| by blonde moment
A full carload of Eastern Panhandle residents made our way to Richmond yesterday, veeerrrry early in the morning, to join the UMWA's demonstration against Massey Energy and its criminal CEO, Don Blankenship.
It would be fair to call the six of us environmentalists, so it was a case of strange bedfellows - we are all opponents of the PATH power line, in part because it would lock in coal for the next 50 or 60 years, yet here we were, arm in arm with coal miners, chanting "Don must go!" and "We are - UNION" as loudly as everyone else.
It was just a miserable day, weather-wise, very cold and windy, with a few sputters of rain. We assembled in Monroe Park, about five blocks from the Jefferson Hotel, and listened to UMWA speakers, highlighted by Cecil Roberts (who apologized for his incipient laryngitis, but didn't let it stop him from a real stemwinder of a speech).
Right on time at 8:30, Roberts and other union leaders picked up a banner and led the crowd to the sidewalk opposite the Jefferson Hotel. There was a pretty sizeable police presence, including cops on horseback.
We had a pretty sizeable crowd of our own. I saw several big tour buses that carried miners and supporters from far away - there were folks from Wheeling and Huntington and Beckley, not to mention Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana (and that's just based on the folks I directly talked with). I heard crowd estimates of between 2,000 and 3,000 people, and I'd say that was about right.
The troops in an army never quite know what's going on, I've read - their horizon is pretty much limited to whichever battlefield they're on. In the same way, we never knew quite what was happening inside the hotel. We simply stood on the sidewalk for almost three hours and chanted.
It wasn't until I got home last night and looked at news coverage (more on that in a minute) that I learned about the two activists that managed to get inside the hotel and unfurl the banner demanding that Blankenship be held accountable. Bravo!
There were reporters everywhere. I saw TV trucks from affiliates in Richmond, Charleston and Washington, and there appeared to be a dozen print reporters walking around and interviewing folks.
I mention this because I am pretty disappointed at the overall coverage. There was no mention of it on at least two of the three networks' news broadcasts last night, nothing on any of the MSNBC talking heads' shows (Ed, where was your outrage?), nothing on the hour of NPR we listened to on the way home.
I realize that between the ongoing oil-gush crisis in the Gulf and hot primary races there was plenty of news for them to cover. But I was afraid of this - all the anger at Massey around the country after 29 miners DIED has been dissipated. The general public's (and media's) short attention span hurts.
I'll update this later today when I get pictures from our "official" photographer (and presuming I can figure out how to embed them). |
