| There's a bombing campaign underway in the United States. And it's happening in Appalachia. Ravenous coal companies, financed by banks like Wells Fargo, are literally blowing the tops off of mountains simply to get to the seams of coal buried underneath. To date, 474 Appalachian mountains have been decapitated by the coal industry. By the end of the decade, mountaintop removal mining, if it continues unabated, will destroy an estimated 1.4 million acres. It has already buried and polluted over 1200 miles of rivers and streams with debris and waste. Check out this shocking video and help spread the word about mountaintop removal. As its land is blown apart, Appalachian culture faces extinction at the hands of corrupt coal companies and the greedy bankers that finance them. Families and communities have been driven from their homes and land by floods, landslides and blasting from a mixture of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel, the same combination used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing, set to knock the tops off some of Appalachia's most beautiful peaks. Mountaintop removal has damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes and caused a 90% decrease in property values. Groundwater and wells are being poisoned by seeping mine waste causing a variety of health issues. As one coalfield resident remarked: "Our wells, our land, our homes, our culture, our very lives are being threatened. Will it take a tragedy for us to be heard?" However, Appalachia has a long storied history of citizens standing up to power. From the 1880's until her death in 1930, Mother Jones organized miners against long hours, low pay and dangerous working conditions in underground mines. In 1920, Matewan, West Virginia's workers initiated and won a strike to speak as one collective voice through a mining union. Today's struggle is no less critical as people throughout the region and country are continuing these traditions by uniting against mountaintop removal and standing up to the wealth and power of the coal companies and their banks. Those past and present stories are told throughout Appalachia. Recently, Rainforest Action Network, with the help of our friends and allies in the coalfields, created a brief video to chronicle the story of coalfield residents. We need your help in getting the word out about mountaintop removal and folks in the coalfields. Please forward this video to 10 friends today and tell them to spread the word about mountaintop removal. For the mountains, Scott Parkin
Global Finance Campaign
Rainforest Action Network
www.ran.org
www.dirtymoney.org | 
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