March on Blair Mountain - Day 4

There is a war going on in the coal-fields of southern West Virginia. We can feel it in the dichotomy of support and anger the residents of Boone County have given us. As we have walked along these windy and often quiet roads, the cars that have passed have often been full of people quietly giving us a thumbs-up, or thanking us for doing this. By my estimation, these folks have outnumbered those on the other side at least two-to-one, which has surprised all of us. While many of the homes have the near requisite “Friends of Coal” signs in the yards, there are many that have signs of support – knowing that there outward displays will likely bring quick ire and possibly more from their neighbors. For this we are extremely thankful, as we know it is extremely difficult to show any level of support for this march at all, and thus most of those who wish MTR.

Today we had an especially brave woman host us for lunch in her back yard – which we learned was the very same spot where the marching miners stopped for a meal 90 years ago, hosted by this woman’s forebears. And given the attitudes of her neighbors and the reception we have received in general this was a courageous step taken by a woman who cherishes her family’s role in creating our local history.

You see, despite the gracious nature of the community on the most part, there remains a hidden power fighting us. The Mayor of Madison may have set aside fresh water for us on a hot day, for which were very thankful, but no none in his county would suffer us on their land that night. We have not yet had a camp-ground or farm willing to allow us to camp. We have had first and second options for each night cancel on us at the last minute, and we recognize the extreme pressure the coal operators have placed on them to not work with us. And this is a signal that the fight will not end this Saturday, when we march up Blair Mountain and demand it be placed once again on the National Register of Historic Places. This is a fight for the communities of southern WV, for the space to create a clean economy with local, sustainable jobs. And for the jobs that will remain in the mines to be safe, and union, and not requiring the tops of our dear ancient mountains to be leveled, ruining our water and air. This is a fight that has been waged since the first commercial mines opened up in these hills. It got bloody 90 years ago, and we march to preserve that history for all generations to come. And just as importantly, we march to preserve our communities so that there ARE generations to come in these towns.

I pray for the day that the quiet souls in these towns who wish they could march with us will find the grace from God to rise up and demand a better way of life for themselves, as some are doing today. I know that day is coming, and a brighter future is on the horizon for our southern coal fields.

The March on Blair Mountain

The Road to Blair Mountain, Boone County, West Virginia – one of the many places in this country where justice seems to go to die.

After weeks of negotiated agreements, last night the side of the law came down against the side of right and morality when the Boone County commissioner forced approximately 300 participants in the March on Blair Mountain off of the county land at John Slack Park. This happened around 9:30pm, after the camp had been pitched for hours, dinner was still being served, and many marchers were looking to bed down for the night after an 11 mile march.

I hold no anger at the men in drill sergeant hats and spiffy tight uniforms for forcing us to find somewhere else to sleep. I know they were only following orders. Many of them may hold a misunderstanding of what we are trying to accomplish on the march. We are not out to completely end our nation’s addiction to coal. What we are trying to do is make a stand against mountain top removal — the most destructive and apocalyptic form of coal mining ever devised — and preserve Blair Mountain as a symbol of the battles and struggles in people’s lives which have taken place in the name of this form of coal extraction. I am sure that there must have been at least a few officers who felt terrible about the orders they were asked to carry out.

You see, we are a good people here in the southern mountains of West Virginia. Lack of abundant opportunities has forced many of us to make terrible choices, between working on a mountaintop mine, or leaving the state for good. And for so many of these kind-hearted and hard working people, leaving just isn’t an option. Some rise up to fight that status quo, and many more get tugged along in the current, caught in the black, poisonous waters that flow down from the strip mines of coal field politics.
Despite the efforts of some behind the scenes powers, this march will go on. We are going to Blair, deep in the heart of Logan County, West Virginia. We are rising. And we will meet our fate there – not in Racine, not in Madison, not in Boone County.

And I look forward to the day when someone, like my dear brother-in-law, who was born in Madison, doesn’t have to make that choice to leave or stay, or to have to choose to obey the letter of the law and follow orders given by a shadow government owned by King Coal.

It's All About the Climb

I have a little button on my backpack: “I Heart Mountains” it says, with a beautiful vista of my Appalachian home, blue and gray ridges fading into the horizon. I spent countless weeks of my childhood summers in the mountains of West Virginia, fishing, hiking, playing camp games with other summer campers. The soft rolling slopes of Appalachia with her ancient green forests 300 million years old, speak to me wherever I am. I believe I have a deep-rooted Appalachian Soul.

I believe in climbing mountains. The big ones on the horizon, the huge monsters of rock that pulled Americans westward with slogans such as “Pike’s Peak or Bust.” I myself have climbed a few of the really tall ones, planted my small mental flag on the peaks of maybe eight or nine, and have stood on ranges around the world, from the American Rockies to the Peruvian Andes, the foothills of the Himalaya in Central Asia, to the glaciers of the Southern Alps in New Zealand. Each has its own challenges, its own history, and its own paths to the top. But it is the Appalachian song that plays in my heart.

The view from the top can be breathtaking but I believe in the serenity to be found at the top of a mountain. Those few moments when you can swear you can see the ocean, so far below, so many thousands of miles away. But this is not why I climb.

I believe in climbing mountains. I think that the climb itself is worth much more that the respite you get at the summit. So often, you approach a peak only to have to give up the climb, due to rain or lightning, to circumstances beyond your control. So you head back down, and resolve that one day you will try again.

But it’s not only physical mountains that we climb. During my year in Iraq in the US Army, the men of my unit climbed up a steep slope of impossible missions every day and every night. I don’t know if we ever reached the top of that peak, but we got better, got closer, on most days. Looking back, I am not even sure that we had a peak to reach even if we could have. And I guess that is one of the keys to what I believe.

Back home in West Virginia, we have a different climb ahead of us, not up the mountains we have so effectively neutralized, but up out of the cycle of poverty and economic malaise that has engulfed us for the better part of a century. Out of a past mired in violence and misunderstanding. I believe not in a city on a hill, but a people on a mountainside, struggling ever upward, eyes to the sky, and hands reaching back down to help those below.

And I believe that being from West Virginia, our nation’s Mountain State, we know how to climb.

(this post has been published by This I Believe... here)

An open letter to Senator Carte Goodwin

Dear Senator Goodwin,

I hope the heat in Washington hasn’t gotten to you yet. It is certainly a different climate than back in the cooler mountains of Appalachia. And of course, congratulations on being named the newest United States Senator from our great state, if only for a couple of months. Please don’t let that short timeline take away from the urgent responsibility that comes with the position. The next few months will be a quick, and tumultuous ride, not unlike braving the first ten miles of the Upper Gauley back home. Hard work, keeping your eye on the path ahead, and working as a team with those in the boat are the keys to surviving the hammering of the river’s class V rapids.

I am writing you because I am very concerned about the economic health of West Virginia. As you are well aware, there are many serious challenges facing our country today, and few of them are felt more acutely anywhere than back in the Mountain State. Job loss, continued poverty, debates on how to fight the climate crisis so we can remain a prosperous country, and our continued military commitment overseas in two large and complex theaters: these are just a few of the questions you will be asked to tackle over the coming months.

I myself have buried a fellow West Virginian, Captain Ben Tiffner, who lost his life fighting in Iraq, after serving there myself. I and many of his fellow officers and soldiers laid him to rest in Arlington National Cemetery in December of 2007. I urge you to go and visit that hallowed ground and walk among the endless graves of our fallen service members. Watch as the members of the Old Guard bury those who have given their last full measure of devotion to our Nation. It is a sobering experience, and one with which every representative should be familiar.

There is no doubt that you are well versed in the struggles of the many out-of-work West Virginians back home. I, and many others, commend you for helping the Senate realize our commitment to them on your first day in the Chamber. But remember there is more yet to be done. Large portions of our economy have been in a long slow decline for decades, providing fewer jobs and less wealth to our people. It will take a clear-eyed vision to see the way forward and bring others behind you.

There is a strong connection between those soldiers who have given their lives, and those who have lost their livelihoods during the Great Recession. Our national security is intimately tied to our economic security, and a forward looking progressive energy and climate policy will provide the means to solve them both. We in the mountains send more than our share of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines off to defend our way of life. We also have a unique and storied history of providing the energy our nation has needed to fuel its unprecedented growth over the past 150 years. But it is no secret that our coal reserves cannot and will not continue to be a source of economic prosperity for our state much longer. The man who sat in your seat before you knew it well. As he wrote in one of his last pieces, “West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it. One thing is clear. The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose.” We need to take a leadership position in creating the new clean energy economy and harness the best of our past as we prepare to thrive in a dynamic global economy. West Virginia, both today and tomorrow, needs you to support comprehensive energy and climate legislation.

It will certainly be an unpopular vote back home; the coal-dominated media will make sure of that. But it will ensure that the people of the state will have a future. The entrepreneurs who will build the businesses of tomorrow will thank you. Plenty of coal miners will thank you for offering their children a better option than they had. And a generation of soldiers will not have to fight terrorists funded directly by our addiction to oil. This will save American lives overseas, and provide the best defense we have to combat violent extremism around the world: by helping restore a prosperous and opportunity-laden economy.

While attending West Point I learned one fact very well above all else. Life is full of choices, and we are often asked to choose between an easy path and a difficult path. I urge you to choose the harder right over the easier wrong. In ten or fifteen years, you will be able to look back and say to yourself, “I helped create a new thriving clean energy economy in my state.” The other option will be to allow the status quo to continue its slow cancer, eating away at our health, our environment, and our pride.

We need you to lead. Paddle hard, and good luck,

Jon Gensler

Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act

I just wrote an opinion piece for my hometown paper in West Virginia on behalf of Operation Free and future West Virginians.

On December 4th, 2007, I stood among a crowd of uniformed US Army officers, and watched as my fellow West Virginian and West Point classmate Ben Tiffner was lowered into the ground at Arlington National Cemetery. Ben was killed in action a month earlier, in an improvised explosive device (IED) attack on his Humvee in Iraq. As my friends and I left the cemetery, we reflected on Ben’s life as well as on the lives of too many other soldiers who gave the last full measure of devotion for our great Nation.

If you haven’t been to see one of our national cemeteries, you need to. The endless rows of white headstones open up into a new section, constantly growing, devoted to those who have given the ultimate sacrifice in today’s War on Terror. Remembering my own time in Iraq leading an infantry mortar platoon, and the dangers we struggled through, I know our military fights a hard, long war. And due to our addiction to cheap fossil fuels, the long war is going to get longer. This is why I choose to fight a better fight, here at home, for cheap, clean energy independence. Our national security depends on it. The lives of soldiers such as Ben’s depend on it. And the lives of our children depend on it. For these reasons we, the people of West Virginia, need the US Congress to pass strong energy and national security legislation this fall.

To be sure, I know the economy of West Virginia has been built on coal. I also know that many people dispute the truthfulness behind the science of climate change. And while I have in fact studied a bit of the science myself, I do not write to you as a climate scientist. Instead, I write to you based on my own experience as a United States soldier. On the battlefield, a soldier doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for 100% certainty before acting. Too often, waiting for certainty results in bad things happening and soldiers dying unnecessarily. We must act when we are sure enough, and the benefits of action outweigh the costs of inaction.

Climate change offers us a similar situation. The world’s top scientific minds agree with 95% certainty that climate change is going to drastically alter the way we live, and that much of climate change is man-made. I’d take that bet any day of the week, especially when my soldiers’ lives are on the line.

Which takes me back to my main point. Assume dry parts of the world dry up even more, and wars over precious drinking water become even more prevalent. Slight sea level increases force the coastal populations of the world’s poorest regions to flee as climate refugees. Instability opens up more holes for extremists preaching anti-American terror to step in and take control. Who is going to have to respond to these threats? China? India? No! We will: American fighting men and women. It is the American soldier who will bear the brunt of inaction. And that will cost us dearly.

We stand at a crossroads. We can choose to do nothing, and be confident that other brave West Virginians such as Ben Tiffner will see their way into our most hallowed of grounds, all because we could not summon the courage to act when needed. Or, we can make an investment in our future today, and reap the benefits for decades to come.

The time for investment is now. On September 30th, the US Senate began consideration of a bill that can and will offer just the added incentives we need to avert the worst of climate change. Such a bill has no chance of knocking out the coal industry overnight -- nor is it intended to. Instead, this bill will spur innovation that will make coal technology cleaner, and will bring better quality jobs to West Virginia. By creating economic incentives for coal users to reduce their carbon emissions, we will unleash an American power just as mighty as any our military possesses: the power of the American entrepreneur. New markets will open up where the hard-working and industrious people of the Mountain State can make the fortunes of tomorrow. And just as importantly, it is going to keep our fighting men and women safer, and our great Nation more secure. We cannot let these benefits pass us by.



Call our Senators and ask for their support today!

A story of airplanes... remembering 9/11

September 11th, is both a difficult and honorable day. Difficult because eight years ago we were woken to threat of terrorism on our shores as thousands of Americans lost their lives in the attacks. And yet honorable because it is now a day we use to honor those whom we lost not only on that day, but in the years since 2001, fighting abroad to secure our safety. However, this is not about the four hijacked jets of 9/11/01. This is about my response to them…

I am lucky enough to be a native of the great state of West Virginia, a graduate of West Point, and a former Army officer and veteran of the Iraq War. I remember clearly the plane that took me to Iraq as a platoon leader. That first year in Iraq, many good soldiers gave their lives for the rest of us, including my good friend and former football teammate, Joe Lusk, USMA ’01. Be thou at peace, brother. I wish I had space to list all of those who gave the last full measure, and I honor them here.

The next plane I want to mention is where this story starts to change. My plane was riding lower over the ground, coming into its landing strip. Looking out the window, I could see desolation all around. Truly the Waste Land of the poet T.S. Eliot. But this was not Iraq or some God-forsaken land in Central Asia. This was me flying home to West Virginia, and those wastelands used to be a beautiful stretch of Appalachia, blasted and laid bare by our coal-hungry economy. My thoughts jumped rapidly from those whom I had lost in the war to future generations of Americans, of West Virginians. What will we call the Mountain State when all of the mountains are gone?

Which brings me to my last plane: a short, small flight from grad school in Boston to Washington, DC, where I would join 150 other veterans with Operation Free in order to meet with our senators on the Hill. We would give voice to the national security threat that climate change poses. You see, this isn’t merely about saving our mountains; this is about preserving our way of life, about reasserting our national place as an international leader. Who will respond when storms of growing frequency and intensity batter the shorelines of the world? Not the Chinese. Not India. We will. The US military. And beyond the count of humanitarian missions that will rise with rising seas, we must not for a moment underestimate the threats that will increase as populations are displaced, as drinking water becomes ever more scarce. Misery and scarcity will spread, creating breeding grounds where terrorists can and will gain a foothold.

And yet there is still time to act. Legislation before the Congress now can give us a chance to avert the worst of climate change, preserve our environment, create new jobs in a clean economy that will last into the next century, and perhaps most importantly, mitigate the threat to our national security posed by unabated climate change. But the time is now. Join Operation Free and call your senators and support strong legislation that will secure our nation for the future.