Stripping Massey: 81-year-old Paratrooper Leads Blockade, Court Hears $85 Million Suit

Big Coal giant and mountaintop removal king Massey Energy is getting strip-mined of its "Friends of America" rhetoric, and charged for sponsoring job-taking, water-polluting and land-destroying operations.

Hours after the West Virginia state Supreme Court considered new arguments in a $85 million damage suit brought against Massey Energy, 81-year-old paratrooper-trained veteran and Christian activist Roland Micklem led a blockade of the road to Massey Energy's regional headquarters in Boone County, West Virginia this morning.

Update: The four protesters have been arrested, according to news reports.

This past Labor Day, Kentucky-born Massey CEO Don Blankenship spent millions of dollars on a concert and rally in Holden, West Virginia, and issued a bizarre diatribe against corporate America, the Obama administration, climate change scientists, and even called corporate giant Caterpillar "un-American."

Micklem said:

I am exercising a spiritual obligation as a steward of Creation. It was not God's intent that these mountains be destroyed to enhance the wealth of a few individuals. ... This should not be solely a young person's campaign. Now that they have provided the example and inspiration, we seniors need to make a statement with our own actions and share the risks that are part of this ongoing effort to stop the obliteration of West Virginia's mountains.

As part of an extraordinary and amazingly creative coalfield uprising campaign this year that has included numerous blockades of devastating mountaintop removal and dangerous coal sludge impoundment sites, school protests, sit-ins of state agencies, and most recently a weeklong tree-sit action that halted reckless Massey Energy blasting at a mountaintop removal site in the Coal River Valley, Micklem was joined by James McGuinness, 53, Joseph Hamsher, 22, and Fred Williamson, 75.

Blocking traffic and holding up signs that read, "Stop Blowing up America," and "Protect God's Creation," Micklem is a native of Richmond, VA, where Massey Energy has its national headquarters.

Massey Energy's brutal attacks on coalfield residents and the judicial system have drawn national criticism. In a stinging editorial last spring, the New York Times held up Massey's judicial corruption as a bellwether for the nation: Justice Not For Sale. The Times wrote:

The case involves a brazen -- and so far successful -- attempt by the chief executive of a large coal company to overturn a major damage award against his firm. A West Virginia jury decided that the coal company, Massey Energy, had fraudulently driven a small competitor, the Harman Mining Corporation, into bankruptcy proceedings. Massey's chief executive, Don Blankenship, decided to appeal. But before that, he spent an extraordinary $3 million to help elect a member of West Virginia's State Supreme Court, Brent Benjamin.

"There were many true 'friends of America' at their Labor Day rally, but not a single one could be found on stage," said Andrew Munn of Climate Ground Zero, continuing:

'Friends of America' are people who strive to make our land and lives better through their work, including those who commit acts of non-violent civil disobedience for the common good. Don Blankenship and men of his ilk are the fiends of America who profit from the violation of our rights of organized labor, clean air, clean water, health and the pursuit of happiness. Mountaintop removal and Massey Energy violate all of those rights, and we intend to take them back.

In Boone County, coalfield residents filed another suit against Massey this spring for contaminating their water supply. The suit charged that through Massey's "mining operations, the plaintiff's water was contaminated, thereby injuring them, their property and also resulting in and/or contributing to their deaths."

As Charleston Gazette reporter Paul Nyden wrote last week, Massey's actions against Caperton put 126 coal miners and 28 office workers out of a job. Nyden reported:

Hugh Caperton, who owned Harman Mining, said, "We have been fighting for 12 years to get these people's benefits restored. That has been the main focus of this fight -- to restore benefits to these miners and to pay off our vendors, who were mostly small mom-and-pop operations.

We hope to right the wrongs against Harman and its employees by [Massey Energy CEO] Don Blankenship and Massey.

Another miner who lost his job, Larry Cox of Vansant, Va., says the community is still reeling from Harman's closure:

Massey shut the whole company down when they bought United Coal Co. and took away our contract. That shut us down and put us out of work.

We couldn't find any coal mining jobs, so I went back to school and got electrical and plumbing papers. I got handyman jobs, but nothing permanent.

Former miner Louie O'Quinn, 62, had worked at Harman 25 years when the mine shut down, most of the time on underground belts hauling coal up to the surface.

"Everybody wanted to keep working at the mine. When you lose your job, it throws you into a scary world of unemployment."

For more information, see: Climate Ground Zero.

Comments

[bowebb]

Thank you Roland, thank you Jeff. There are only two types of people who support mountaintop removal; Deceptors and Suckers.

[RevBookburn]

100% agreement.

[MegonMainSt]



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[HillBillyRealist]

Jeff,

You have a wonderful forum that can do much good. Please work on some the real issues that are holding us back. Lack of economic diversity due to insufficient infrastructure, drugs, sewerage, relocation of communities that are locked into narrow valleys, and the aging population. Coal like all heavy industry has become increasing mechanized requiring fewer workers. We do not have options for other employment with same salary and benefits. That what we need. Not people trying to take away that which is supporting us. It's bad enough when we cut off our own noses despite our faces its tragic when other do it to us despite our wishes.

[HillBillyRealist]

Do you ever do any investigation? "Massey Energy's brutal attacks on coalfield residents and the judicial system have drawn national criticism.­" Massey along with the other coal corporations have provided the only economic support the Appalachia has gotten in the last several decades. NO ONE gives a hoot what happens to us. We have had several years of the heaviest rains in history. Massey, Alpha, Consol, Arch and others sent out their equipment and their crews to help. The State let contracts.­...some of which have yet to be awarded. This is Appalachia we have timber, coal and gas. That is what we have. We do not have roads and the infrastructure to attract another kind of industry. So we do what we have to survive. How dare you sit in front of your computer and crack out this c____ without evening verifying your information. We have environmental problems - they are sanitary sews and stream encroachment. Both related to the topography. We can't get support from the rest of the country to install sewer lines and the land does not support the septic systems we need. There is pollution in the streams - its human sewage. Streams have to be able to move. We have to build houses. The only place we have is the flood plains near the streams. We need flat land to build on out of the flood plains so the stream can return to their natural state. Where are you on these issues?

[Dave Cooper - Huffpost Blogger]

Interesting that CEO Blankenship called Caterpillar Corp. "unAmerica­n." I hope that he stops buying any new equipment from Caterpillar.

In West Virginia, Walker CAT (affiliate/dealer of Caterpillar equipment to mining companies) has been a strong supporter of mountaintop removal coal mining, and has even sponsored all the billboards reading "Coal Keeps the Lights On" and "Clean, Carbon-Neutral Coal"

For more on Walker CAT's dirty, lying "Yes, Coal" campaign, go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWejgip3_Is