Daryl Hannah, Climatologist James Hansen and 94-Year-Old Former Congressman Arrested at Coal River Protest
June 24th, 2009
NASA Climatologist Dr. James Hansen is arrested at the gates of Massey's Goals Coal plant. (photo: RAN)
Notables attending a peaceful protest against Big Coal were arrested and two local organizers were attacked by an industry supporter.
UPDATE: 6 pm EST. Goldman Prize Award Winner Attacked. During the rally in front of the Massey Energy coal property today, Coal River Mountain Watch co-director (and 2003 Goldman Prize Award winner) Judy Bonds was reportedly assaulted by a Massey supporter. While Bonds was engaged in a nonviolent protest, the Massey supporter lunged from the line without any provocation and roughly slapped Bonds on the head, ear and jaw. The Massey supporter also attempted an attack on another protestor, Lorelei Scarbro, a coal miner’s widow and local community organizer. The Massey supporter was immedidately apprehended by the police and charged with battery, according to news reports.
The crowd included dozens of Mountain Justice participants who have been active in similar protests since 2005, including getting arrested at the same site. Read the rest of this entry »
Mountaintop Removal Protest
June 22nd, 2009
Mountaintop removal protest at Masseys Twilight mine on June 19 2009
Massey Targets Journalists in Latest Protest
June 19th, 2009
Journalists Kurt Mann and Paul Corbit Brown were arrested while reporting on the latest non violent protest in southern West Virginia. The journalists’ equipment has been confiscated because,†it is evidence in a crime,†according to Boone County sheriffs. photograph (c) antrim caskey, 2009
Statements from Judy Bonds & Bo Webb
June 19th, 2009
Mountaintop Removal Site
Breaking: Daring Dragline Protest Launches 7 Days That Will Shake Mountaintop Removal Operations
June 18th, 2009
by Jeff Biggers     source: Huffington Post (click here)
Four daring protestors accomplished something today that no high ranking member in the Obama administration involved in the recent mountaintop removal mining policy decisions has ever bothered to do: These four American patriots made an actual visit to a mountaintop removal site.
They also went beyond the call of duty.
Scaling a towering 20-story dragline (those behemoth stripmining machines that could rip up a Manhattan block in a New York minute) and then unfolding a 15 x 150 foot banner at the Twilight mountaintop removal strip mine in Boone County, West Virginia, they also unveiled a simple message on how the EPA, the Department of Interior and the Council on Environmental Quality can best enforce the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws:
JUST STOP MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL.
The action launches a dramatic weeklong series of protests at mountaintop removal sites in the West Virginia coalfields that will culminate on June 23rd with a special action in the Coal River Valley area with local coalfield residents, NASA climate scientist James Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah, and 94-year-old former US Representative Ken Hechler, and Rainforest Action Action executive director Michael Brune, among many others.
“It’s way past time for civil disobedience to stop mountaintop removal and move quickly toward clean, renewable energy sources,” said Judy Bonds, Goldman Environmental Prize winner and co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch of West Virginia. “For over a century, Appalachian communities have been crushed, flooded, and poisoned as a result of the country’s dangerous and outdated reliance on coal. How could the country care so little about our American mountains, our culture and our lives?” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Updates! | 
Tags: action, banner, dragline, mountaintop removal, mtr, protest | 
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