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Watch, read, or listen to Coal Country, and learn about the destruction to the environment and human health that comes with coal mining. It's happening on a large scale, and for the good of the country, needs to be stopped. But there's also the personal side of the issue: the people who live in Appalachia, whose lives and communities are being destroyed by this dirty practice. This essay is part of a series leading up to the premiere of Coal Country, taken from the Coal Country book:
The last time there was the kind of division and turmoil in the central Appalachian coalfields as there is today, the people stood together and demanded better working conditions and treatment from an overbearing coal industry, as well as the right to form a union. That turmoil lasted for decades and some of the best American labor ballads ever written arose from that tumultuous time. It has always been challenging to live in the coalfields...to live in an economy where everything revolves around one thing—coal—and where the boom and bust cycles are as certain as the black dust your daddy breathes.
Growing up in the southern West Virginia coalfields, I had no idea how unique the culture that I grew up in really was; and no idea how deeply coal permeated every aspect of it. It was only after going away to college that I began to truly appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of my home. My husband is from Pendleton County, West Virginia, where there is no mineable coal. In 2001, he went home with me for the first time and as we drove through the county seat, he commented on the expressions of the people we encountered. He stated that he had never seen such despair or sadness in his life. "It's as if they have nothing to live for," he commented.
I had never made such an observation myself, and certainly didn't recall such desperation from my childhood, but he was right. There it was. Drug addiction and unemployment run rampant in my beloved home and this desperation etched its way onto the faces of the people. Hope for a promising future is a treasured luxury that few have in a place where your typical choices are working for the coal mines, a minimum wage job, or leaving.
Still, many people of the coalfields continue to honor their heritage and their place by standing up to the injustices of the mountaintop removal that is dismantling their communities and displacing their residents. The artists on this CD understand the outrage rising like a tidal wave throughout the coalfields and through their music hope that you will understand as well. I wish that all of you could see my beloved hills of home and see what the people here continue to sacrifice everyday under the guise of "cheap energy". This is our heritage, and we're taking it back. I proudly stand with them because I am one of them...always.
This essay is excerpted from the Coal Country book.
Watch Coal Country on Planet Green
Related Posts:
Find Out Your Connection to Mountaintop Removal
Focus on Focus Earth: Coal's Hard Truth
Ten Dirty Things About Big King Coal
Ashley Judd on The Last Patch of Green Earth
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