These Mountains are Divine Creations

While Eric Blevins is holding out up in the trees with fellow activists Amber and David to successfully halt blasting at Coal River Mountain, I’d like to share with you some inspiring words which he delivered this past December at a protest at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in Charleston. Eric spoke on behalf of Mountain Justice, and was joined on the stage by the likes of former WV congressman Ken Hechler and Robert Kennedy Jr. The genuine and profound framing and delivery of Eric’s speech has stuck with me since that day. And as he sits up there, defending this mountain, I hope his words inspire you, as well.

Mountain Justice is a regional movement, moving to abolish mountaintop removal. And this region unites us. Whether we live in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia or Alabama, we are united by these mountains. Appalachia unites us.

These mountains are divine creations. They deserve our love and respect. The people who live in these mountains are divine creations. They deserve our love and respect. The plants and animals who live in these mountains are divine creations. They deserve our love and respect. The fresh mountain air and fresh mountain spring water are divine creations. They deserve our love and respect. We must love the creator and all of the creator’s creation. If we all give them the love and respect they deserve, then they will heal us every day, for generations and generations into the future. If we continue to desecrate and destroy them, they will leave us, probably within a generation.

Coal River Mountain is a divine creation. It deserves our love and respect and it deserves to live.

Massey Coal is a corrupt corporation, [Eric had to pause here for a big applause] with over two thousand documented violations of the Clean Water Act, and the government continues to allow them to poison our divine living water and to blow up our divine mountains like the terrorists they are, and to bury our loved ones in their waste.

They are turning our loved ones into waste. This is criminal activity and it must be stopped. Massey Coal has said that they are going to kill 998 people in the Coal River Valley if their coal waste dam fails, and the government has given them permission to blast within 200 feet of it, and the blasting has begun. Massey dams like this one have failed in the past and there is no reason to think they won’t fail again. The government must step in now to stop this killing, and if they don’t, we will keep getting in Massey’s way until this madness ends, and we will save Coal River Mountain and the Coal River Valley and our deep connection to divine creation.

Thank you.