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(With Climate Ground Zero tree sitters back in the news, this is a good time to revisit how the last tree sit went. Here's an exclusive interview that Heath Harrison did with Laura Steepleton. There's also an essential video with two of the contractor security guards that provides a real sense of how Blankenship was saying one thing in public while doing another thing in private. - promoted by Clem Guttata)
by heath_harrison
This is the first installment in a series of interviews planned on the topic of mountaintop removal.
On Aug. 31, Laura Steepleton and Nick Stocks, activists with environmental group Climate Ground Zero, were arrested following a tree-sit at Massey Energy's Edward mine, a mountaintop removal mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia.
The two spent six days in platforms 90 feet from the ground in an effort to halt the blasting endangering the nearby community of Petry Bottom. In addition to drawing national attention to the destructive effects of mountaintop removal, the protesters demanded Massey pay heath care and home repair costs for residents affected by the blasting.
The protest was part a larger campaign of civil disobedience and direct action events occurring in Appalachia, as local and national pressure to end mountaintop removal has grown.
The following is an excerpt of a conversation I had with Steepleton a few weeks after her release (adapted for print):
Q - How long did you originally intend to remain in the tree?
L.S. - I intended to stay until I was out of food and water.
Nick had to be back home by the 1st, so he made plans to get down by Monday. We had a rope connecting both the trees, called a traverse, and I went over the night before and talked to him. I told him I was fine to be up there by myself. I took all of his extra water and food, which left me with enough for a week.
My plan was to be up there for as long as possible. Our support had been arrested already, so I knew there was no chance of resupply.
After Nick got down Monday morning, they upped the harassment - which I totally expected -and brought the chainsaws out and put them at the bottom of the tree.
I kind of turned it into a game whenever they would do some sort of harassment. The first couple of nights, they would be banging on buckets - and whatever they could bang on. I just turned it into entertainment. We had a drum circle, just to show them it wasn't going to bother me.
On Monday, they brought these obnoxious sirens out, and that lasted for a couple of hours. By then, Sergeant Smith had already come out and arrested Nick and left.
They realized the sirens weren't affecting me, so two loggers walked up on the berm. One miner kept saying, "They're going to come down and start chopping down trees."
I said, " You're not really going to do that you wouldn't endanger me like that."
And they were like, 'That's what you think.'
So I said, "Well, if the state trooper was here, you couldn't do this."
And they made the comment, "Oh, we know the trooper's not
here right now and he's not on his way. We came in through the back entrance and Massey's ordered us to be here. It's their property we can do what we want."
Both of the loggers had come down and most of the security had gone up to the berm out of the way. One logger started spiking up the tree that Nick was in.
At that point, I thought I needed to get out onto the traverse. That way, he couldn't cut that tree down, because I would be on the rope connecting the two trees.
I went to do that and, as I was setting it up, a miner said, "You better hurry up and cut that line, or she's going to get out on that line."
He looked at me and said, "I don't care if she's on that line. She's got a harness on. She's not going to fall."
It's true I wouldn't have fallen. I would've swung a little bit. Being that the line is a dynamic rope and stretched quite a bit, it probably would have snapped and then hit the tree.
At that point, I thought, "Well, maybe this guy's not bluffing. If I go out on this rope, he's going to cut it and not care if I swing a little bit."
And, at that point, trees started coming down around me, so I just said, "OK, I'll get down.
Q - Did you have any interaction with any major Massey officials or objectives during your time there?
L.S. - No, there was a Massey helicopter that flew over on the first day and the last day. I was told - but I still haven't verified it - that [Massey CEO] Don Blankenship was in the helicopter the last day.
It wouldn't surprise me that he would want to be there to see all the different tactics they were employing when I was the only one up there, and that he'd want to see trees falling down beside me.
Q - Do you think Blankenship wanted to have you down before his big Labor Day bash?
L.S. - Probably. The one thing I definitely wanted was to still be in that tree for that big Labor Day bash.
I think that 's why they were stepping it up. He knew he had to go and do this.
We watched it live on Internet, and he mentioned "the crazy enviro-nuts" that strap themselves to machines and hang out in trees - and how we're the real threats to America and giving more jobs to China, which is increasing pollution.
Q - What sort of reaction have you received after getting back?
L.S. - It's really great how it's drawn a lot of local support. We've had a lot of locals come out because of it. They were really excited by the fact that we were actually able to hold ground and stop them for a week. It's been creating more locals to speak out, which is great.
And those two security guards coming out and doing that interview - that made me really, really happy. I couldn't believe that amount of support. Those guys were my heroes.
More people walked off the job because they were getting overworked. They were pulling 17-hour shifts and not getting briefed on what was going on until they got there.
A lot of them lived two hours away, so they'd get on these 17-hour shifts and had to be back in six hours. A lot of them didn't even have time to go home. They were pulling over on the side of the road, sleeping and coming back.
Q - What was the interaction like between you and the Massey employees?
L.S. - I had conversations with miners every night. They'd go on break around two in the morning and come out and harass us.
The first night, I came out after they kept saying, "We know you're awake."
So I pulled over my tarp and said, "I'm here. Let's have a conversation."
It was kind of funny, because for a couple minutes there was dead silence. They couldn't say the nasty things to my face, that they were saying when I had the tarp pulled in front of me. But then it eventually stepped up.
By the third night, I was actually able to have somewhat of a conversation.
They kept mentioning how their side of the story never gets told, and how we're just full of propaganda and get all of this media attention.
At that point, I asked, "OK, what is your story? I am talking to media. What do you want to say? Just let me know. "
Q - And how did they respond to that?
L.S. - Basically their response was, "There is nothing here but coal. You are taking away our jobs by doing this and causing our kids to not have food on their plates."
My response to them was, "It's going to take time and, believe it or not, I don't want to come in and take your jobs way from you. I don't want to see a lot of people laid off."
I asked, "Don't you want a safer future for your children - a healthy future and to be able to stay in West Virginia? And what are you going to do anyway in 20 years when there's no more coal left?"
Q- Was it hard to discuss a long-time scenario with them?
L.S. - That was totally it. Their response is, " By them I'll be retired." I think the mentality is that they'll be able to send their kids somewhere else to have a better future.
But some of them did ask, "Where are these jobs? We would be willing to transfer, but they're not here. "
That's the frustrating part. I can't sit there and say, "If there were windmills, you could go right to work." It's not going to happen overnight, with a great windmill farm up on Coal River Mountain.
You could still have jobs. There's tons of real reclamation that could be done on these mountains. If mountaintop removal ended tomorrow, you've still got all of the heavy machinery. Let's start actually doing a better job reclaiming.
But where does that funding come from? It should come from the coal companies, in my opinion. Massey's making a ton of money. They should be able to spend a couple million dollars in actual reclamation.
They asked, "Do you think we should just live off of welfare?" I think they should get government should support them until there's a transition into different jobs here.
And I let them know that there people working on that. We're not just a bunch of people getting arrested. There are other people here doing so many things to help bring different forms of economy and alternative energy into this area.
I didn't make a lot of leeway. It was kind of like talking to a brick wall, for the most part. In their mind, Massey treats them fine.
They're making 20-something dollars an hour, and that's the best paying job you can get in this area, just coming out of high school.
They've been fed a bunch of information from their side, which they believe to be legit. I think, even if they don't believe it, they just want to believe it so bad.
Q - It's going to require such a paradigm shift in this state, from the political leaders - and everyone - to change this mentality.
They're just not thinking long-term about any of this stuff.
L.S. - And that's what I kept trying to tell them. I don't hate you I want to have a conversation with you. I want you to help end this, too. And help find yourselves better jobs, and make it so your children can stay in West Virginia and enjoy this beautiful place.
The company doesn't care about them. I'm not pro-coal in any way, but you if want to talk job loss, look at the jobs that were lost - 80,000 jobs - when they started to do mountaintop removal.
It only takes about 25 to 30 people for a mountaintop removal site, site because of all the heavy machinery - so more profit for the company; they use more machines and less people.
That cut a lot of jobs when they shipped it over to mountaintop removal from underground mining.
Q - In addition to civil disobedience and direct action, what sort of work have you been doing as part of your community organizing?
L.S. - I've been photo documenting the damages to people's homes, talking to them about how the blasting has impacted them. They've been blasting this area for the past three or four years, but it's really moved on top of this community in the past year.
We have this great community that's addressing this problem from all different kinds of angles - every legal route from lobbying, writing letters and talking with community members and then direct civil disobedience action.
Climate Ground Zero's campaign is ongoing. For more information on how to get involved and what you can do to help, visit www.climategroundzero.com.
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