[NOLAwelcomingcommittee] The Dirty Truth About Mountaintop Removal! Thursday and Friday!

[Amy Marlow]

Ok, real quick:
Mountaintop Removal is an outrageously destructive method of mining coal,
that is practiced by some of the most greedy, ruthless, soul-less
corporations that would put King Midas to shame and make Hannibal Lecter
look warm and fuzzy.  MTR first clear cuts all of the trees (which
exacerbates flooding), then blows the up mountains in order to extract the
coal, and pushes the remaining rock and debris into neighboring valleys,
burying streams, and potentially rolling a boulder onto someone's house - it
happens!  The coal companies have an icy death grip on Appalachian
communities that even Joseph Stalin would find reprehensible.  There is no
alternative source of income because everything else has been driven out, so
folks are faced with the choice of risking their lives while destroying the
beautiful mountains they call home in order to put food on the table, or
leave.  The folks that live in towns that the coal companies are buying up
in order to get at the coal underneath don't even have that choice, their
homes are being snatched out from underneath.  And then you have coal
slurry, the toxic sludge that is produced when coal is "cleaned" and
processed, which is then either pumped into abandoned underground mines,
where it leaks straight into the groundwater, or collected in enormous (up
to 7 billion gallons!) impoundments that often loom over homes and schools,
and guess what, they burst.... often.
This is just the tip of the iceberg y'all!  Come learn more about MTR and
how folks are resisting!


The organizations involved:

*-Climate Ground Zero is not another environmental organization. It is an
ongoing campaign of non-violent civil disobedience in southern West Virginia
to address mountaintop removal coal mining and its effects on our future. *CGZ
is based out of the Coal River Valley of West Virginia, just minutes down
the road from the horrific explosion that resulted in the deaths of 29
miners last week.
http://climategroundzero.net/

-Featuring one of the breathtaking "True Cost of Coal" banners produced by
the Beehive Collective, who uses large intricate murals as a method of
educating folks and spreading the word about some of the fucked up
shit/social injustices if you want to be polite about it, that go on in this
world that we live in.  Their graphics, while visually complex and full of
hidden detail, create a narrative that deconstructs complex and confusing
issues, making the story accessible to even folks who aren't able to read or
have no prior information on the subject.
http://www.beehivecollective.org/english/front.htm
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