<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/31/west-virginia-mining-coal-industry>
"Coal has stalked Junior Walk his entire life. He remembers his elementary
school in the mountainous southern reaches of West Virginia being caked in coal
dust, and the representatives from the nearby mine showing up to hand them out
mollifying squeezable toys in the shape of lumps of coal.
That school was subsequently shuttered and is now wreathed in weeds, a
replacement established a few miles away to escape the shadow of the mine.
Walk’s childhood home sits a few hundred yards from another mine, Black Eagle,
that spectacularly disgorges coal via a conveyer belt into a huge heap by the
main road, like a sort of Stygian waterfall.
Walk followed the path of many of his peers, as well as his father and
grandfather, by working for the coal industry in its Appalachian heartland,
doing jobs in security and maintenance. But as he saw the black rocks being
clawed from the guts of the mountains and thought of the local people being
sickened by this work, Walk began to see coal as an implacable foe.
“People are getting exploited, people are getting poisoned, people are losing
their lives to the activities of this coal industry,” said Walk. “I’ve seen
friends and neighbors getting sick and dying of cancer and heart disease and
having babies with birth defects.”
Since he was 19 years old, Walk, who is now 33, has risked the wrath of his
community by actively campaigning against coal, firstly through direct protest
action and, more recently, in more novel ways. Standing as a lonely opponent of
an industry that still holds the region in a tight grip, Walk is now fixated
upon the destruction of his nemesis. “My ultimate hope is to shut down the coal
industry,” he said. “In order to get anything else new here, you’ve got to burn
it down first.”
He has a perfect weapon to do this: a drone."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
