Green Action protests Arch Coal practices
Courtesy of Green ActionCommunity members, 40 Washington University students and West Virginian Brandon Nida called on Arch Coal to cease mining operations at Blair Mountain on Friday, Feb. 17.
In an effort to resist Arch Coal’s plan to mine the historic Blair Mountain with mountaintop coal removal, Washington University’s Green Action, Climate Action St. Louis, and organizations from the Blair Mountain area demanded that Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton back the protestors in their efforts to cease the company’s activities.
“In recent weeks it’s become evident that Arch Coal is moving towards mountaintop removal coal mining which is super destructive, so we’re moving in solidarity with West Virginia with regards to our board of trustees,” sophomore and member of Green Action, Caroline Burney, said. “We thought we had an obligation to stand up to Arch.”
The march began on the Washington University campus, where protesters asked Wrighton to urge Leer and Arch Coal to halt mountaintop mining.
“It was great to see so many people join us on campus. We were able to deliver a pretty strong message to the Chancellor’s office,” senior and Green Action member Arielle Klagsbrun said. “Green Action will continue to push Chancellor Wrighton to stand with folks in Appalachia and to stand up to multinational coal companies like Arch Coal.”
Arch Coal could not be reached for comment on Sunday.
After demonstrating on campus, protesters headed to the Arch Coal headquarters in Creve Coeur.
They were prevented from entering the Arch Coal building by security. However, they still voiced their message through signs and chants from outside the building.
“Arch knows our message now, and they know why we’re opposing the Blair mountaintop removal,” Burney said.
Brandon Nida, a West Virginian and member of Friends of Blair Mountain, spoke directly to Leer.
“Steven Leer, back off Blair Mountain. We will not stop fighting the destruction of our communities until Arch stops blowing up our mountains,” Nida said, according to a press release.
Students cited human and environmental costs as reasons for getting involved.
“It’s really hard not to take action. We, as Washington University students, have the degree of duty to take some degree of action because of Arch Coal’s dominance on campus, because of their position on the board of trustees,” Klagsbrun said. “It’s really important that we use our power as students to support the folks in Appalachia.”
Oh, go home hippies….what good is your protesting anyways?
Why don’t you do something more productive with your time like, say, learn some engineering concepts and try to solve the problem our school and many other organizations are trying to solve the best way possible….produce more energy.
I designed and painted those signs two years ago. Thrilled to see they’re still getting use :)
Maybe a quick google search would have helped….
Arch spokeswoman Kim Link dismissed the concerns that mining activity is imminent.
“We are not currently conducting any mining-related activities in the area in question,” she wrote in an email, “and we have no immediate plans to do so.”
I am also pretty sure Arch Coal is not open on Sundays
Occupy Brookings! I was proud to march through Brookings Hall, the Pink Castle, once again, with many students and Occupiers. We marched right past Chancellor Wrighton’s office and delivered a letter to his assistant, the honorable Dr. Rob Wild, who asked us “Do you have a petition?” (next time for sure), and said “I see a few students,” an uncalled for remark because there were MANY wash u students and who cares about that anyway? We are all Occupiers together. When he said he saw a few students I raised my hand and he said, “Oh, Professor Bauer. I am sorry if I have misrepresented anybody.” After that he was scrupulously polite, though he was observed to lock his office door, as if we might just sit in (I did not see this but others did). As I walked by I extended my hand and he shook it politely and asked how I was doing, by my first name. I told him I am doing fine. That is the diplomatic thing to say, but of course he and I and everybody knows I could be doing A LOT BETTER if I were PAID a LIVING WAGE as a LECTURER once again, under a REFORMED Lecturer’s Policy, with Fairer Deals and even Collective Bargaining for Adjuncts, all I ever wanted. It’s so simple, why does nobody get it?
Lecturer Dr. Jerome Bauer
Initiative for Lecturer’s Policy Reform and Fairer Deals for Adjuncts
Please see The Case for Lecturer’s Policy Reform, 2011–, http://www.facebook.com/notes/jerome-bauer/the-case-for-lecturers-policy-reform-and-fairer-deals-for-adjuncts-2011/10150652910679829
No doubt they have already drafted their formal letter of invitation to occupy one of their offices as honored guests, as they did in 2005. They need us to give them the courage and political cover to do what they know must be done. Most of them are very decent and honorable and please let’s not forget that. They are on our side, or will be when the time comes. I am very glad we are keeping our protests good humored, civil, and as polite as angry folk can be.
“No doubt they have already drafted their formal letter of invitation to occupy one of their offices as honored guests, as they did in 2005. They need us to give them the courage and political cover to do what they know must be done. Most of them are very decent and honorable and please let’s not forget that. They are on our side, or will be when the time comes. I am very glad we are keeping our protests good humored, civil, and as polite as angry folk can be.”
Seriously, the 2005 Living Wage Sit-In participants were invited into the Admissions Office as guests of the University, a brilliant way of handling the situation that everybody knew was coming. The University very wisely chose the late Dean Jim McLeod and Justin Carroll to negotiate with the students (though they insisted that it not be called negotiation for legal reasons). We only became trespassers when the Board of Trustees ordered us all out, after having threatened to dock the pay of all our faculty supporters (this was reported in Student Life). 480 people turned out on very short notice to prevent this from happening, and to give our Chancellor Wrighton political cover to let us remain. Had we been few, we would have been arrested and he probably would have lost his job (because other Chancellors in a similar position had lost their jobs when their alumni objected to rough treatment of student demonstrators). Because we were many, he remained in office and was given credit for persuading the Trustees to be lenient in the 2007 Post-Dispatch article naming him Man of the Year. When the Assistant Vice Chancellor asked to see our petition, I don’t think his question was rhetorical. I think he really wanted to see a long list of student and alumni and faculty names. Can I put my name on that list? Where do I fit?
Why are all my comments now held so long for moderation? You posted my impostor right away. I’m just asking…
The Real Jerome Bauer
–Initiative for Lecturer’s Policy Reform and Fairer Deals for Adjuncts
–Who has never, and never will, post anonymously or pseudonymously, except under this, my transparent pseudonym, shevek
–Whose pre-2008 Student Life op-eds and letters are republished to my Associated Content blogsite, Shevek Nagarjuna Kundakunda, with the formal permission and blessing of the Student Life Editorial Board, Spring 2008: http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/129720/shevek_nagarjuna_kundakunda.html
–Who lends you his name: “i lend you my name: anonymous politics can work, but complete personal transparency is now necessary”: http://voices.yahoo.com/i-lend-name-anonymous-politics-work-1293305.html?cat=4
you’re crazy
Hah! No doubt an agent of the administration, the CIA, Blackwater, or Monsanto (or perhaps some combination of the above?) trying to discredit me.
We are the 99%! We will have lecturer reform!
Still makes you crazy.
“Whoever it was, they didn’t swing at you very long. The coal bin needed filling” said a friend, about the impostor above.
Agreed. Seriously, ALL of his comments are crazy.
Jerome Bauer is a lucid, articulate person who writes with more clarity than most. You can call him crazy, but it will not make it true. Frustrated? Definitely. Crazy? Definitely not. And infinitely more patient than you, who have most certainly not taken the time to actually read and understand his statements.
To “A West Virginian” Perhaps West Virginia is poor because out-of-state corporations operate all the mines and all the money from W. Va.’s natural resources flow out of state?
Also the supreme arrogance, ignorance and privilege espoused in the statement “sometimes the environment needs to be sacrificed for humans to prosper” should disgust any rational human being.
West Virginia is one of America’s poorest states. Their economy, such as it is, relies on two things: tourism and coal mining. What environmentalists don’t understand is that sometimes, the environment needs to be sacrificed for humans to prosper. If you limit the activities of coal companies in West Virginia, you make life harder for a population.
But humans living in West Virginia mining areas are NOT prospering because of the wide-reaching damages of mountaintop removal mining, a widespread method of extracting coal. In many areas, their water has been rendered completely undrinkable, the air is polluted with airborne toxins, cancer rates and birth defect rates are spiking, and they are absolutely not getting jobs— coal mining employment has only plummeted over the last half-century, and mountaintop removal is a mechanized process relying on more machines than people. It’s cheap, it’s quick, it’s profitable for a large company, but it’s disastrous for local populations.
There are many jobs to be created in the area in restoration, conservation, and sustainable energy infrastructure building. That is, if you are willing to think of Appalachia as more than just “tourism and coal mining.”
Who would pay for these jobs in “restoration, conservation, and sustainable energy infrastructure building?” The state government that WITH the income it gets from coal couldn’t afford it anyway? I’m all for bringing in new businesses to get West Viginia off its coal dependence, but you’re being overly-idealistic and impractical.
Right… that is why WV is not prospering….. It has nothing to do with; the lower education level, lack of major cities, lack of major transportation hubs, sparsely populated, or a suppressed industrial sector. No, it has nothing to do with any of those.
Also well represented were Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, Occupy St Louis, and Occupy Wash U.
One of my Occupier friends lent me the sign in your photo that reads “We Only Get One Earth.” Before we boarded the bus to take us to Arch Coal HQ, we traded signs. He lent me one a bit more on message for me personally, as he knew: “Another House the Banksters Stole.” SOLIDARITY! An injustice to one is an injustice to all.