After 500 mountains in Appalachia have been blown to bits by mountaintop removal, one peak was most likely saved today: Blair Mountain in West Virginia, the site of the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War, was officially approved by the Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places to be placed on the National Register.
This is a huge victory, as the tide continues to turn in the movement to stop mountaintop removal in Appalachia.
Some consider it the Bunker Hill of the labor movement. But the great battle in 1921, when thousands of union coal miners and World War I veterans donned their uniforms and took up arms to liberate and unionize the last coal camps in southwestern West Virginia held hostage to ruthless outside coal companies, has emerged as one of the great symbols of Appalachia's fate today. Over the past several years, the Friends of Blair Mountain--an organization of community and labor activists, historians and environmentalists--have led an even more epic battle to save the sacred mountain site from a plan by coal companies to strip mine and destroy Blair Mountain through mountaintop removal operations.
The mountaintop removal war might soon be over. The Rednecks won. According to the National Registry Federal Program regulations:
"If a property contains surface coal resources and is listed in the National Register, certain provisions of the Surface Mining and Control Act of 1977 require consideration of a property's historic values in the determination on issuance of a surface coal mining permit."
"Redneck" was the name given to the progressive miners, as William Blizzard recalled in his wonderful memoir, When Miners March, as they wore red bandannas around their necks to distinguish themselves from others. As the battle raged, and even bombs dropped, President Warren Harding was forced to intervene with military troops.
President Barack Obama needs to intervene against mountaintop removal today. As three million pounds of ammonium nitrate fuel oil are detonated daily in an assault on Appalachia today, raining toxic dust on the inhabitants and devastating watersheds as part of the brutal mountaintop removal operations, it's time for the federal government to stop this egregious violation of human rights in the mountains.
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