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Stand with Poisoned Inmates

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Graphic by Adam Peck via Think Progress.

This is climate injustice.

In January, thousands of gallons of the toxic coal cleaning chemicals contaminated the drinking supply for 300,000 people and hundreds of inmates at the South Central Regional Jail (SCRJ) in Charleston, WV, were deprived of access to enough safe water.

Many inmates suffered from illness and injury from dehydration or chemical exposure. Some even faced violence and legal repercussions for seeking medical help and for asking for clean water to drink. You can hold SCRJ accountable and ensure the basic human rights for inmates if you speak out right now!

Click here to demand basic human rights and safe water access for inmates at West Virginia’s South Central Regional Jail.

Our allies with West Virginia Water Hub and Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival (RAMPS) met and corresponded with more than 50 inmates, and based on their stories, it’s clear that this failed crisis response is just the latest example in a larger pattern of abuse, violence, and negligence by the jail’s staff and administration.

WV Water Hub and RAMPS are amplifying the voices of inmates and exposing this horrendous abuse in order to force a response from prison authorities.

Add your voice: sign RAMPS’ petition to demand basic human rights for inmates in coal country.

RAMPS has stated that they are acting “in solidarity with broader movements of resistance to the growing prison state and poisonous extractive industries.” Combined, the systems of state repression and fossil fuel industry profit are creating a perpetual crisis. Like RAMPS, our movements must respond in kind and directly confront fossil fuel expansion, challenge the political power of that system, and act in solidarity with those facing the brunt of the crisis.

That is climate justice.

Take Non-Violent Direct Action for Climate Justice!; New York City, September 17-24, 2014

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Take Non-Violent Direct Action for Climate Justice!

New York City | September 17-24, 2014

International Week of Solidarity with Frontline Communities Around the World

solstice_600On September 23rd, political and corporate leaders are meeting at the United Nations in New York City for the Climate Summit 2014. This summit represents yet another step towards the corporate takeover of the UN climate negotiations, and the privatization of land, water and air resources under the guise of a global climate compact.

Meanwhile, as communities on the frontlines of climate change, we are the ones cultivating real, place-based solutions to address the global ecological crises. Indigenous peoples’ communities, communities of color and working-class white communities that are the first and most impacted by the storms, floods and droughts, are organizing to create millions of family-supporting jobs in clean energy, public transportation, zero waste, food sovereignty, community housing and ecosystem restoration.

We are organizing to stop pollution and poverty at the source, confronting the extreme energy corporations causing the climate crisis. As we write, our friends and comrades around the world are putting their bodies on the line to stop the corporations responsible – mining corporations; oil, coal and gas companies; pipelines and refineries; biofuels plantations; nuclear power plants; waste and biomass incinerators, and a myriad other industries profiteering from the destruction of our communities, our cultures and our ecosystems.

From Mesa to Mountaintop, from Hood to Holler – join us as we meet the scale and urgency of the crisis by standing in solidarity with all frontlines of resistance and resilience around the world, and taking non-violent direct action against the corporations driving the extractive economy.

We call on our allies to:

  • Join us in the streets of NYC for a week of creative non-violent actions for Climate Justice
  • Organize a delegation to join the Peoples March & People’s Climate Justice Summit in NYC
  • Organize a creative action in your home community that highlights local solutions to climate change
  • Spread this /call to action/ amongst your respective networks and social media outlets

Our demands of local, national and international decision-makers are simple:

Support us in building Just Transition pathways away from the “dig, burn, dump” economy, and towards “local, living economies” where communities and workers are in charge!

Join us in solidarity – in the streets of New York City, in your own community, and around the world!

Alliance for Appalachia • ACE for Environmental Justice • Asian Pacific Environmental Network • Black Mesa Water Coalition • Catskills Mountainkeeper • Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy • Center for Story-based Strategy • Communities for a Better Environment • Community to Community Development • Cornell Global Labor Institute • East Michigan Environmental Action Council • Energy Justice Network • Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative • Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives • Global Justice Ecology Project • Grassroots Global Justice Alliance • Grassroots International • Indigenous Environmental Network • Institute for Policy Studies • Ironbound Community Corporation • Jobs With Justice • Just Transition Alliance • Kentuckians for the Commonwealth • Labor Community Strategy Center • Labor Network for Sustainability • Little Village Environmental Justice Organization • Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment • Movement Generation • Movement Strategy Center • NAACP Climate Justice Initiative • New York City EJ Alliance • People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights (PODER) • POWER • Right to the City Alliance • Rising Tide North America • Ruckus Society • Southwest Organizing Project • Southwest Workers Union • UPROSE

Stay tuned for more information on action plans being developed in the coming weeks.

For more information, and to share your local action plans with us, contact sharon@ruckus.org or nyc@risingtidenorthamerica.org, or go to www.ourpowercampaign.org

Eight Jailed After Alpha HQ Blockade and Banner Hang

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lockCross-posted from the RAMPS Campaign

Update: Five of the eight have been bailed out.  The remaining three are expected to have bail hearings on Wednesday or Thursday. Read all updates here.

June 23, 2014. Bristol, VA All of our friends arrested in the Alpha headquarters action were arraigned in front of a judge this morning after spending the weekend in Jail. While none of them can be released from jail until their bail is set, only some of them will get bail hearings this afternoon. If enough donations are made to the legal defense fund, we may be able to get some of them out of jail today or tomorrow!  While it’s looking like half or more of our friends won’t be able to get a hearing today, we hope to raise money in the interim so that we’re able to make bail as soon as it is set.

Over the past decade, the Mountain Justice Legal Defense Fund has made it possible for countless people to risk arrest in actions and for our movement to bail those arrested out when they needed it. Donations to the legal defense fund are usually used not just once, but again and again as court cases are resolved and those funds return. In other words, one donation can help action after action over the years. Right now, our fund is critically low because many activists are still out on bail for other Mountain Justice actions that have happened this year.

If you can, please donate to the legal fund to make it possible to bail out the 8 people in jail now and to support our ongoing work.

Our friends who were arrested near Alpha’s headquarters thought a lot about the issue before taking action. Here are the statements that they made about why they are organizing against Alpha Natural Resources:

Galen pic for website

 

Galen

“I’m participating in this action in solidarity with my friends in Appalachia whose daily lives are affected by Alpha Natural Resources’ operations. I’m also doing this to send a message to Alpha that they cannot continue the wholesale destruction of mountain communities.”

Maleny
maleny for website

 

“Those who got arrested in this action, who were protesting against the unethical practices of Alpha Natural Resources, aren’t the true criminals. The true criminals are those who are ordering the destruction of these beautiful mountains, symbols of history, culture, and community.”

Camilo for website

Camilo

“Extreme extraction is very close to my family’s story, and the destruction of mountains is near to my heart. My father’s hometown in Peru is right next to the largest gold mine in the world, Yanacocha. As long as I can remember, I’ve had family who worked in the mine – and against it. My grandfather taught me that according to his indigenous beliefs, each mountain has an Apu – its own spirit. I’m here today in solidarity with the people of Appalachia, to demand an end to Alpha’s mountaintop removal mining. I’m standing up for the mountains and all of the life that depends on them.”

Dakota
Dakota for website

 

“How can we live in a society where corporations like Alpha are allowed to strip the land, blow up mountains, pollute the water and the air we breathe? People are sick and dying because of mountaintop removal, and it’s time we held corporations accountable.”

roger

Roger

“I oppose MTR because it harms life.  I risked arrest alongside friends practically guaranteed for it because of what has left the sphere of risk and entered into reality and living history for Appalachian communities, working and incarcerated people, and the mountains that sustain them.  I will not negotiate on the right to clean water and decent livelihood for everyone.  Instead I will act to ensure it.”

No Business as Usual at Alpha Headquarters

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flagReposted from the RAMPS Campaign

June 20, 2014 — Bristol, VA. Three activists with Mountain Justice and Radical Action for Mountains and People’s Survival (RAMPS) are currently stopping business as usual at Alpha Natural Resources headquarters in Bristol, VA, in protest of Alpha’s devastating practices of mountaintop removal coal mining. Activists were protesting the opening of new mines on Coal River Mountain in southern West Virginia. Two protestors are locked in front of the front doors of the office, while a third is hanging from a flag pole displaying a banner that reads “Save Coal River Mountain”

“That mountain is the mountain I learned to hunt on, it’s the mountain that’s sustained my family for generations. I’ll be a dead man before I see them take what’s left up there,” said
Junior Walk, of West Virginia. Walk lives in the Coal River Valley, directly below Alpha operations on Coal River Mountain. Alpha recently began blasting on the 264 acre Collins Fork mine. Local residents and activists have opposed surface mining on Coal River Mountain since the late 1990s.

2014-06-20 06.25.05-2“I am here today to demand an end to Alpha’s role in the destruction of Appalachia. While coal is exported and profits leave the region, the health effects remain in the communities,” said Camilo Pereira, one of the protestors blocking the office. Two of the protesters in a lockbox at the front door of Alpha’s headquarters and blocked the entrance.

While coal production has decreased nationwide in the past years, coal exports are at an all-time high. The overwhelming majority of coal extracted from Coal River Mountain is metallurgical coal used primarily to produce steel and is likely bound for export markets. Adam Hall, of Glen Daniel, WV, said, “As a country, we have made great strides against the dangers of coal fired power plants. However, new emission regulations will not stop Alpha from blowing up Coal River Mountain and endangering my home and family.”

More than 20 peer-reviewed studies demonstrate a connection between mountaintop removal coal mining operations and increased cases of lung and heart diseases, as well as increased birth defects, early mortality, and depression.

The RAMPS Campaign’s ongoing work against Alpha Natural Resources demands an end to Alpha’s mountaintop removal practices in Appalachia. Furthermore, RAMPS urges the company to re-employ miners for effective and thorough reclamation of retired and abandoned mine sites.

Photos of today’s protest can be found here when available.

Mountain Justice is a regional and national network that has worked for 10 years to support community based, grassroots efforts to end Mountaintop Removal and build a brighter future in Appalachia.