What Would You Do If You Knew This Place?

What would you do if you knew this place? If you'd hunted here when you were younger? If you knew every holler and every old logging road? What would you do if your kin people built a cabin back in there long ago where that machinery now sits? What if they had a little graveyard up on what was used to be the top of that ridge?

Would you keep your hear buried in the mud? Would you trade off the places you'd once roamed looking for that elusive ginseng root, or the places your grandparents would take you and tell stories? All for a handful of temporary jobs and a boat load of cash for some banker up on Wall Street? Because that's what some here have chosen.

Would you try to stand up to this? To an industry with a century worth of political power? With any and every elected official snugged neatly in their front pocket? To an industry with the best lawyers, PR firms, and enough money to drown anyone who would stand in their way?

It's an uphill battle folks, but it's one we can never shy away from. People here in these woods have been fighting this monster of an industry tooth and nail since before I was born, and we owe it to them to keep at it.

My point is, here in Appalachia we know first hand how disheartening a fight like this can be.

There will be a great need for resistance work over the next four years. It will be disheartening at times, probably a lot of the time. Larry Gibson was once asked what kept him fighting he gave a simple answer - “Because I'm right.”

Here in Appalachia we've lost more than we've won over the years. I for one, however, ain't willing to give up. Not until they put me in the ground or we get out heads out of the mud and decide the coal should stay in it.