The 'most powerful panel' in the history of Netroots Nation

by: Carnacki

Tue Aug 18, 2009 at 08:34:34 AM EDT

The panel that struck me most profoundly, perhaps more than any I have encountered in four years of attending these conventions, was on Saturday.  "Green Begins in Appalachia: Ending Mountain Removal" moved those who attended greatly.  It began with Jeff Biggers telling us why he did not want to use the microphone, because if you think about it the wire powering it connects with the destruction of mountains in Appalachia, in West Virginia, Kentucky, and as I have seen for myself Virginia.  Lorelie Scarbro told us how communities are being destroyed, and how those in the  Coal River Valley are trying to use the ridges for wind power rather than destroying the ridges to remove the coal underneath, in the process burying even more streams and poisoning even more wells.    Stephanie Pistello talked about a one sentence law that could stop mountaintop removal by restoring a definition of fill that was changed under the Bush administration - and reminded us that the man most responsible for that change, former mining executive Stephen Griles, is now in a federal penitentiary.  

The one who moved me most was Bob Kincaid.  He started by telling us about ancestors who arrived in his neck of the woods from Scotland and Ireland in the 1700s.  He then told us about grandchildren, a 2 year old in a playpen, and a 1 year old in the crib, the 11th generation of his family in that area.  He wonders if there will be a twelfth.  He wondered if his people were not considered Americans, because you don't do this to your fellow citizens.  

As I listened, I wondered if the mining executives and their political supporters might consider the loss of these communities and the habitat and the mountains as collateral damage, and I said to someone with whom I spoke later that collateral damage is a cleaned up synonym for atrocity.   That was one of the nicer words I could use -  crimes against humanity, crimes against nature and other similar thoughts occurred to me.