I'm a technician and a strategist. It is rare that I set that skill set aside and dust off my quill to enter the space that so many others occupy so elegantly and so passionately. This week, I feel compelled to take that step.
I am lucky enough to work with a great group of people who work on a range of issues from ocean acidification to toxics reform. No other issue has touched me, or meant more to me though, than the fight to end mountaintop removal. Perhaps it is because my boss is so passionate about it, sometimes writing 3 blog posts a day. Or perhaps it is because I stood on the edge of Kayford Mountain and looked down on the machines as they retreated to safety before a blast.
It is more likely that it means so much to me because I have been in the homes of the people living in the shadow of big coal, their Kitchen floors warped from the seismic blasts, their water made flammable, and their gardens blackened with coal dust from the passing trucks that feed this nations seemingly insatiable hunger for electricity. This is some video from that trip.
A few months ago, I attended Netroots Nation and met some of my heroes who fight on the front lines of the MTR battle every day. Jeff Biggers, Stephanie Pistello, Lorelei Scarbro and Bob Kincaid. I was moved to tears by their presentation, and swore to come back to write more often about MTR. But as is often the case with those of us who are busy with the work of helping others have their voice heard, I never got around to doing it.
This week, Massey Energy started blasting apart Coal River Mountain, and instead of getting sad, I got pissed off. I started thinking again about those people I visited, about the beauty of the land, and about something that came to me when I listened to Bob Kincaid tell his story. Bob told of nine generations of his family being blasted to bits and pushed into the valleys as "fill"...into the waters that feed one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet. I remembered this poem by my favorite poet Etheridge Knight. Knight was a poet after the civil rights struggles of the 1960's so he missed the fight, but was left with the aftermath that comes just before the heady memories of an old war. What will Bob's grandchildren say when the write about the war against Massey and big coal?
I don't write this Diary with any answers, just a little outrage, a little embarassment that I don't do more every day, and with some desire to share something that touched me.
You should watch all of this video if you can, but if you only have a few minutes, skip to the 44 minute mark to hear Bob speak.
[Please note blip.tv seems to be having issues feeding up video at the moment 12am 10/28, and there is no YouTube version.]
http://netrootsnation.org/...
Here is the poem from Etheridge Knight, it is called The Bones of My Father
1
There are no dry bones
here in this valley. The skull
of my father grins
at the Mississippi moon
from the bottom
of the Tallahatchie,
the bones of my father
are buried in the mud
of these creeks and brooks that twist
and flow their secrets to the sea.
but the wind sings to me
here the sun speaks to me
of the dry bones of my father.
2
There are no dry bones
in the northern valleys, in the Harlem alleys
young / black / men with knees bent
nod on the stoops of the tenements
and dream
of the dry bones of my father.
And young white longhairs who flee
their homes, and bend their minds
and sing their songs of brotherhood
and no more wars are searching for
my father’s bones.
3
There are no dry bones here.
We hide from the sun.
No more do we take the long straight strides.
Our steps have been shaped by the cages
that kept us. We glide sideways
like crabs across the sand.
We perch on green lilies, we search
beneath white rocks...
THERE ARE NO DRY BONES HERE
The skull of my father
grins at the Mississippi moon
from the bottom
of the Tallahatchie.