Johnson opened up about the whole issue of mountaintop removal, a practice few Americans are aware of, and specifically talked about how activists organizing against the destruction of their land often receive threats:
West Virginia is a poor state that is rich in possibilities and rich in natural resources. It’s rich in possibilities but poor because of these few who have controlled the purse strings and the government within the state for a very long time. There’s a long history of intimidation going back to the southern coal fields during the early parts of the 20th century, which was the real birth of union activism in this country, back to the battle of Blair Mountain, which was the second largest insurrection in the history of the United States next to the Civil War when 15,000 miners marched on Blair Mountain fighting for lives, rights and their family. The southern coal fields of West Virginia were the last to unionize, and it was the final battleground between this burgeoning spread of unionizing in America.
Even today when we try to commemorate that battle or celebrate labor in this country, most labor knows nothing of it and whenever we try to commemorate it some forms of intimidation occur. The coal operators threaten to pull up stakes and leave communities and leave the jobs and families unable to fend for themselves. That’s the kind of intimidation by the coal company on its own employees and it provokes the employees to go protect their turf from these vilified environmentalists. Then you have miner vs. miner and labor vs. labor dynamics flaring up.
Not only has Blair Mountain been on historic registry---their trying to get it on a historic reservation site. Simultaneously, two coal companies own the rights to that coal and they have it scheduled for demolition. That should be a battleground for all countries to help preserve what happened there. I propose they create an Internat’l Museum of Labor. It was just a few years ago Ken Heckler, secretary of state before Manchin, served with FDR and Truman and was a Congressman in WV is now 94 at 89 he was out marching with us and commemorating the battle of Blair Mountain and some of these miners attacked him and pushed him to the ground. This is outrageous when considering that he was responsible in Congress for the Mine, Health, Safety Act and responsible for getting the Federal Black Lung program passed.
It’s dangerous when I’m out traveling. I’ve received death threats. I’ve been harassed on the road by other vehicles. Endangering my passengers. These things happen in the hills of WV. We’re our own little isolated frontier just outside of Washington, D.C.
Johnson talked about the role of religion in all of this and further revealed how corporate interests reign supreme in West Virginia:
Religion has made it more possible to occur. You have to understand the culture and most people outside of West Virginia don’t. You have to understand the company town mentality. Many of these coal mining towns even before the days of MTR the workers were often brought in right off the ship from Ellis Island brought down by train. They didn’t speak English but were immediately offered jobs. They would be in one hollow and another and would have language barriers. They would be paid in company script and not the currency of the time. The possibilities were limited and they could never become a part of the investment class. They had nothing negotiable as tender outside of their tight community.
Communities were built by the coal company. Every store that you purchased anything from was owned by the company. The house was owned by the company. Transportation was owned by the company. There was very little opportunity to get out of the coal camp.
The coal companies would build the churches and then supply the home and job and paycheck of the clergy that would come in and serve that community. They too were on the company payroll. It became very easy for them to manipulate the public and at this point, that is tradition in the state of West Virginia.
There is a new movement about MTR though. Minister Allen Johnson from the southern part of state has been very vocal about reminding people that those who are more inclined to look at the world through the eyes of their religion should realize this is God’s creation and we are only stewards of it and we are being really poor stewards of it. There is a resurgence of this idea within those churches and some parishioner to be better stewards of the land and to fight against MTR.
Broadly, religion is still a problem. It’s a contant problem here and nationally. And particularly at the buckle of the Bible Belt, which we often fall in here, there are definitely blurred lines between church and state.
Johnson talked about how Manchin appointed himself the head of public broadcasting and has adopted this attitude of impropriety, which allows him to not take responsibility for certain scandals that have developed in West Virginia like the WVU scandal, etc.
He ended with some points on renewable energy and the economy:
WV’s [economic] growth is slow and steady and anchored by virtue of the rampant environmental destruction for these nonrenewable resources being extricated and taken from the people of this state and exported with very little left in the state to show for it. The commons/value is extracted and the people are left with basic environmental degradation. Potential superfund sites are being created.
They practice sludge injection, which is really where they came up with carbon sequestration---injecting sludge into the ground [a practice that clean coal supporters would use]. That has polluted the water for communities, such as, Printer, WV in Boon County. If you would see the water, you would be absolutely shocked. It’s too toxic to even bathe in. All of the water has to be brought in and of course, that’s not being paid for by the mining companies that are spoiling the water table and the local water supply. It’s being paid for by the water supply. They literally have to have every drop of water including bathing water, etc. trucked in.
The Coal River Mountain Wind Project exists. We have been urging the governor for a stay of execution for the Coal River Mountain, which is now also much like Blair Mountain. They could start blasting tomorrow, which if that were the case it would immediately deplete that area’s wind power potential. It will cause the communities to truly suffer in various ways, not only the loss of a green economy but the loss of tax dollars which we projected to show that one area in Raleigh County alone by employing people with the wind project versus surface mining (MTR) the revenue to the county would be more than 7 times when redirected to Raleigh County by virtue of wind energy. We’ve been working to get the governor to do this but he doesn’t want to do it and we’ve had a camera crew record this. And Weeks won’t stay the execution. He believes Mother Nature will reclaim itself.
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