Environment vs. jobs in new Battle of Blair Mountain

Mountain Top Removal Protest
Protesters marched 50 miles to West Virginia's Blair Mountain to oppose mountaintop removal coal mining.

CNN
By Soledad O’Brien and Robert Howell
June 14, 2011 1:46 p.m. EDT

Blair, West Virginia (CNN) — We’re at the peak of Blair Mountain in the middle of southern West Virginia. It’s about 85 degrees, the coolest it has been all week, and there’s a slight breeze that carries voices before we can see the singers.

“This land is your land. This land is my land.”

More than 600 dusty, sweaty people are singing as they hike through the hardwoods up the mountain. Their protest signs — “Save Blair Mountain” and “Abolish Mountaintop Removal” — poke through the leaves. [snip]

About 150 people in this group have been walking the twisting mountain highways through West Virginia’s coal fields for six days. The 50-mile march is re-creating the 1921 March on Blair that led to a bloody battle between thousands of coal miners and coal company supporters. The fight eventually brought unions, along with respectable wages, to the coal mines of West Virginia.

But this time, the march isn’t about unions. It’s about saving a mountain. It has been organized to oppose “MTR,” or mountaintop removal, a highly effective type of mining that involves blasting away slopes to get at the profitable coal seams underneath.
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