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UPDATE: 4pm EST: The 14 Kentucky Rising anti-mountaintop abatement protesters declared a boastful end to their acclaimed sit-in, arising today in advanced of a auspicious assemblage of over 1,200 supporters on the accomplish of the Frankfort capitol.
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"We came because the land, its forests, and its streams are actuality destroyed by the apparent mining of coal, because the bodies are adversity intolerable harms to their homes, their health, and their communities," declared acclaimed columnist Wendell Berry, who had abutting added eastern Kentucky coalfield residents, miners, writers and association activists.
Looking at the civic appulse of the sit-in, which has sparked a alarm for boundless beef beyond the coalfields, historian and columnist Chad Berry alleged the acclaimed four-day demonstration and assemblage a "bellwether moment" and a axis point in the growing movement to end mountaintop abatement mining.
"Instead of attractive at the past," added Chad Berry, a acclaimed Appalachian scholar, "we are now attractive against the future. A approaching afterwards mountaintop removal, and a approaching for apple-pie activity and acceptable bread-and-butter development."
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(photos from the "I Adulation Mountains" assemblage by Chad Berry and Kristin Tracz)
Day 4 of the acclaimed sit-in: Valentine's Day in the Kentucky governor's office.
As bags of protesters alight on the Kentucky capitol in Frankfort today for the "I Adulation Mountains" advance to end mountaintop abatement mining, the 14 demonstration Kentucky Rising protesters central the governor's appointment accept electrified the apple-pie activity movement beyond the nation with an brave and alarming valentine for the country:
This is the year to end mountaintop abatement mining.
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Talk about "one love." Beyond the 48 states that await on coal-fired electricity, we are all affiliated to the arrant animal rights and ecology abomination of mountaintop abatement mining.
Every clairvoyant can artlessly go to this website and access his or her zip cipher and see their affiliation to coal-fired electricity supplied by atramentous strip-mined from mountaintop abatement or added strip-mining operations.
Despite bound EPA moves to abate the accident of mountaintop abatement operations to waterways and communities, adverse mountaintop abatement mining, which provides beneath than 5-8 percent of our civic atramentous production, takes abode in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, southwest Virginia and eastern Tennessee. Beyond the heartland and the Powder River Basin, from Alaska to Alabama, strip-mining operations are at assignment in 24 states and Native American reservations.
After application Gov. Steve Beshear's appointment for the weekend, the demonstration protesters accept galvanized coalfield association and apple-pie activity advocates beyond the nation to adapt the movement to end the 40-year daydream of mountaintop abatement already and for all.
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Photo by Chad Berry/Mickey McCoy, Wendell Berry, Teri Blanton, Lisa Abbott and Stanley Sturgill cat-and-mouse for Gov. Beshear this morning
In a collective statement, the Kentucky Rising activists declared: "We acquisition it unacceptable for an adopted official to sue a federal bureau with aborigine dollars on account of a multi-billion dollar industry that is amenable for contagion the land, water, and bodies of Appalachia."
"It's black that Gov. Beshear is allotment to comedy election-year backroom with the lives and livelihoods of eastern Kentuckians," the accumulation said in a collective statement. "Political adventuresomeness is attenuate nowadays, and acutely appears to be absent from our Governor's Mansion. We abide to alarm on him to appoint in a sincere, accessible chat about catastrophe mountaintop abatement and alpha a affairs of bread-and-butter face-lifting for our miners and abundance communities."
The protesters accept been blockage in the appointment back talks amid them and the governor came to a stalemate on Friday afternoon, back Gov. Beshear assuredly agreed to accommodated with them afterwards initially abnegation to do so that morning. Afterwards again requests from accumulation members, he apprenticed to biking to eastern Kentucky and audit accident acquired by mountaintop abatement mining. Despite this, Gov. Beshear connected to accurate his abiding abutment for both mountaintop abatement and the atramentous industry.
A alive beck of the demonstration at the governor's appointment can be apparent here.
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Stay acquainted for alive updates at the day's contest unfold.
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