West Virginia: The Guardians of the Mountain

il manifesto, 18.6.2011

The guardians OF THE MOUNTAIN
A march to the place where in 1921 ten thousand armed miners challenged the militias of the mining companies. That today, with their destructive practices, they have declared war on the air, the land and the people who live

there Chief Logan Park, in West Virginia, is one of the many beautiful nature parks that dot Appalachia. It is dedicated to an Indian chief, Logan, who went down in history for the eloquent speech, praised by Thomas Jefferson, that he made to mourn the massacre of his family and his tribe by the newborn United States at the end of the 1700s. First they slaughter them, and then they dedicate parks and football teams to them. There’s a statue of Logan in the park, but nothing is written on it.
I arrive at dusk after an adventurous journey (American airlines, like so much infrastructure in this country, are falling apart). There are already about 30 tents, and Mike and Carrie Klein welcome me with a new song they learned a few days ago in Harlan, Kentucky: “Here in Harlan you have two options, either you grow marijuana at the bottom of the valleys or you go down to the mine where your tears turn to mud.” They are joined on guitar by a young woman who will later tell us about the time when she was expelled from the school dance because she had gone there with her girlfriend instead of a boy.
We are here because the next morning we will join hundreds of other people for a demonstration at the top of Blair Mountain, the peak that separates Mingo and Logan counties. It was here in 1921 that ten thousand armed miners clashed with the private armies of the mining companies that held Logan County under the heel of absolute feudal rule. It was the most dramatic social conflict in U.S. history since the Civil War, ignored by history books and public memory. The battle was settled by the intervention of private planes that bombed the miners – the only bombing that had taken place on U.S. soil before 9/11. The fledgling U.S. Air Force also sent planes ready to bomb their own citizens, but they did not arrive in time.
In recent days, two hundred people from all over the United States have retraced the miners’ march of 1921. It wasn’t just about commemorating those events and demanding union rights, which were under attack in much of the United States. The historical memory was intertwined with a current and future urgency: a mining company obtained permission to blow up the top of Blair Mountain to extract the coal underneath. It is a practice called mountain top removal, and which has already destroyed 500 mountains and poisoned 400 kilometers of rivers in West Virginia alone, turning an area equal to that of an average Italian region into desert and debris.
In the evenings at the campsite they ask me to say a few words – maybe because I’m the one who comes from the furthest away. He told him about Giacomo Diana and Nicola Aiello, Italian veterans of the First World War, who marched with the Blair miners in 1921. And I remind him of the words of my friend Annie Napier: “God has given us water, land, air and trees, and now we have to fight not to let them destroy us.” That’s what we’re here for. It’s the eve of the referendum on water in Italy, I don’t I’ll be there to vote, but the fight here is the same. Then a girl who knows me because she had to study one of my books for an exam saves me from sleeping in the open by going to sleep with two friends and leaving me her tent.
We gather the next morning in the meadow at the foot of Blair Mountain, surrounded by a green forest and lapped by streams with brown water due to the debris of the mines. The only way to get there is through a field owned by a mining company. Be careful not to put your feet off the path, they warn us: if you touch the grass, you will be arrested for trespassing. We are greeted by a sign reading “Friends of coal”: mining companies distribute them by the thousands, and many people, convinced that their survival depends on the interests of the companies, wave them in the faces of the demonstrators. As if being a friend of coal has to mean being an enemy of the earth, the air and the water.
Those who have walked the miners’ route so far say that most of the people along the road applauded them, thanked them, handed them bottles of water. But when they arrived at the campsites they had booked along the way, they rejected them: the majority are against the destruction of the mountains, but no one has the courage to stand against the companies that control the economy, politics, the police, the courts of this state.
Under a sun that splits the stones, in the apparent confusion of hundreds of signs, T-shirts with slogans, mobile groups, small groups crouched with guitars, harmonicas and banjos, an organization that I would call military if it were not for the fact that there is no discipline but sharing. We gather in a circle for training on non-violent practices: since the summit of Blair Mountain is also private property, some decide that they will risk arrest by entering it, while most will stop outside the fence, at the top of the mountain. There is a canteen, edible and plentiful; the medical service with doctors and nurses; legal support lawyers; the lost and found service (where miraculously, I will later find the glasses that I had lost in the midst of all that chaos); the mobile toilets that come and go depending on the movements of the crowd.
He met Charlen Keeney, great-granddaughter of Frank Keeney, leader of the 1921 march. “I didn’t know anything about my great-grandfather,” he says. My parents were ashamed of him, because he had been in prison, convicted of high treason and all kinds of crimes. Then, as I grew up, the people who knew who I was would come and shake my hand, tell me that they knew Frank, that they had been with him… And I realized that I should be proud of it.” He opened the assembly: “They call us environmentalists, but we are not here to defend only a few rare species of salamander, but to save a precious and rich natural environment, and to save the lives of people threatened by explosions, debris and pollution. They say we have to destroy the mountains because America needs energy and because jobs are being created; But since it began, we have lost tens of thousands of jobs, and there would be many more if we looked for a sustainable economy and alternative sources.” Work and the environment are allies, here and today. Signs and banners of the sectionsThe unions mingle with those with the names of the destroyed mountains and the flags of the Mountain Keepers and the River Keepers, the guardians of the mountains and the waters. People of all ages, but especially young people.
A local musician updates Bob Dylan’s Maggie’s Farm, denouncing Massey, the company responsible for the disaster a few months ago that killed 28 miners, in constant violation of safety regulations and never seriously punished: I ain’t going to work in Massey’s mine no more, I don’t work in the Massey mine anymore. Then Robert Kennedy Jr., environmental lawyer, son of Robert and grandson of John Kennedy, speaks. He remembers that if it weren’t for the West Virginia miners’ vote, his uncle would never have been president, and that his father Robert was at home here. He makes the most radical intervention of all: “What is at stake here is democracy. Because when citizens have no way of making themselves heard by the institutions, when the big companies control the government, there is only one name for it: fascism.” Nashville star Kathy Mattea closes: They’ll never turn us back. Maybe it’s not true that all country music is right-wing. And I ran out of batteries in the recorder.
Then we set off, strictly and cheerfully in a line of three, flanked by the security service that chants: “Stay on the road, don’t touch the grass…”. A dozen police cars flank the procession, every now and then they force you to walk in single file so as not to clutter the road, they intimidate, but the procession goes on. I can’t make it to the top, I twisted my foot climbing up an escarpment and immediately I am surrounded by three caring nurses who are so happy to be helpful that I want to tell them that I have nothing and I can go back to the base on my own.
At the base camp we follow the procession from radios and mobile phones. There are tense moments, but in the end they don’t arrest anyone. Two hours pass before the police lift the blockade on the road and everyone goes back. The return journey, with delays and cancelled flights, is worse than the outward journey.
A film about mountaintop removal, The Last Mountain, is currently being shown in New York. It’s worth seeing at least the trailer on youtube: it’s worse than the bombings, it looks like Iraq, it looks like the moon. It is the war against the land, the air, the water, the trees, and the people who live there. Perhaps, a thousand people who climbed Blair Mountain will not be enough to stop this massacre and remind all of America of the miners of 1921. But, as Gianni Bosio said and as Ivan Della Mea sang, today we have done something.

ALESANDRO PORTELI | 7:32 AM