Fineman's a pundit who has interviewed presidential candidates since 1984, why not also cite a LOCAL newspaper journalist, such as The Courier-Journal's Joe Gerth, who interviewed U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth and also Judd, via twitter (here, here and here).
Irritation when folks put down Ashley Judd as a light- weight as as possible contender against Mitch McConnell. It even grieves me when her fan lump her (or Al Franken) with Ronald Reagan as an entertainer who should be able to run for office.
Comparing Judd to Reagan fails to recognize her history as an activist and her education: she graduated from the UK Honors Program and was nominated to Phi Beta Kappa, then in 2010 earned a Mid-Career Master in Public Administration degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. (Lumping Al Franken w. Reagan is similarly insulting, as he was a longtime political activist and graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude in 1973 in political science).
Joe Gerth quoted U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District KY. “If you had an Ashley Judd-McConnell race, I think it would be as high profile a race as Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown.”
In the past race, the Democratic powers that be discouraged an attractive opponent in favor of running someone with a lot of baggage. Of course, Judd has been ridiculed for her stand against mountaintop removal coal mining when an anonymous hit man ripped off a copyrighted photo and smacked it up on a billboard at a golf tourney.
If they bring up that again, we should wonder, as did Silas House, if they would have done the same thing to another politically active actor and KY native, George Clooney:
The sign insinuates that Judd has made her career on taking off her clothes. Nudity is sometimes a part of acting, yes. But to imply that Judd has made her living off that is ridiculous. If George Clooney, another Kentuckian, had made the same speech, would they be putting up a sign about him taking off his clothes, since he, too, has appeared nude on film? Of course not. Because he's a man.
Of course operatives made fun of Elizabeth Warren for her possibly overstated Cherokee heritage in a cookbook when she ran against Scott Brown. And pundits thought that doomed her to status as an also-ran. Given the results on election day, ask Scott Brown if he still agrees...
Happy Election Day! I hope you've voted or will get to the polls by closing time (in an hour here in Virginia.) Then around eight join some of us at Cellar to watch the election results.
Here are some tips from Brad Friedman to protect your vote and that of others. Kate Sheppard over at Mother Jones warns some of them may be illegal in your state. Sigh. Someone with a computer should be at every polling place at Montgomery
County, Virginia helping folks look up the proper polling place if they
didn't do so before they left home. Here's why...
Adventures in voting
Last night, I looked up my voter registration record online and learned that the Virginia Election and Registration Information System listed my precinct as, F-2, while my voter registration card issued last month by our registrar, said I should be voting in E-2.
Although I am not much of a morning person, I drove, soon after the polls opened at 6:00 a.m. , to the place the registrar listed on my voter registration card card (St. Michael's Lutheran Church). After I waited in line, the woman person with the polling book on computer told me I wasn't on the rolls because I had an
"old" registration card. False. I showed her the post mark on the
envelope, but she insisted.
She said she couldn't tell me where I was
supposed to be and wanted me to step out of line and go over to the
other side of the room. I'm guessing she would have made me use a provisional ballot. I told her no, I would just go to the right
polling place, according to the state board of elections site. The
gentleman ahead of me at St. Michael's had the
same problem. The official told him, "You're a student, your polling
place changed, this is a 2008 card." As far as I know he went along
with them. I don't know if he got to vote.
When I got to the correct place according the site, Blacksburg Middle
School/High School, the official there was very nice. Since I had
already waited in one location, he let me check right away to confirm I
was in the correct place and then the second official with the voter
roll offered to check me in and let me vote without waiting a second
time. I had no trouble with the touch screen machine, but they still make me leery.
Virginia is one of the states with a new voter id law
A recent study from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School found that voter
ID laws disproportionately affect poor, minority and elderly voters. The Justice Department cleared our law because, on its face, it appears fair. Anyone can vote, with a registration card provided at no cost by the State.I am here to tell you that things are not as peachy as they seem.
I had been unable to find shared housing in Blacksburg. Students don't want a roommate that reminds them of their mother (or grandmother.) I thought an apartment on my own busted the budget, so in order to vote, I planned to move back to property I own in the County, although it has only a shack off of a gravel road with a privy and no running water.
In Virginia, you are supposed to be
able to register to vote if you can describe where you live
In addition to the tax records, I have a drivers license and bank statements that show my post office as my mailing address and I can point out on google maps, my location:
You have to register to vote in Virginia by October 15
It wasn't until October 10, when I picked up a receipt for my real estate taxes so that I could register, that I learned that the property no longer has an 911 address on Derby Road, but is instead
listed on Coal Hollow Road with no street number. No, the registrar's assistant said, I needed a street address; I wouldn't be able to register to vote. The Assistant Commissioner of Revenue and County Administrator were very helpful in trying to get me the address. The Administrator's secretary suggested that I call the registrar, rather than his assistant. He, too, said I needed a street address.
By October 11, I was willing to rent an apartment
Even
if it busted my budget, since landlords here require long leases. No
luck, though; it would take until Monday to get an appointment to view
my options with an agent. It would take another week to process my
application, and the rental agent for one dumpy efficiency told me that
if the apartment cost more than a third of my attachable income, I would
have to get a co-signer, despite a good credit history.
By 4:35 p.m. on October 12, I received confirmation I couldn't obtain an address from the county's Director of Planning and GIS Services:
Thank you for your email. At this time we are not able to assign a 911 address for a dwelling on this parcel. Our records indicate that there is a structure on the property however it does not appear that it has been occupied for over 10 years.... In order to assign a 911 address for a residential dwelling on this property, we will need for you to apply for a zoning permit and provide documentation of an approved well and septic system by the VA Department of Health or documentation from the Montgomery County PSA that the dwelling is serviced by public water and/or sewer services. In addition, the dwelling will need to be approved for occupancy by the Montgomery County Building Official. I have attached a copy of the zoning verification form as a guide to help you through this process. I apologize for the problem that this may cause with your attempt to obtain voter registration. Feel free to contact me directly (see contact info below) if you should have any questions or comments about the process to obtain your new 911 address for this property.
Despite the law, rural poor and homeless apparently need not apply to vote in Virginia
My housing is similar to some poor people in this County. And there are others who live in trailers with no 911 address, who, like me get their mail in town at the post office. A friend on the school board told me of one person she knows who thinks he can't register because of living in such a trailer, although he is a native--by comparison I'm a newcomer--I've only owned property here since the 1980s and I suspect that I lost the 911 address in 2000 or 2001 when the adjoining property changed hands.
I asked about the registrar about the Virginia registration form which said that rural residents should be
able to vote by describing their location and giving a post office box if the address was not served by the post office. No, he said, I needed a street address.
I asked him about the third question on the form, that even the homeless
are allowed to register.
He repeated that I couldn't vote without an address
and that my post office box and drivers license wouldn't do. I asked
him what if I registered as homeless and after he called the State Board of Elections or some such, he called back to say I would have to
use a church address as a residence and he would mail the card there. By now it was Friday, October 12.
By October 12, I was willing to say I was homeless
I wrote the registrar back at 5:23 p.m. to confirm:
Thank you for your phone call. It appears that since I cannot get a 911
address, I am "homeless" unless I move back to Giles County. You
advised that I would either need to obtain a lease by Monday at a rental
property or get a church or synagogue to accept my mail. You said that
I may not get an individual homeowner to accept my mail.
There are no properties for rent on this short notice. [My friend] tells me that her church cannot accept mail on short notice as
it would have to go before a care committee. Blacksburg Jewish
Community Center receives its mail at a Post Office Box. Which churches
in Montgomery County are currently providing mailing services for the
homeless?
I was openly copying the American Civil Liberties Union and Barbara Arnwine of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. I got no response from the registrar: I did get one from a representative of the Lawyers Committee.
Soon it was as October 13
I called the pastor of the church where I had voted and although I am a total stranger, he agree to accept my registration card. I wrote back the Lawyers Committee to let the representative know.
On October 15, the last day to register I was still having problems
I drove over to Christiansburg. Since the registrar wasn't there, I filled out the form and called and asked to speak to him. He wouldn't come to the phone.
The Lawyers Committee representative told me he wasn't a lawyer and all he
could do was call himself. I told him I needed legal muscle. He didn't offer to contact a lawyer with his organization. I wouldn't hear back from the ACLU until
two days after the deadline.
I drove over to Christiansburg for a second time ad sat down in the registrar's office
When he came out to meet me, he smirked and said there was no such church or pastor. I had mis-written the name of the church (writing St. Mark's, not St. Michael's) but had the address correct. I had written the pastor's last name correctly (it was the same as his) but he pretended he couldn't read my handwriting. He told me the
planning department had showed him on a map where my property lay, but that it wasn't sufficient. Nor would he approve the application, without talking to the pastor, whom he had been unable to reach.
I refilled the form, although he said it wasn't necessary. I didn't want him to disqualify it. I asked for a copy signed and dated that it had been received. He waffled about whether he was going to register me. I tried to pin him down and put what he had said in an email to the pastor and cc'd the registrar.
At 4:41, nineteen minutes before the deadline, the registrar wrote back:
I still have not heard back from ..[the pastor]. I cannot approve this application until I get confirmation from [him] that he has agreed to accept your mail. When I hear from him, I will let you know my decision on your voter application. As we have discussed a voter must be able to receive mail at their address so they can receive their voter registration card and other mailing from my office and State Board. As soon as I hear back from [the pastor] I will phone you with the results of our conversation.
I am not the only one having problems with this registrar
I know one woman who changed her voter registration to a country a couple of hours away at the Division of Motor Vehicles website. She received a new card at her post office box in that county, but it had her voting here in Christiansburg. She tells me all she had to do was show her registration card and she was allowed to vote.
This registrar has been criticized in national publications for discouraging student voting. (A friend says he was sued, but I can't find a newspaper story to that effect and the reference librarian hasn't found anything for me either. I wonder what he thought about the 5,000 forms that got delivered to his office by the deadline, according to Democrats.org.
This same registrar has been censured for errors and yet reappointed by the Board of Electors.
Is it a coincidence that the Board of Elections appointments are political?
The sitting Governor gets to appoint a majority. And the
sitting Governor in Virginia is a Republican, a party accused of voter suppression in the form of techniques it says are necessary to prevent fraud that
A Virginia Republican operative stands charged with throwing out registrations
In the Harrisonburg area (another jurisdiction with a large student population) has been charged with throwing away registration forms and it took outside pressure for the Republican Attorney General to investigate.
Conservative activist O'Keefe pulls another sting--in retaliation?
Weeks later, James O'Keefe released a video of his efforts to entrap the son of a liberal Virginia Congressman, James Moran. O'Keefe, of course is the man who brought down ACORN with his undercover video and has been sued for violations of privacy. As Jon Healey writes in an LA Times opinion piece which includes the whole video,
The younger Moran doesn't tell the man that what he's planning is
illegal, immoral or wrong. Instead, he tells him it would be "tough" and
that he'd be better off spending his time and energy getting those 100
voters to the polls. He also encourages him to help Obama's
get-out-the-vote efforts in Northern Virginia, which his father
represents.
But as the man persists, Moran gets drawn in...
Former John McCain 2008 presidential campaign adviser Steve Schmidt calls fraud a myth
Well,
I think one thing you always want to be for, whether you’re Democrat or
Republican , is you want everybody who’s
eligible to vote to vote, and that’s how you want to win elections.
And, so, I think that all of this stuff that has transpired over the
last two years is in search of a solution to a problem—voting fraud—that
doesn’t really exist, when you look deeply at that question, It’s part
of the mythology now in the Republican Party that there’s
widespread voter fraud all across the country. In fact, there’s not.
(Quote starts at 1:43 on this complete clip on MSNBC, which sn't embeddable on this blog platform.)
Former Republican Governor of Florida Charlie Crist criticizes Republican suppression
For better or worse, the central principle behind the unlimited
contributions to super PACs that will dominate this election cycle is
simple: Money is speech, and we cannot limit speech. Yet many who hold
this freedom as an article of faith are all too willing to limit an
equally precious form of speech: voting.
If we don’t speak out against these abuses, we may soon learn
the hard way the danger of that double standard. And a dozen years after
the 2000 recount that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, my
state of Florida threatens to be ground zero one more time.
He went on to complain that his successor had conducted voter purges, curtailed voting hours and employed other means of taking away the vote.
Meanwhile it's a nail biter
I'm loathe to make predictions or even cite those who do. What I will say, though, how does winning at all costs constitute leadership or patriotism?
Or to quote Crist again, while we go off and inspect corrupt elections in
"banana republics...[i]t’s time to look right under our noses. It’s happening here at home.
And it’s our responsibility to honestly assess the root of the problem —
which requires doing so with as little partisan bias as we believe
belongs in the administration of our elections.
We can’t be
surprised every time it turns out that politics are involved in our
politics. But neither can we be silent when our democracy is threatened
in its name.
There are lines that should not be crossed; meddling with voting rights is one of them. It is un-American and it is beneath us.
Photo 2 of 18: Acid mine drainage, July 27, 2008 Photo 3 of 16: Maria Lambert at home in Prenter WV shows jars of water that came from her kitchen sink. Behind her are the jugs of water she filled and carried everyday from elsewhere so she would have water for her family to cook with and to drink.
Photo 6 of 18 (chosen by Blue Earth for its photograph of the day on September 17, 2012): Owen Stout with water from his family’s well in Cabin Creek, WV.
At 4:30 p.m., coming back from a late lunch, I noticed that my friend Paul Corbit had sent out--at 3:11 p.m. from Frankfurt, Germany via his cell phone--a status update on Facebook that he was "with" me and nine others speaking to a meeting of bankers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, sharing why they should "no longer finance coal in general, and Mountaintop Removal in particular."
Through the magic of the internet, I started a conversation with him at 4:35 p.m.and by 5:12 he'd given his permission to share these notes from his talk and approved the use of the above copyrighted images.
*
Ladies and gentleman, I would first like to thank you for having me here. I am honored to have the opportunity to speak to you about this incredibly important situation. Indeed, it is so important that I have spent a week of my life to travel thousands of miles, knowing I will have only 15 minutes to speak to you. I hope I am up to the task. I regret that I cannot address you directly, in your mother tongue, for we do not share that. But I do hope to reach you as a fellow human being.
I will not speak of the images behind me directly, but rather, I will let them play silently in the background as a witness to the irreversible devastation of my home in Appalachia, the second most bio-diverse ecosystem in the world, and the poverty, sickness, suffering and death of many people at the hands of the coal industry.
Martin Luther King said, " We must all learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."
First I would like to propose a toast
First, I would like to propose a toast. I ask each of you to raise your glass with me and drink to our shared destiny. I know it isn't normal to toast with water, but in this case, I think it is highly appropriate because water is one of the few things that all humans, in fact all life on this planet, share. Our planet is 2/3 water and our bodies are more than 3/4 water. And so it is true that whatever any one of us does to the water on this planet, we do to everyone and to all life on earth.
The bottle of water I am holding is water that came from a well in a community near where I live. You would be rightfully disturbed if I told you that you had just shared some of this water, unaware, just like the people in so many communities where coal is mined.
Don't worry, even if I had shared this water with you, it's doubtful only one sip of it would harm you very much. But unfortunately, my people have had more than one drink. It is their daily reality. It is the water they use to drink, to cook with, and to bathe themselves and their children.
I will pass this water around so you can see it up close and you can know what it feels like to hold death in your hands. You are even free to smell it, if you dare. I put it in a water bottle from here because it is symbolic of the very real fact that financing this industry anywhere, makes a problem for you here, because it makes your bank complicit in the system that creates this poison water.
The effluents of mining, preparing and burning coal include mercury, chromium, selenium, cadmium, lead and arsenic- just to name a few. Heavy metal poisoning is forever. Once it is ingested into your body, it stays there and, like radiation, it accumulates until it kills you. And even worse, large amounts of this poisoning have begun to cause genetic mutations in aquatic wildlife near my home. These mutations will eventually work their way up the food chain to us, humans, who on our current course of environmental devastation, won't stay at the top of this chain for long.
The good news is that we really needn't worry about saving the earth.
The good news is that we really needn't worry about saving the earth. She has been through several mass extinctions already. We aren't really destroying the earth, we are simply and rapidly making it unfit for human life. This is proven by the fact that 4,000 additional Appalachians die each year in the areas where coal is mined and burned.
Death to my people doesn't come quickly from the barrel of a gun. It comes slowly from the simple act of drawing water from the kitchen faucet. There is no difference in killing me slow or killing me fast.
Coal in general, and mountaintop removal mining in particular, is far more than an environmental disaster. The production and use of coal is an egregious human rights violation of epic proportions. It is a living, waking nightmare.
Why should you not finance mountaintop removal mining?
The question in front of us today is, "Why should you not finance mountaintop removal mining?" If, after hearing me talk and seeing the photographs of the way my communities and our ecosystem are being destroyed, isn't enough, I will give you another reason. You represent the banking industry. Banks exist for one very simply reason: to make a profit.
The science has finally arrived to prove what we in Appalachia have always known: coal is killing us. We now have more than 22 peer reviewed scientific studies that show how coal is irreversibly destroying our water and our health. These studies prove that people who live in areas around MTR are far more likely to suffer from heart attacks, cancer, respiratory diseases and are even more likely to have children with birth defects.
The science is here and the lawyers will soon follow.
The science is here and the lawyers will soon follow. Several large cases have already been heard in the courts, with tens of millions of dollars being rewarded to those who have suffered because of coal. This is only the beginning. The courts may finally force the coal industry to pay the true cost of its profits, the human cost- which until now, had been an externalized and hidden cost.
Many in the coal industry point to the jobs that coal creates. "Look at all we've given you," they say.
Yes. I see all you've given me every day.
And I answer," Yes. I see all you've given me every day. I watch my father gasping for his next breath, just like my grandfathers did. All of them victims of Black Lung disease. I see children dying of brain cancer and my own mother suffering through two fights with cancer. I see the communities left in ravages after you make your profit and leave. I see the five counties in my state that produce the most coal are among the poorest counties in my entire country. And I see you pointing to the food you have laid upon our tables, for a time, as being merely a distraction to the fact that you have poisoned the vessel from which we drink."
We should not need to wait for government legislation in order to do the right thing
As human beings with a hearts and minds, we should not need to wait for government legislation in order to do the right thing. Financing coal is exactly and simply financing the poisoning of Appalachian people and our planet. Why do you need to wait for the government to tell you it's wrong?
Coal is a barbaric and outdated method for producing heat and energy
Coal is a barbaric and outdated method for producing heat and energy. There are ways as yet unimagined to do all that coal has done and more. Rather than mining our mountains and destroying our water, invest your best money and efforts in mining the human imagination and the untapped potential for human creativity. The energy in coal pales in comparison to the unlimited and inexhaustible fire of the human spirit.
A good investment should be one for the future, rather than one of the past.
Imagine investing in chariots and stagecoaches when the automobile was first introduced
In hindsight, can you imagine investing in chariots and stagecoaches when the automobile was first introduced?
If you can't do it for my children, do it for your own. There is only one water and one air on this planet and, ultimately, it is shared by all of us. Would you want your children to drink this water and breath this toxic air? How would you feel to know that someone in another country was actually realizing a profit from the suffering and reduced life spans in your own community? I will not sit idly by, offering my life as a mechanism of sacrifice for anyone's profits.
Stop financing coal.
Dream won't manifest unless you, the bankers, finance it
In closing, I would like to share this:
Folks often confuse what they do, with who they are. Many people regard bankers as the greedy ones who only care about money and their profit. But I propose a different view, I suggest we look at bankers as those who sit at the right hand of the Architects of the Future. The architect can dream it, but the dream won't manifest unless you, the bankers, finance it.
From this perspective, the future truly lies in your hands. What will you choose to make of it? You can choose who you are by what you do. My father, for instance, was not merely a coal miner. He was a man who chose to work hard, at any peril to himself, to provide for his family and see to our wellbeing. He and my mother always chose to give of themselves for what was best for us and our community. The world is a better place due to the kindness, devotion and generosity they shared.
Although I don't know you, I have a great belief in each of you. I know each and every one of you has the capacity to change our world for the better. As I leave you, I will offer you this choice:
At the end of your lives, as you say to your children of the world you are leaving them, "I built this world and I now leave it to you", will you look back with pride or will you look back in regret?
The quality of our future will be measured in much more important terms than simply a financial return on our investments. It will be measured more by our ability to live peacefully with one another and in harmony with the planet that gives us life.
As bankers, I challenge you to stop financing nightmares and begin financing Dreams.
This photo is by Wendy Johnston. It accompanied the following essay by Rachel Parsons of Athens, WV, originally published this under the same on her blog Mountain Girl Writes on September 10, 2012. Reprinted with permission.(Rachel has another essay here on civil disobedience in WV at the Mountain Mobilization. I've got a short interview with her here. Other posts in this series Larry Gibson 1946-2012 are indexed here.
*
In loving memory of Larry Gibson, 1946 – 2012
I’ve been involved in the movement to stop mountaintop removal for over three years now, which is a relatively small period of time when I think about the many people who’ve been involved for much longer. Fighting big coal has come to define me to such an extent that it feels like a lifetime since I first heard Judy Bonds and Larry Gibson speak. Judy and Larry were two coalfield residents whose words were more than just genuine; they were passionate and empowering.
Larry Gibson was a spunky little man who talked big, and it was not difficult to believe every word he said. I always believed that he would fight for the mountains until he took his last breath. People like Larry don’t just stop fighting for something when the fight gets too hard. Larry’s fight was always hard. Throwing his lot in with the “tree huggers” and refusing to sell the last remnants of his home on Kayford Mountain to the coal company meant that Larry made a lot of enemies.
People shot at his house, vandalized his property, poisoned and shot his dogs and threatened his life. The police ignored Larry’s problems, claiming that Larry lived in “No Man’s Land” on Kayford Mountain and that there was nothing they could do to help him. Despite this, Larry was not deterred. He never claimed to be a saint or anything of the sort, just a man who owed his life to Kayford Mountain, but there must have been some part of him with divine patience. How many people can claim that all those things, or even of those things, wouldn’t scare them away from their home?
If anyone wonders how bad the harassment of Larry Gibson really was, well, let me tell you a little story. It’s about a nineteen year old girl who went with her family to spend the Fourth of July with Larry and a large group of mountaintop removal protestors on Kayford Mountain for Larry’s annual Fourth of July festival. That nineteen year old girl was me and I was brand new to the movement. I’d met Larry a couple of times before but didn’t know him well. He welcomed my family – my mother, my brothers, my grandparents, and me – with open arms, like he’d known us forever.
Not much for crowds, I retired to my tent early on to write. Larry had warned us all earlier that day that there could be some disturbance from locals who didn’t like what Larry stood for. While I was squirreled away in my tent, some of those locals showed up. I could hear raised voices from inside the tent and, afraid of getting involved in something potentially dangerous, I stayed where I was while our group was verbally assaulted by several locals. One of them was a large man who decided to express his disdain for us by eating several of the hotdogs we’d grilled while a female friend of his poured tomato juice all over our picnic area. They shouted vicious things at our group and at Larry, prompting my grandfather to place himself protectively in front of Larry. My grandfather told me later that he put himself in the line of fire hoping that one of them would hit him, so he’d have a real complaint to take to the police, since they wouldn’t listen to anything else.
When I emerged from my tent, the troublemakers had gone and we all tried to go about our celebration and pretend that nothing had happened. As Larry explained, it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened, which was of little comfort to us when it began to rain. My mother, my brothers and I were huddled together in a tent that leaked, none of us getting much sleep while locals roared their cars and four-wheelers past our camp all night long and shouted expletives and threats at us. After that night, I never doubted any claim Larry made of violence against him and his property and family.
Larry lived on what little remained of Kayford Mountain, which was his family’s ancestral home. He placed his fifty acres in a land trust that prevents it from ever being strip-mined, though underground mining still takes place. That fifty acres is all that’s left of over 500 acres owned by Larry’s family, most of which has been taken and destroyed by a mining company by way of a broad form deed that sold the mineral rights to the property, signed with an “X” by one of Larry’s ancestors. Larry would take all of his visitors to a place called “Hell’s Gate,” a point where you could look out at the destruction of Kayford Mountain.
The first time Larry took my family to Hell’s Gate, I was shell-shocked. There are no words to describe the site. People tried to describe the horror of it to me before I went, but nothing that anyone said could have prepared me for the sight of a mountain that had been nearly leveled. They don’t call it mountaintop removal for nothing. Kayford’s mountaintop is gone. Even worse was when Larry pointed out a patch of green that resembled an island, raised above the rubble and waste. He explained that it was his family’s cemetery, which the company was not allowed to destroy, but was now incredibly difficult to reach. Larry’s ancestors are buried in that “protected” cemetery.
It made me sick to my stomach and I knew I had to find a way to join the fight. Every time I saw Larry, he smiled and hugged me and encouraged me to stay involved. He was very concerned about getting young people to join the movement, because he said that we were the ones who would have to carry on the fight after he was gone. It never really occurred to me that one day we wouldn’t have Larry to lead the charge. He was such a powerful personality that it made me believe Larry would always have my back in this fight.
Now I’m twenty-two and still fighting. A little over a year ago, one of my heroes, Judy Bonds, passed away from cancer. Her death had a huge impact on the movement. I had only just escaped the melancholy that settled on me on the anniversary of her passing. With one powerful person gone, I know the vast majority of people in the movement looked to Larry for inspiration and guidance. I don’t use the word “hero” lightly. Larry fit the word in every sense. If a person grew weary of the fight, they only needed to go to Larry to get that metaphorical fire lit under their ass. Larry didn’t just ask you to fight, he told you flat out that it was your responsibility to fight and to fight hard.
I was not expecting to come home Sunday evening to news of Larry’s passing. In fact, I had no reason to expect that he would leave us any time soon. At sixty-six years old, he was lively and loud, though I was not under the illusion that he was in prime health. My mother and I pulled into the driveway of our home after a trip to the grocery store and we were met by my stepfather, who broke the news to us. My mother broke down in tears. For me, the news was so out of the blue that I wasn’t sure how to react.
The first thing I did was rush to my computer to uncover the facts about the situation. I found out that Larry had indeed passed away. He’d had a heart attack while working on his beloved mountain. I suppose he would have wanted to die up there but I’m sure he wasn’t planning on it happening so soon. He still had work to do, the responsibility for which has now been thrust upon his family and friends.
Activist and photographer Paul Corbit Brown took a video of Larry a few days before his death, in which Larry spoke of his love for Kayford Mountain. Kayford was not quite heaven, he said, but up there, he was one step up – one step closer to heaven. That’s testament to how much he loved that place, considering that most of it was already gone. Larry must have remembered Kayford the way she used to be, wild and rich with life. I can’t say what happens after this life, if we continue to another life or return to the earth, but one way or another, I hope that Larry was reunited with Kayford.
There’s so much to say about him. Physically, he was a small person and had an unassuming appearance. If it wasn’t for the neon green shirt and hat that he wore everywhere, he would have been an easy person to overlook. It was the fighting passion inside him that made him such a memorable person. He wanted to fight for Kayford, for every mountain in Appalachia, and he poured his heart and soul into it. He made sure that no one ignored him, going out on the road to speak all around the country and spread the word of the threat of strip-mining in Appalachia.
People said he looked like a highlighter out in public, clearly visible in his trademark green, which he said he chose because it caught peoples’ attention. The shirt and hat, now owned by many of us in the movement, bear the information for Larry’s foundation, The Keepers of the Mountains. “Love ‘em or leave ‘em, just don’t destroy ‘em,” he said. He wanted to win the fight against big coal and see a stop put to mountaintop removal more than anything. It makes me hurt and angry to know that he won’t get to see the final chapter of the story. He won’t be there when mountaintop removal is finally abolished.
It will feel so strange to celebrate that victory without him or Judy Bonds to get up in front of us all and tell us that we did it; we won against all odds. That’s all the more reason to keep fighting. If I count Larry as a dear friend, which I do, I know that I can’t throw in the towel now. It’s time to step up and carry the torch onwards, to make sure that our voice is not lessened just because Larry’s not here to clear the way in highlighter green.
All that being said, I miss Larry and it hurts so much to know that I’ll never see him again. He’ll never give me another hug, or tell my mother what a pretty daughter she has. Larry was special to me and my family. We counted ourselves as his people, people from Appalachia who were tired of being quiet, and it is like losing a family member now that he is gone. I thought I would get to see him soon in DC and I was looking forward to it. I feel hollow knowing that he won’t be here to lead us anymore.
Larry’s passing only strengthens my resolve. I want the world to hear his story and know the true cost of coal. I want everyone to hear about the suffering of the Appalachian people and our beloved mountains. Larry’s home was destroyed. The forests he explored as a child were demolished, his mountain was leveled, and yet our government thinks that this is okay. Worse than that, this has happened to over five hundred mountains in Appalachia, and more all of the time.
In Larry Gibson’s honor, I refuse to back down and allow the greedy rich to have their way. As Larry would say, it’s my job and it’s your job to see this through. It doesn’t matter if you live here or you don’t, if you’re a transplant or a native, or if you live on the other side of the world. Everyone should care about this, and everyone should want to preserve and protect the Appalachian Mountains.
I know what Larry meant when he said that being on Kayford was “one step up.” There is something divine about these mountains, about the land I have loved since I was a small child, and I have felt that strong connection to it that Larry had. Imagine the most important thing to you in this world, the one thing that you keep in your soul, so deeply ingrained in your being that it defines you. Then you will understand what it is like for me and for Larry, to love this place. Maybe then you’ll want to join us and carry on Larry’s legacy, to move us ever closer to a world where these mountains are protected for future generations.
This is an invitation. If you’re not already involved, stop wondering whether or not this is your fight and jump into the fray. It is not an easy fight. People will try to hold you back every step of the way. They’ll call you a liar and many less pleasant names, they’ll try to label you as an outsider who has no right to speak up, but no matter where you live, you are not an outsider. Larry would have wanted you with us. Join us and help us keep the mountains.
