To Turn On The Lights—But Remain In Darkness

April 15th, 2010  |   

The Red Bud & The Dogwood In Coal Country

If you’re driving through West Virginia these days, you will, if you are paying attention, see the mountains sprouting green, spotted with purplish-pink large shrubs or small trees. These reddish splashes of color are Red Bud, one of my favorite spring blossoms.

Appalachia’s landscape is marked with hollows— called “hollers” in this part of the world. These deep cuts in the terrain are often so narrow and so deep that the sun doesn’t touch the bottom until mid-morning. Along about late-afternoon smoky shadows cover the area and drift into a heavy fog that lingers overnight.

Last Saturday Judy and I drove up one of those hollers on our way to a patch of soil where we would spend a few hours with our hands in the earth. We planted kale, onions, romaine lettuce, and potatoes in a garden that, when harvested, will feed hundreds of poor people twice a day, seven days a week, at a church in downtown Charleston.

The hills along the road—dotted with Red Bud—looked like they had measles. Actually, I commented to Judy that the red blossoms seemed particularly appropriate, given what was taking place at the nearby Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, where twenty-five miners (now 29) had died in a tragic explosion. It was as if the Red Blood had become earth’s depository for the blood, shed by these miners underground. 

Along the way, I could not ignore the fact that the dogwood trees were also beginning to bloom, nor could I fail to recall the legend of that particular tree. It is said that when the Roman occupiers of Palestine looked for a tree upon which Jesus would hang, they chose the stately dogwood. But the crucified Christ, as the legend goes, made a promise about that tree which still hold good. An anonymous poet tells the tale.

 “Never again shall the dogwood grow/Large enough to be used so./Slender & twisted, it shall be/With blossoms/like the cross for all to see./As blood stains the petals marked in brown/The blossom’s center wears a thorny crown./All who see it will remember me/Crucified on a cross from the dogwood tree./Cherished and protected this tree shall be/A reminder to all of my agony.”

The miners who were trapped underground were crucified on the cross of corporate greed, and the agony of their families and friends is being worn like a crown of thorns. Grief lingers over the hollers of Appalachia like a shadowy shroud-like fog.

For those of us who turn the lights on at home but remain in darkness about coal and those who mine it, I offer some thoughts from coal country.

Slurry Ponds & Statistics

Statistics are like a slurry pond—one of those artificial coal mine or mountaintop removal ponds that stores billions of gallons of coal sludge—left over mining waste. A person could drown in statistics, like the 125 who died in 1972 when 132 million gallons of sludge refused to be dammed and swept down upon the residents of Buffalo Creek. 

Nevertheless, if you turn your lights on, far from the nation’s coalfields, you have to know a few facts about the Massey Energy subsidiary Performance Coal Company’s Upper Big Branch Mine. As they say, the devil is in the details.

• Last year, the company was cited by the Mine Safety & Health Administration (MSHA) with 10,653 violations, amounting to proposed penalties of nearly $13 million. Massey is contesting nearly 75 percent of the penalties levied against it.

• As recent as March 2, 2010, this mine has been cited with 12 serious ventilation problems, 8 of those for failure to follow the ventilation plan, and 4 for not enough air being brought into the active mining area. Note: It appears, even though the investigation is just beginning, that the explosion was the result of methane ventilation problems. 

• Of $123.4 million in major fines against the industry by the agency since 2005, only 8 percent have been collected–$10.2 million.

Don Blankenship—A Villain Out Of Central Casting

Now, let me move from statistical numbers to what I’ve heard from none other than DonBlankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy.

If central casting were to look for an oily, villainous looking character, Don Blankenship would get the part. When the mine explosion was reported, a friend of mine said he expected the newspaper headline to read—MASSEY STRIKES AGAIN. For a long time, Don Blankenship has been blowing up our mountains, busting union organizing efforts, poisoning and burying streams, and pouring millions of dollars into political campaigns. Massey owns mines and politicians. Massey’s purchase of a West Virginia Supreme Court justice was the reported case study for John Grisham’s novel, “The Appeal.”

What I heard, with my very own ears, was Don Blankenship say some pretty damming words in a debate with environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. held at the University of Charleston a few months ago. He said that it was impossible to do mining without breaking the law. What he was really saying was that if a mining company is to make money it will have to fudge on environmental law and workplace safety regulations.

Back in 2006, a fire in a section of a Massey/Aracoma mine in Melville, West Virginia, killed two miners. Days before the fire, a federal mine inspector tried to close down that section of the mine, but “was told by his superior to back off and let them run coal, that there was too much demand for coal.” The “superior” has blood on his hands.

Three months before the Aracoma mine fire, Don Blankenship sent managers a memo saying, “If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal . . . you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.” Don Blankenship has blood on his hands.

In a Richmond Times Dispatch article, Terry Holstein who worked at Upper Big Branch Mine until 2006, said he left because he didn’t like the way Massey operated the mine. “It was like they wanted production more than they wanted safety..you know what I mean? They speak safety first, but production’s really first for them.”

So, Don says he’s learned it’s impossible to mine coal without breaking the law. I wonder if he is about to learn another lesson—that it’s impossible to break laws that kill 29 miners without going to jail.

Obama To The Rescue?

When I was working with poultry workers on the Delmarva Peninsula, I, along with other religious leaders, had occasion to go to Washington to see the Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chou. Serving under President George W. Bush, she held that office from 2001-2009.

We were there to convince her that the extensive study on ergonomic injuries done under the Clinton administration should be acted upon. I even asked her to leave Washington, cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and meet with workers who had been injured working in poultry plants.

Write me a letter she said. I did. She never made the trip. In fact, she put the ergonomics report in “File 13.”

President Obama inherited a mess at the Department of Labor. The good news is that he has made excellent appointments there. While working with poultry workers, I had very positive connections with Deborah Berkowitz from the United Food and Commercial Workers union. She is now OSHA’s new chief of staff.

Want a comparison? President Bush named former Massey Energy official Stanley Suboleski to the MSHA review commission that decides all legal matters under the Federal Mine Act. And how about Dick Stickler appointed as the head of MSHA? This dude was a former manager of an energy company that had double the national average incurred injury rates. The good news is that he has appointed Joe Main, former mine worker and health and safety man at the United Mine Workers, as head of MSHA.

My advice is for folks to keep watch over the Department of Labor—that big fish right there in the shadow of the Capitol and down the street from the White House. Jonah and Pinocchio were good guys, but both were swallowed by a big fish. Good folks like Joe Maine and Deborah Berkowitz are now inside the belly of that beast. Will they be allowed to do the good work they are capable of doing? Or will the lobbyists overwhelm them and, most important, will the President support them. We shall see.

“Miner’s Religion” On Display

The media descended upon Dry Creek, Montcoal, and Whiteville—unincorporated towns near the Upper Big Branch Mine. A worldwide audience kept a vigil with ABC’s Diane Sawyer and CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Folks, many of whom know little of Appalachian life, had a chance to see the agony of people suffering over loved ones, and the ecstasy of people who cling to their faith in a God who goes down in the mines with them, and walks with them through the valley of the shadow of death.

“Miner’s religion” was on display. Folks heard: “Those who died were covered with the blood of Jesus, and that’s all you need to remember.”—“Amazing Grace”—“Glory Hallelujah!” A miner/preacher sang, “I make my living in a coal-black hole. … You got to give your life to Jesus. You know he likes coal miners, too.”

Other voices said it was all in “God’s plan.” A youth minister, a Massey miner himself, said he might have been killed if he had lingered five additional minutes in the mine and then spoke “company store” words: “We like the company a good bit…Most violations are nothing.” These were words that may have tempered anger and, as one observer put it, “delivered them from animosity toward the Massey Mining Company.”

But there were other voices as well—voices which did not pin the disaster on God’s plan, as if —voices unwilling to accept the resignation of a preacher who said: “We’re all going to die. Things happen, accidents happen. Things just always don’t work out right. … That day’s done and past and now we can only pray.”

Richard Trumpka, a former miner and now head of the AFL-CIO said “this incident isn’t just a matter of happenstance, but rather the inevitable result of a profit-driven system and reckless corporate conduct.”

Some recalled the words of Mother Jones, the early twentieth century labor and community organizer of miners: “Pray for the Dead and fight like hell for the Living.”
 

A Choice—Mining & The Military

Diane Sawyer, in an ABC World News interview, asked someone why they mine coal. The answer: “It’s the only choice we have.” That choice leads to a 50 or 60 thousand dollar a year job and a way out of poverty. But Diane, there is another way.

The other way to escape poverty and dying communities is to join the military. That’s what Jessica Lynch did. Living in a poor West Virginia town, she gave up on a plan for college and enlisted in the Army, where she was wounded in the Iraq War.

There’s an interesting parallel one can observe about these two choices. Go into the mines and risk being a casualty like the 29 who died in the recent tragedy. Or go into the military, as so many West Virginians have done, war after war, and risk having your name carved on the State Capitol War Memorial Monument in Charleston.

The mines and the military are connected in another way. Old fashioned pride can be found in both places. Mining and the military are tough jobs that make people proud when they go to work. They are more than professions. They are public services. One fuels the energy for our nation; the other provides security for the homeland.

Listen to Albert T. Bonds, an Upper Big Branch miner. “A coal miner is a rare breed. They’re something like a soldier, I think. Because every time you go underground, there’s always a slight possibility that you might not come out. But that’s the occupation you’ve chosen. That’s how you earn your living and feed your family.”

Accept the fact that mining and the military are dangerous careers, but understand that the real danger in mining is the company that sends a miner into an unsafe mine. And the real danger in the military is the Commander in Chief who sends you into combat in an unnecessary war, and, on top of that, without a clear mission or adequate equipment.

Upper Big Branch & Tax Day 2010

I am writing these Notes on Tax Day, April 15. So here are my thoughts, no holds bar, as straight as I can give them to you.

Our nation’s carbon-dependent energy fuels war. Over 50% of our tax dollars go toward war. Ironically, the Income Tax originated to pay for the Civil War, still funds past and present wars. Our carbon-based economy is leaving footprints in war-torn countries—an expanding trillion dollar war in Iraq and Afghanistan with as many people dead and homeless as were devastated by bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Speaking of nuclear, our President wants to cut our nuclear arsenal back to 1,500 missiles, while Midwestern communities that house those missiles are lobbying to keep them there for their economic health. They have a fierce pride over being at the center of our nation’s defense.

A post-coal era is in the birth-pangs of labor and will not be born unless we move quickly toward new sources of energy and green jobs. Coal is environmentally disastrous. It claims lives, lungs and a healthy lifestyle with all of God’s living creatures.

Our country is a mess. Our systems have failed us—all of them—religion included. We worry about children bullying one another, yet we are a bullying nation. Our obesity is more than excess fat—it is excess materialism and overweight greed. We are anorexic in our loss of passion for social justice. We keep watch over the dalliances of athletes and politicians, while we forget the men and women in Afghanistan. We are the world leader in the sale of armaments, while we fill our prisons with people who have used weapons.

A Tea Party has emerged that looks nothing like the face of America. The only black face I see in the crowd is a man running for Congress in Florida—Retired Lt. Col. Allen West who was forced out of the Army for torturing people. Tea Party folks want to “take back America,” an America that existed only in their minds—one that believes “diversity” means “perversity.” Behind their fear-mongering is a appetite ripe for fascism.

There is another face to America. I see it everyday in the individual lives and actions of people from all walks of life. They redeem our nastiness as a nation. But individual acts of charity and mercy, as beautiful as they are, do not revitalize and remake the systems that are destroying us. Planting seeds and harvesting food for the poor helps to sweeten my community and nourishes my soul. But the systems that make people poor are still in place and must be addressed.                                                                      

I’m encouraged by what the mayor of Binghamton, New York is doing. He’s sick and tired of poor communities having to “squabble over crumbs” while tax money goes for war, bypassing crucial needs at home. He’s placed a large digital “cost of war” counter in the front of City Hall. The mayors of Boston and Chicago are also joining a chorus of mayors who want to address our country’s “skewed national priorities.” Like they say in churches all over Appalachia—“Glory Hallelujah!”

My taxes are in the mail and my body will be outside the Charleston Post Office today handing out information about where that money is being spent—on a carbon-dependent economy, hell-bent on war. And I will be hoping and praying that a nation, with wax in its ears, will awaken and organize not around tea and sympathy for the Civil War, but for a moral and political post-carbon, antiwar birthing of the American Spirit.

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