Black Mesa - There are some lines that must be drawn

Black Mesa is a mountain containing an abundance of coal on a portion of the Navajo Nation Reservation in north eastern Arizona.  Just as in Appalachia, people's lives are being destroyed in the wake of coal industry greed, but on Black Mesa, it is much worse.

Peabody Coal Company set about gaining access to the vast coal reserves of Black Mesa through a variety of unscrupulous acts, including dishonesty with native elders and the use of industry political and economic power to sway government and tribal officials. 

Today, just as in Appalachia, the indigenous people of Black Mesa are seeing millions of dollars leave their lands while poverty reigns supreme amongst their people. Everyday a corporate jet flies Peabody officials to a private airport constructed near the mine and everyday Navajo elders must drive miles to get water. A few proud native elders continue to live without electricity and running water on lands they consider sacred; and, by doing so, they are committing an illegal act according to Peabody Coal Company. 

My family and I recently had the honor of joining these elders thanks to the efforts of groups like Black Mesa Indigenous Support and their affiliations with Appalachian groups such as the RAMPS Campaign. High on Black Mesa we joined dozens of other people to camp out on a Navajo homestead for a week,  working to help the elders and to share stories of struggle from other places.

It was a different life, rising with the sun, herding sheep through desert landscapes where the kids often met with the needle of a prickly pear, found their socks covered in Russian thistle, and fought off the constant biting of desert fleas. We sheared sheep the old fashioned way using sheep shearing scissors, we cooked for the elders, and my children even shoveled sheep manure out of a corral. We only spent hours doing what people are accustomed to doing all of their lives and we learned a great deal of respect in doing so. 

Back at camp we heard stories from Palestine and Hawaii, from the Lakota of Oklahoma, and more about the struggles on Black Mesa. In many cases it was the same story, people who only wished to live by the old ways of caring for the land, not asking for much in return, and yet finding themselves fighting each day, hoping that the spoiled reckless greed of our civilization will not continue destroying the lands and culture they have clung to for thousands of years. 

The more we learned, the more disgusted we became, especially with the stories from Black Mesa. Though the elders did not agree with the mining, though they did not sign the land to Peabody, they are still being forced to relocate. Terrible laws have been implemented thanks to Peabody’s greed, one of which being the Bennett Freeze that prevented elders from fixing their homes, even broken windows, or from building any new structures. Laws were even created to limit the amount of sheep Navajo people were allowed to own. Rangers continue to confiscate "excess" livestock right from people's homesteads. Such methods of weakening the Native American people are not new however, millions of buffalo were ordered to be killed to weaken the food source of the Lakota whose lands were lusted after by rich industrialist in the 1800s.

Peabody's atrocities towards the Navajo does not end with land acquisition and forced relocation, but runs deeper still into the Navajo Aquifer. Peabody accessed the Navajo aquifer where they used millions of gallons of water a day to pump slurried coal 240 miles to a power plant. The wells and springs of the people began to dry up, forcing the elders to truck water to their homesteads. 

We heard stories from the elders of how they would be abused, shoved to the ground, and threatened with bodily harm. I thought to myself, “Would the people of Appalachia who proudly support ‘Friends of Coal’  allow their grandmothers and grandfathers to be shoved to the ground, to have their livestock confiscated, or to be prevented from repairing their own homes?”  I knew the answer, but I also knew how ignorant coal company supporters can be towards things things not directly affecting them. They would instead find some way to sugar coat the coal industry. They would continue ridiculing the so called “tree huggers” and “environmentalists” who leave their comfortable beds behind to spend months without running water and electricity to help herd, shear, and butcher sheep in the harsh desert lands of Black Mesa, to cut firewood, haul water, build and clean corrals, plant corn, and perform hundreds of other jobs that need to be done to help the elders.

I hope a few of those coal miners are reading this, because I would put the work and dedication of those "treehuggers" up against any of today's Appalachian coal miners and their families—but I digress.

Standing on a hill above the homestead I watched the massive booms of drag lines swinging back and forth on the horizon and the plumes of dust rising from blasts. I knew the the mine was ever approaching and feelings of deep sorrow mixed with feelings of tremendous respect for the people living here. Thousands of miles away from my Appalachian home in a foreign environment, I began to feel even more strongly the connections: the power of all life, the struggles we all face, and the need to protect our children's future. If only people could understand as the native elders do—that the land, the water, and the air are more important than any man made economy ever could be.

For more information see the Black Mesa Indigenous Support website.

"If You Don't Like It, THEN MOVE!"

Many times I’ve heard it said to people who are fighting the coal industry, “If you don’t like it, THEN MOVE!” I want to share something I wrote a few years ago: 

 

Home

What makes a home "home"? Some say home is where your heart is, or home is where you hang your hat. For me and my family it has been Georges Fork for the past ten generations. Despite a youth consumed with naivety and a longing to escape the seclusion of these hollows, I was still drawn back to them. This is the home where I was raised. These are the people I know, and the family I love.... This is where people come together to help one another and where being a neighbor means more than living next to someone. This is where children are raised with a good understanding of what it means to live simply and be happy, where they learn giving is better than receiving. This is where people fight for what they believe in, sacrificing and risking it all, joining others to see that everyone is treated with dignity. 

Unfortunately time changes everything.

As the older generations pass on, so do many of those values that were so deeply engrained into day to day life within these hills and hollows. The race to live and to provide for our families has now been tied to the almighty dollar, separating everyone and everything. We now "survive" by placing wants before needs. We sell our lives to the lenders in an effort to achieve the American dream—unending cyclical material happiness. All the many lessons of a simplicity-based happiness have seemed to vanish.
No one talks or visits anymore. Friendships and family ties become distant. Seldom made phone calls replace supper table conversations. Television replaces idle time on front porch swings. Only during times of strife do we pull together, and, for a glorious moment, brandish the mountain spirit, the true grit and humility we were once known for.

Each day as I witness the blades of the dozers and the deafening blasts of ANFO destroying our mountains, I can't help but feel as if the coal industry is performing a coup de grâce on my mountain home. For me, the raw exposed earth and grasslands that remain have come to symbolize the end of an era, the death of the mountain spirit and all the wonderful things which made these hills and hollows my home.

If home is where the heart is, what is one to do when that heart has been broken?  

I wrote this as a means to understand the uncertainty of my family’s immediate future. We faced many hard decisions during those dark days following the fire that consumed our home. Rebuild and continue living in an area where we feared for our children’s chances at a healthy future and a good education, or move away from the valley my family had called home for 200 years. We ultimately decided to move for the children’s best interests.

Over two years have now passed since I wrote that piece. Throughout the journey we have become even more aware of the injustices of our world, especially those occurring within Appalachia. Since leaving my home, I have not only continued to witness the strengths of truth and the weaknesses of ignorance, I have also found my place and anchored my resolve as a true Appalachian.

In the strangest turn of events, my reaffirmed identity as a traditional Appalachian has branded me an environmentalist. I am not vegan nor do I have long hair, a piercing, a tattoo, or any other such characteristic given to how most Appalachians view environmentalists. No, it is my upholding of the traditional Appalachia ideals—the ideals of my grandfathers—that has branded me an “outsider” in my ancestral home. Compassion, minimalism, love of family, friendship, honesty, respect for the land—these are the ideals I speak of, and yet, thanks to the work of an insidious industry, these traits are no longer the measure of people in Appalachia. 

Now that the coal industry owns and controls Appalachia, they have created a new measure of a man set against the identity of the proud, heroic, hard-working, coal miner. In the new Appalachia, men are judged by how hard they work and how much overtime they put in. They are even judged by how little they call in sick. These measures are compounded with the feelings of inadequacy amongst younger coal miners who are buying the nicest vehicles and the nicest houses to somehow show their worth.  

Having realized these things, having contemplated the cold calculated methods by which outside industries exploit Appalachia, by feeling the pain of severed roots and clinging still to that place, that time, that love of mountains, I have now become an outcast amongst my own people. For fighting for the land and a brighter future for every child in Appalachia, one in which the streams run as clean as they did before the coal companies came, one in which they are not destined to a life of pain and suffering in the coal mines or to find themselves on the verge of death following a drug overdose, for fighting for a future without the destructive ways of the coal industry—I, Nick Mullins, 9^th generation Appalachian, have become a despised environmentalist.

I can be called everything but a milk cow, it will not change who I am nor will it change the fact that I care about all people and the future of all of our children. I will fight to the very end against the greed that continues to destroy lives here and throughout the rest of the world. I will even continue to help people who choose to hate me for what I do. This is who I am.

Love thy Neighbor. It means a lot more when money destroys the lands and water your neighbor’s children will eventually need.  Has buying the things we want but do not need become more important than the health of future generations?

A Few Random Thoughts About Washington DC

 One time I heard it said that Washington, DC is "Twenty-four square miles surrounded by reality." I could not agree more. My son asked me several times on  our most recent trip, "Why do they make the buildings so fancy?" I could only reply, "Because they want people to think they are big and powerful."

Power. The ability to control: to change surroundings, to manipulate people, to become more comfortable than the masses.

Washington, DC was never built for the people, by the people; it was commissioned by those in power to make great monuments of the powerful.

Why does it seem that the only monuments built to honor common people are war memorials?

It took nearly 60 years before the WWII Memorial was built to honor over 400,000 American lives given to defend against true evil, and yet the Vietnam "military action" (never classified as a war by our government) which came decades after had a memorial built decades before the WWII memorial.Which war was necessary?

One of the few monuments dedicated to true peace is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, but it took over 40 years to be built and the statue pales in comparison to most others.

There are no great monuments for the coal miner, the farmer, the steel worker--nothing to honor the people who labored and gave the most to uphold the power of a wealthy minority.

Though we are given the chance to vote, it does not matter. Any representative we send to the halls of government will be purchased by the true power of this country—money: money hoarded by corporations, money hoarded by CEOs and the 1%.

The most dignified and morally responsible representative, if not corrupted by money, will find themselves fighting a battle against the hundreds of other representatives corrupted by money and power.

The people of Appalachia are labeled as sacrifices for the greater good: the retired coalminer gasping for breath, the disabled miner living in such terrible pain that he places a pistol in his mouth to end it all—just more sacrifices to uphold the stations of power held by wealthy minorities.

Those who fight against the unjust system of money and power are labeled as “activists” are discounted by modern society.

Activists are despised not only by those in power who have tremendous wealth, but by the people whose ignorance keeps them bound in servitude to the almighty economy. 

Everyone should go to Washington, DC, or at least visit their state capitols. They should take time to see what has been built, not for them, but to honor the powerful who have manipulated them time and time again. Everyone should realize the true cost of all that marble and granite.

Each brick has a face, a name, a wife and children. Each column contains the suffering of coal miners and farmers, steel workers and auto workers, Native Americans, blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians—peoples of the entire world bent over in pain and suffering for cigars, brandy, and expensive furniture.

The sacrifice of the laborer is just another immaculate mahogany desk, a beautifully carved column, a $300 pencil sharpener or $2000 office chair, even a free soda offered to a well-paid coal industry lobbyist while he waits to see the senator.

Only 150 years ago black people were treated as less than animals, free to be beaten or killed at the bidding of their owners. Today, there are people who still think of black people as no more than animals. It is a sickness of the human race and it knows no bounds. 

According to Wikipedia "In 1916, the National Child Labor Committee and the National Consumers League successfully pressured the US Congress to pass the Keating–Owen Act, which was signed into law by president Woodrow Wilson. It was the first federal child labor law. However, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law two years later in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), declaring that the law violated a child's right to contract his or her own labor. In 1924, Congress attempted to pass a constitutional amendment that would authorize a national child labor law. This measure was blocked, and the bill was eventually dropped."

It took until 1938 before child labor was ended--only 75 years ago and 162 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

 What was this great nation truly built upon? A constitution and freedom or the suffering and death of the American laborer and their children sent off to war?

Suffering continues in every part of the nation, in every part of the world.

Fighting the Good Fight

Yesterday in Washington DC my family and I had the honor of joining our mountain brothers and sisters in shedding light on the problems Appalachians face. We had talked to officials about the thousands of miners being left behind as the coal industry once again tucks tail and runs and we worked hard to see to it our water--and our future--is protected.  

Many people in Appalachia do not understand the extent of suffering being caused by the coal industry, yet they continue to hedge their bets, believing every word spoken by the already wealthy outside industrialists. They do not fully understand the extent of their lies, but those of us who have chosen to keep our eyes open know that Appalachians are fighting a losing battle. We know the industry only sees profit when they look to our mountains. We know the jobs they preach about take away the health of both the miner and his family.

To those sitting at corporate headquarters, it is a game of production, a game of numbers--black versus red on a financial statement. It is not a game for the coal miner who struggles everyday with  pain, holding off drug addiction so he can keep up with the bills or the retired miner facing ever increasing costs of living on a set income. It is not a game for the new mother and father standing outside of a neonatal ward hoping their newborn makes it through the night. It is not a game for the mother sitting beside her child's bed at St. Jude’s hoping the many tubes delivering chemotherapy into their little one's body is working to save a precious little life.  

These are the true battles Appalachians are facing. It is no longer about pride or dignity or economy. It is about our children's future. I can only hope that the people of Appalachia will realize what is truly important, and that they too, will rally to protect what little they have left as so many brave and wonderful people have done and continue to do. We must see through the lies and look beyond the short lived paychecks of the true outsiders. We must begin to look five, ten, twenty, fifty years ahead and beyond. 

God save the people of Appalachia. God save our mountains!