Time to give Democratic Governor Joe Manchin (WV) a call. Blair Mountain about to be lost.

[Lyric]

From WVU's newspaper, The Daily Athenaeum:

State fails to protect rich Blair Mountain history
Wednesday July 29, 2009
C.G. Shields, Opinion Editor

After a 20-year period of research, study and lobbying, the battlefield site at Blair Mountain in Logan County, W.Va., was finally added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 30 of this year.

The administration of Gov. Joe Manchin opposed the designation and immediately announced plans to challenge it.

Earlier this month, the administration got its way and proudly announced the removal of Blair Mountain from the registry, citing curious new findings in surveys of landowners on the site.

(snip)

So what happened at Blair Mountain that was so historic?

It is the site of the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War, a battle that would catalyze unionization of mining – and eventually, unionization of many other industries – and finally put an end to the brutal indentured servitude of miners by early 20th century coal barons.

Read more--it's heartbreaking and worth it. http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?story_id=43254

Blair Mountain was the site at which 15,000 miners came together and battled for their rights. The battle there marks the one and only time that the federal government has ever dropped aerial bombs on its own citizens, and remains the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War. It was a place where everyday working people stood up and put themselves in harm's way in order to secure rights from a government that oppressed and opposed them at every turn, in favor of corporate domination by greedy robber barons. Every lover of freedom in this nation should value and respect what happened there, and be appalled and outraged at the impending loss of that site to strip mining. How disgusting is it that the place where coal miners took a stand against robber baron coal-companies is now to be destroyed BY coal companies? My disgust and anger are so intense that I can't even express it. This is an INSULT, and Manchin should be ASHAMED of himself.

I'll be calling Manchin's office today, and passing this along to every other West Virginian that I know. In the meantime, we could use some help. Pressure from citizens of other states might make greasy Joe change his mind. If you have a few minutes to spare for the sake of standing up to robber barons, please join us in calling Governor Joe Manchin and giving him hell over this. If THAT doesn't work, then Joe and the coal companies can expect to see West Virginia protesters at the site, putting themselves in between our heritage of liberty and their machines of rape and profit. I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here while they destroy Blair Mountain. No. Effing. WAY.

CONTACT INFO FOR GOV. JOE MANCHIN, OF WV (supposedly a Democrat, but apparently fucking NOT)

E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: [phone]

:grr: :grr: :grr:

[chaska]

1. This really is disgraceful. But of course, nobody cares about wild areas and nature anymore....

Nobody but me.

I can't understand why folks aren't shooting people to stop this. How many mountains leveled? How many watersheds destroyed? How many lives disrupted? How many plant/animal habitats destroyed? When will people wake up? We can't go on destroying this planet like this.

[KamaAina]

2. This isn't even about nature. It's about history.

What if there were a thin seam of coal under, say, Antietam?

[Lyric]

3. Exactly.

Thank you--that is exactly how I feel. Honestly, the only reason that more people haven't heard of Blair Mountain is that our corporate masters don't WANT us to hear about it. It represents an embarrassing defeat for them; even though they won that battle, they ultimately lost the war on unions in West Virginia. Thanks to the awareness that the battle brought to the plight of Appalachian miners, practically all mines were unionized within a decade of the Blair Mountain battle.

[MountainLaurel]

5. That's exactly it

Not to mention the fact that the government isn't very keen on discussing how the U.S. military bombed its own citizens there.

[Lyric]

4. Folks, please please read this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

Read that article. This was something deeply, intensely important in our nation's history, and to see the place where it happened destroyed by mountaintop removal mining and strip mining would be horrific. People fought and died at Blair Mountain to oppose corporate abuse and domination. The least, the very LEAST, that we can do is to honor their sacrifice by keeping the battle site from being destroyed--especially by a coal company. The significance of this is NOT lost on the coal robber barons of today. If they are allowed to go through with this, they will see it as proof positive that American working people just don't care about their rights or the struggles of their forebears anymore.

We are the ones who AREN'T asleep at the wheel. I called Joe Manchin today and told him I was disgusted and appalled by his refusal to protect Blair Mountain as a National Historic site. To working-class people, to the poor children of miners, to everyone who punches a timeclock for a living and proudly supports their union...this place is sacred. The Democratic Party is supposed to be about support for the working class, for labor, for everyone who wasn't born wearing silk diapers. It would mean the world to we West Virginians if everyone else could join us and help keep this monument to resistance, noble defiance, and liberty safe from the likes of Massey Energy.

Please?

Joe Manchin's office: 1-888-438-2731

[MountainLaurel]

6. I'll call in the morning

Grrrrr.