We ALL Own A Piece of the Horror At Montcoal [View All]

[GrpCaptMandrake]

Easter Sunday, 2010 dawned in West Virginia in the radiant glory that Christians associate with the profound mystery of the Resurrection. Clear and mild, hillsides garlanded in the majesty of budding trees and blossoms in profusion, the day was perfect for the sorts of Sunrise Services and family gatherings that are typical to this region steeped in simple faith.

In pulpits across Appalachia, ministers read the account from the Gospels of the Passion and Execution of Jesus, right down to the much-misunderstood verse in which the assembled cried out “Let his blood be upon our heads, and upon our children’s.”

Although Grim Death has stalked the coalfields of Appalachia for over a century (three coal miners still die EVERY day in the U.S. from Black Lung disease), it does so just out of sight of the majority of Americans, and likely no one, or only a very few even in West Virginia, had reason to fear for what Monday, and the beginning of the work week, would bring to the Coal River Valley.

We all know what happened. Monday afternoon, April 5, the day after Easter, a massive explosion ripped through Massey Energy’s non-union Upper Big Branch mine near Montcoal, West Virginia, killing twenty-five miners, with four more still missing. New-made widows and orphans rushed from their homes to try to find some word of their beloved husbands and fathers. Some found out the fate of husbands, fathers, uncles, nephews and cousins from the news media, without even the courtesy of a visit from a representative of the employer, Massey Energy.

The mine had an abysmal safety record, piling up literally thousands of safety violations, the fines for many of which Massey STILL hasn’t paid. Some of those violations involved failures to competently vent methane gas from the mine (it produced 2 MILLION cubic yards of methane per DAY), the selfsame methane that exploded so massively and tragically.

So it is that West Virginians gather in homes, in churches and schools, waiting for the bodies to be recovered and the fates of the four remaining unaccounted-for miners to be known.

That bible verse I referenced above has agonizing relevance today. American citizens are woefully ignorant of where the electricity comes from when they flip the wall switch or plug the wire into the socket. When we remain ignorant of what it takes to power our increasingly electrified lives, from iPods to cellphones and Bluetooths, to computers and bigscreen teevees, we say to Appalachia, “Let their blood be upon our heads, and upon our children’s,” and it assuredly is.

The worst coal mining disaster in twenty-five years shines a brutal spotlight on our national failure to take alternative energy sources seriously, whether it be tepid government sponsorship of transition to green energy, the business community’s overall failure to leverage money-saving energy plans, Wall Street’s persistence in financing and facilitating the likes of corporate predator Massey Energy’s ongoing war against Appalachia, as well as the cries of some “environmental” groups against erecting wind turbines in Appalachia whose electrical output could replace coal in a matter of only a few years.

There is no doubt that the ultimate responsibility lies upon Massey. You and I, however, have our own level of culpability, as consumers of coal-fired electricity.

In the next day or so, after the death toll has been finalized, the media crews that have descended upon West Virginia’s Coal River Valley will pack their gear, ready to fly to the latest news “event.” When they do, the question will linger after the coverage is done: have we learned anything? Will we have finally figured out that coal is too filthy, too deadly, too toxic, too costly in human blood for any civilization that considers itself “advanced” to continue using? Will we FINALLY dedicate ourselves and our posterity to a future free of Montcoals, and Sagos and Crandall Canyons? Will we FINALLY loose Justice so it can flow, as Dr. King said “like a mighty river” through the hills and hollers of Appalachia, where justice has been so long denied in favor of corporations like Massey that have denuded Appalachia’s hills, buried her streams, poisoned and killed her people? We forget at our peril the old adage “Justice delayed is Justice denied.”

Alternatively, will we shrug, the issue out of sight and therefore out of mind, and say “Let the hillbillies’ blood be upon our heads, and upon our children’s?” The answer will define the very future of our nation.


http://headonradionetwork.com/blog/2010/04/07/monday-bloody-monday-bob-kincaid-editorial/


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