The police were slow, arresting people one by one. This was likely because they wanted the hundreds of people who were standing behind police caution tape to leave and thought by prolonging the arrests support for those who were making them do extra work would dwindle. However, many remained and, in fact, walked under the caution tape multiple times giving food and water to anyone who was making a small sacrifice for the people of Appalachia.
Monday's actions started on Freedom Plaza with a rally that
featured outspoken Appalachian residents from the movement and others.
Gunnoe explained, "The youth is so knowledgeable of mountaintop removal and its impacts on their water and their land. Now, we have a government that thinks that they can regulate blowing up mountains. You cannot regulate destruction." And, she talked about being interviewed by people from other countries who don't get how the government in West Virginia expects Appalachians to blow up their mountains so they can have jobs.
Hansen said, "We're gathered here today to draw attention to the failure of our government to protect the rights of the people and the failure to provide equal protections of the laws. People have suffered a long train of abuses invariably with the same objective: to enrich the few at the expense of the many." And, he added, "Our government allows and contributes to a great hoax perpetrated on the public by monied interests aimed at confusing the public about the reality of climate change. We are in danger of becoming the land for the rich and the home of the bribe."
Ken Hechler, the ninety-seven year old principal architect
of the Coal Mine and Health Safety Act of 1969 and a man who ran against
Governor Joe Manchin in the special election to fill the late Senator Robert
Byrd's seat because he wanted to draw attention to the devastating impact of
mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia, sent a letter to be read at the
rally. Mari-Lynn Evans, executive producer of the documentary film Coal Country, read the letter.
He called upon the second battle of Blair Mountain to be a "focal point of the movement" and drew attention to the history of Blair Mountain as a key example of how the coal industry wishes to obliterate any symbols from labor history that might energize people against mountaintop removal. He called himself a hellraiser and then he asked the audience to "get political" and endorsed a candidate running in the special election to fill Byrd's seat:
"Ask yourself to step up and don the mantle that I wear hell raiser. If you believe in this struggle, then it is time to double your efforts. If you don't like to get political, then it's time to understand that the very circumstances of your life is political. So, do it now. Get political. You must realize the power to change is not only within your grasp but it is to your responsibility to your generation and the one to follow
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