Sit-ins-Funeral March Erupt at EPA/JP Morgan Chase Offices Across Nation

By Jeff Biggers, AlterNet. Posted October 30, 2009.

BREAKING NEWS: The Coalfield Uprising is spreading across the nation.

As millions of pounds of explosions rip across their mountain communities, including the clean energy landmark of Coal River Mountain, scores of residents from the Appalachian coalfields have joined with supporters from across the country in a series of sit-ins, die-ins, protests, and a haunting "Day of the Dead" funeral procession and sit-in in the courtyard of the Washington, DC headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Clean energy and clean water supporters across the country are also sending emails to the EPA and President Obama to stop the tragic blasting of Coal River Mountain.

"Inaction on the part of the EPA will affect the future of Appalachians, and generations to come," says Bob Kincaid, with the Coal River Mountain Watch organization in West Virginia. "If Coal River Mountain is blown up, the green energy future of Appalachia, and the entire nation, will be imperiled."

Coal River Mountain has been recognized by the Obama administration's Council on Environmental Quality, and energy experts around the nation, as one of the most important sites for wind energy in the region, and a model for clean energy transition in the nation.

Instead of being destroyed for a limited dirty coal operation, the Coal River Wind project slated for the historic mountain range would provide enough clean energy for 150,000 homes, hundreds of long-term jobs, and millions of dollars in tax revenues and local commerce.

As part of a nationwide "End Mountaintop Removal Day of Action" organized by the Rainforest Action Network and coalfield activists and clean energy advocates across the nation, sit-ins and "die-in" and protests are taking place in over twenties cities at EPA regional offices from Kansas City to Denver to San Francisco, and at JP Morgan Chase offices from New York City to Chicago to Kentucky.

Today's sit-in at the EPA in DC is directed at Lisa Jackson, who recently invoked the agency's veto power to stop the massive Spruce Mine mountaintop removal operation in West Virginia. Declaring a state of emergency that threatens the lives of thousands of coalfield residents, the protesters (who include former coal miners) are calling on Jackson and the Obama administration to intervene in the new mountaintop removal operation on Coal River Mountain in a similar fashion, where the initial blasting took place last week. Operated by Massey Energy, the Coal River Mountain mine is setting off explosives that potentially jeopardize the 8-billion-gallon Brushy Fork coal sludge held back by a precarious earthen dam.

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