Hightower Lowdown

"You've got to stand for something," sings John Mellencamp, "or you're gonna fall for anything."

Folks in West Virginia's Coal River Valley are no longer falling for the long litany of lies they've gotten from coal-company executives and-bought-off politicians. The corporate elites of the state have literally been destroying mountains, forests, streams, wildlife, livelihoods, human health, and whole communities in Appalachia by using a brutal form of coal mining called "mountaintop removal."

For years, people here have tried the usual political and legal channels to stop this corporate assault --yet it continues. So people are now putting themselves on the line.

In May, at three mountaintop removal sites, protesters carried out non-violent civil-disobedience actions, and 17 were jailed. Two women, for example, donned hazmat suits and respirators and boated onto the Brushy Fork impoundment--an 8-billion -gallon lake of poisonous coal-slurry waste. Having unfurled a floating, 60-foot banner reading "No More Toxic Sludge," they were arrested for--get this-- littering! How can you litter a toxic-waste dump?

Though the charges against the protesters are misdemeanors, state judges demanded that each one post a punitive bail of $2,000 cash, rather than the usual step of posting much cheaper bonds. Contrast these bail rates with the meager $1,800 fine that one of the coal giants paid when its slurry lake broke, poisoning 14 miles of river.

King Coal may think it owns West Virginia, but the people are in revolt. To connect with this growing movement, go to www.ohvec.org.