The last day of our 6 day march finds 1000 people marching up 1900 ft to the summit of Blair Mountain.

mo'fo'  http://www.friendsofblairmountain.org

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A few days ago someone blocked the public access road to the Blair Mountain Battle Field with boulders that were clearly brought from a mine site.  This would prevent the march from using this state road turnout off the highway as a pick up and drop off spot for Marchers who intended to walk up the Public Road to the historic site.   A small group of marchers took the initiative to move those boulders with thier bare hands.   They opened up the road while jeering miners, private security and state police looked on.  The action had been cleared by the Dept of Transportation because this turnout was an important safety feature on this windy steep mountain  road that is frequently traveled by fast moving over loaded coal trucks.

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The March on Blair Mountain has lunch at an camp spot of the original 1921 march and enters Logan County.

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Marchers tell personal accounts of the impact o their lives from
Mountain Top Removal and the battle to save their own personal histories
and the sustainability of the land. Spirits are high as the march
passes through Madison WV.
http://marchonblairmountain.org

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A little bit of Union History, morals & ethics in regard to the Blair Mountain Historic Battle Field; the site of the largest Armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War.  10,000 union miners engaged in armed conflict with coal company thugs and the US Military over the Unionization of the coal mines in 1921.

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A counter protester tries to sabotage the generator being used by independent media at the first campsite of the March on Blair Mountain.

http://marchonblairmountain.org

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Blair March Photo's by Jerry Nelson

44 people risked arrest Oct 24th on Kayford Mountain, WV by trespassing on a
Patriot Coal Company "reclamation" site to plant trees. Once all the
trees were planted and the activists were not under arrest, they walked
back off with their shovels.

Mountain Top Removal creates a fraction of the jobs needed for a healthy Appalachian economy.  A recently propsed Srip Mine operation claimed it would cost 250 million for the project and create 250 jobs...  250 jobs an hundreds of miles of destroyed mountains and streams.  Maybe there's another way to create some jobs...?

Mo'Fo'
http://climategroundzero.net/2010/10/kayford-reclamation-after-release/

"[Mountaintop removal coal mining would] wipe out a large part of the southern end of the battlefield that was occupied by the union miners."

Blair Mountain, West Virginia is the site of the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the historic push of unionized coal miners from the north to organize the workers of the southern coalfields. Involving 13,000 union miners and 2,000 anti-union defenders, the battle was the largest armed conflict in America since the Civil War!

It remains literally a battleground: a prime location for finding historic artifacts left from both sides of the conflict. It's also, however, a battleground between opponents of mountaintop removal coal mining and the coal companies themselves.

Kenny King, a resident of Blair Mountain since 1962, explains how this historical site, which he has been working to preserve for 17 years, is threatened by a 333 acre mining permit. "[Mountaintop removal coal mining would] wipe out a large part of the southern end of the battlefield that was occupied by the union miners."

A valuable piece of labor organizing history is not the only thing that would be destroyed by mining Blair Mountain. According to King, if they strip Blair Mountain, they'll lose innumerable natural resources: "Valuable hardwood forest, herbs like the ginseng, yellowroot, cohosh, and blood root... you'll never see it again. All will be lost; it'll just cease to exist. It will be erased off the face of the earth."

If you would like to help protect Blair Mountain's many valuable assets, please take King's advice: "Let [your representatives] know that there has to be a better way than sacrificing all the mountains and forest land and historical sites just for a convenient way of producing energy."

To support Kenny and his community contact:
Kenny King • (304) 752-2260 • hillboy23@suddenlink.net
www.FriendsofBlairMountain.org

The
Friends of Blair Mountain is a group of historians, archeologists and others dedicated to preserving the cultural and historical resources of the site of the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain in southern West Virginia.

MORE MOUNTAINS at
http://ilovemountains.org/endangered/