The Environmental Activists of Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice Stand Up to Big Coal in West Virginia

The Environmental Activists of Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice

In the hills and hollers of southern West Virginia, a protest movement for environmental justice, social justice and human rights has arisen in the recent past that is having tremendous success. Arrayed against this movement is the multi-billion-dollar coal industry that owns the government of the State of West Virginia. Stepping into the breach with calls for an end to mountainop removal coal extraction are two groups that practice civil disobedience on behalf of the environment: Climate Ground Zero (CGZ) and Mountain Justice (MJ). Comprised of volunteers, these organizations have peacefully protested coal company practices that run a real risk of bringing death, dismemberment, horror and mainfold tragedy to thousands of people in southern West Virginia's Coal River Valley.

“Peaceful” doesn't mean “ineffectual,” however, and the actions of CGZ and MJ have, forced the "Coal Mob" to tip its hand by engaging in the same sort of ham-fisted tactics that have always been coal's stock-in-trade. Using the bought-and-paid-for West Virginia justice system, peaceful protesters arrested for tresspass and the like have been subjected to merciless cash bails that have literally kept them behind bars while alleged child molesters have walked free on bond. They have been threatened with death, assaulted and terrorized. In the face of it all, they have not flinched.

Injustice is the order of the day in West Virginia's courtrooms. Convictions of two members of the “Coal Mob” have lately resulted in a grand total of $200 in fines and no jail time at all for people who, in one instance, struck a world-renowned community organizer in the head, and another who threatened to slit the throat of a parent and child at a picnic. Each received a measly hundred dollar fine. That's the sum total of their punishment.

Meanwhile, the CGZ and MJ protesters have been left to sit behind bars on as much as a $7,500 dollar cash-only bail. The Constution of the United States prohibits unreasonable bail, but the Constitution of the United States doesn't apply in Massey Energy's Appalachiastan any more than it applied in Bull Connor's Birmingham.

As often has been the case in decades past, those leading that struggle are students and volunteers who put themselves at hazard to peacefully call attention to a social and environmental disaster that puts at hazard the lives of thousands of people.

Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice are heroes for our time. They more than merit this week's BuzzFlash Wings of Justice Award.

Guest Nomination by Bob Kincaid of the Head On Radio Network