Venezuelans and Appalachians Unite!
Thursday, June 02 2005 @ 04:11 PM UTC
Contributed by: Anonymous
Views: 791
Indigenous people in Venezuela are rising up against
large-scale coal development projects whose profits
they know will not benefit their local community.
Mountain Justice Summer will be raising hell in
Appalachia this summer, igniting a mass movement to
dethrone King Coal once and for all. Venezuelans and Appalachians Unite!
Join Us July 8th for a Day of Decentralized Action Against Climate Change!
Indigenous people in Venezuela are rising up against large-scale coal development projects whose profits they know will not benefit their local community. Mountain Justice Summer will be raising hell in Appalachia this summer, igniting a mass movement to dethrone King Coal once and for all. All over the world, power-hungry politicians and unimaginitive policy-makers continue to support the archaic fossil fuel industries, with coal leading the way; and all over the world, local communities are resisting them.
Organizers in Appalachia have been in kahoots with organizers in Venezuela, plotting a hemisphere-wide alliance of grassroots groups fighting the coal industry. After all, the coal companies are international; it only makes sense that the resistance be as well. This network will ideally include folks from the coalfields, indigenous people who's land and sovereignty are being threatened by coal companies, environmental justice groups who are dealing with the health effects of coal-fired power plants, and others who are negatively impacted by coal extraction, processing, transportation or burning.
Together, we are planning local actions for the July 8th Day of Action Against Climate Change, originally a project of the anti-G8 organizing in Scotland. We will put forth a coordinated message against the continuation of coal as a primary energy source, and will use the flurry of international activity to highlight our local struggles.
We invite you to join us! Is there a mercury-ridden coal-fired power plant near you? Are you sick of seeing mountains being bulldozed for cheap electricity? Organize an action in your neck of the woods (or desert, or scrubland, or prairie…)! Use this day of action to educate your community about a local social and environmental hazard, or simply express your solidarity with battles being waged in Venezuela, Appalachia, and elsewhere.
There are many links to be made between the production/extraction end of coal development and the burning of coal in power plants -- throughout the entire process, coal wreaks havoc on the environment and people's health. We must, nationally and internationally, make it clear that coal kills, whether it's in the coalfields of Appalachia, the jungles of Venezuela, or low-income urban neighborhoods where coal-fired power plants spew asthma-causing, life-shortening pollutants into the air.
We are interested in making links with other communities fighting against coal and for health and environmental justice; to join the growing network of anti-coal activists.
We are putting a call out for an East Coast convergence on Massey Coal headquarters in Richmond, VA. Help Shut the Bastards Down! stay tuned for more details
for more info about the resistance to mountain top removal check out:
www.mountainjusticesummer.org
Please email:
communitiesagainstcoal@yahoo.com or
mountainjusticesummer@yahoo.com
or en español: noalcarbon@riseup.net
(Coal in Spanish is called carbón)