MRETV80_THE STROKES FEAT. EDDIE VEDDER AND JOSH HOMME

“We All Live in the Coal Fields”
West Virginians Step Up Protests as EPA OKs New Mountaintop Removal
At least thirty people were arrested in West Virginia Saturday as protesters marked a new phase of Operation Appalachian Spring, a campaign to end mountaintop removal mining. The protests came just a week after the Obama administration gave the green light for forty-two more mountaintop removal permits in a major victory for the coal industry. (Mountaintop removal has destroyed 450 mountains in West Virgina, Virginia and Kentucky.)
- details and interview at Democracy Now

An excerpt from the interview with author and activist Jeff Biggers on May 29:
AMY GOODMAN: What about media coverage, Jeff Biggers, of Appalachia?
JEFF BIGGERS: Media coverage. You know, this is something that I’m just not quite sure what’s going on. You know, here you have one of the most egregious environmental and human rights violations right before our very eyes.

You have little communities in West Virginia, a little town outside called Prenter, where 97 percent of the people have some sort of gallbladder disease. You have Americans who cannot drink their water. You have people who are living under daily explosions and silica dust coming into their gardens and their farms. People are having to be relocated and removed. And yet the mainstream media is not handling it. They’re just sort of acting as if this is something that can wait, that something—that it’s not really an urgent issue.

Related
End Mountain Top Removal / Action And Resource Center
The Struggle Against Mountaintop Removal / via Democracy Now