Letters

Dear friends at Appalachian Voices,

This spring the Southern Energy Network (SEN) and the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) are partnering with grassroots community groups in the coalfields of Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia to hold Mountain Justice Spring Break in Charleston, WV from March 10-18! This will be an opportunity for current and future leaders of the environmentalist movement from across the Appalachian region and nation to voice their opposition to the ecological devastation and social injustice caused by mountaintop removal.

Check it out: www.climateaction.net/mjsb
Abram Racin
Morgantown, WV

You have a wonderful publication and I really enjoy reading the App. Voices
Teresa Shupe

I am a college student here at Hazard Community College and am currently pursuing a degree in medicine. I have many relatives who work in coal, and I wish to not offend and cause myself family problems. The companies have the area so brainwashed that these poor individuals actually believe that we depend on coal and if it wasn’t for these knights in bloodied [armor] we would have nothing. This is my first qualm with these corrupt businesses. We and our land are nothing more than resources to exploit for the profit of businessmen who know nothing of the area and the people they wreck.

Anonymous (from the ilovemountains.org web site) Hazard, KY

I am from Knott County [KY]. I understand the destruction that these mines cause all too well. It’s not just a physical destruction of the mountain, but a mental destruction of its people. I do hope that someday we find an alternative to this form of mining coal. As it is now though, I feel like fighting them is like fighting a very uphill battle.

For two years I’ve been helping to survey on a job very near my home, slowly watching them blast away the mountain I have so many childhood memories of.
It has had a profound mental effect on me. the mountain was more important to me than I realized, and now it’s gone.
Caudill (from the ilovemountains.org web site)