Appalachia Rising: Part 1

Appalachia is rising, and has risen. I spent 4 nights and 4 days in DC.

It began in Brooklyn, where I met my ride from the ride-share online, on Atlantic Avenue. It turned out to just be one person, who was well older than me. Let's just say his oldest kid was applying to college. Me, I'm trying to get into graduate school.

He drove a hybrid, so we never stopped for gas. I had a guitar, a small gym bag, my side-tote, and a sleeping bag, just enough to be able to walk around covered in stuff. It turned out he was the filmmaker for a doc I saw on Mountaintop Removal over a year ago, some six months after I had heard about it at Power Shift. But he wasn't from Appalachia, he was from New York, and was into Climate Change, was shooting nature stuff at the time, came into the issue somehow. He told me about his experience at Klimaforum and how he is very conscious of the America that doesn't believe in Climate Change. He told me that a guy who would do a workshop with him was well known in the Movement for buying a huge amount of land in Utah at an auction so the Industry couldn't buy it for Tar Sands extraction. He fundraised the money. He was a hero, he said.

When we got to DC we stopped at his hotel to drop off his projector and camera gear. I stretched in the parking lot. Someone said my name with a question mark. It was Suzie T, who basically introduced me to Climate Justice and Climate Tax 12 to 18 months prior. She had moved from Harlem back to Ohio and rode in with "major figures" as Al, the filmmaker called them, of the MTR Movement. He introduced me to Jonas Larry, stout, older man who refused to sell his mountain.

Al went to do a radio show in the basement of a church where I signed in and made a name tag. There was a small table for people people willing to risk arrest. I signed my name there.

They directed me through the chapel, down a hallway to a room with a stage. A band played country music and twenty four people square danced and thirty watched.

Sam and Kitty, girls that I had just met in Manhattan at a Tar Sands protest with Friends of the Earth days prior, were dancing in a sweat. They took a break and sat down with me. They said they were staying at a friend's house. A rather non-feminine girl asked me to dance. We were couple 1 amongst 2, 3 & 4 in our group, meaning our backs were to the stage. It was a 15 minute dance. It was easy with my expert partner. Push ma, lose pa, fellow go around in the outside track.

2 dances later I was far from the stage and my new group talked while the instructor explained the new dance. So we were lost and pathetic. It kept going so we tried on, mainly because of Kristin who wouldn't give up, or stop laughing. But then we all tried again. We got it that time. What does it mean? It meant I felt closest to the group I struggled with. Then I talked to Kristin. She lived in DC. She suddenly seemed 5 years older while stationary. Her blonde hair rather poofed to the side. We talked about America. She said the Tea Party is not America. She said there's hope for Climate Legislation. It seemed we could have kept talking.

People slept throughout the church. A group from Upsate Ny came in. They said just one of them convinced them all to go and I talked to him about the Fracking Movement, and he wanted to get involved.

Then a group of 30 people came and crashed on the stage, mostly girls, one bearded, shirtless guy with long dreadlocks.

A friendly girl with braided blonde hair, a flowery shirt and overalls approached me with a smile. She said she loved how people with similar interests found each other, and I think she meant mystically. I thought she was from Appalachia, because of her friendliness, but she was from Rhode Island, and had moved down to Appalachia because she loved Nature. Her name was Jassie. We took the bus together at 7AM, just us. It was sunny. She never stopped smiling. She told me her story. We had to transfer and a woman on line at Starbucks actually broke my dollar. The fee was 1.70 & 1 for the Circulator. In George Town, Seeds for Peace served tofu, eggsalad and potato stuff. I had tofu and coffee. Jassie talked to an old Earth Firster.

I lost Jassie & met a guy I already met in the woods once. He was organizing against Fracking in Baltimore. He said there would be a week of action in early November in Baltimore.

People from App spoke at the plenary. In the hall were huge Beehive Collective posters, buttons, a paper called Tennessee Mountain Defender, which I took.

I went to MTR 101. Someone sang old Strip Mining protest songs and Sam & I passed a ball of thread around in a big circle connecting words like water, slurry, banks, hillbilly, and prisons.

At lunch I met 2 guys, Ed and Russel. They were at Connecticut schools. They had met at Power Shift. Russel wore a bike helmet and had a deep voice. Ed had red hair and a goatee. They said they worked with some prestigous school where the students were pushing for 450ppm. They thought it was funny how out of the loop they were.

Suddenly I was doing dishes in a small yard with ten people exchanging stories.

I went to a workshop on Economic Diversification. There were 70 people. In Coal Country in Appalachia, there is a Mono-Economy of Coal work. They had every person state their name and what their grandfather's occupation was. Maybe more than half said Coal Mining. Some people not from Appalachia said lawyer, doctor, the rail road, farmer, auto-factories. Many said military service. I was last. I said, "Some sort of textile designer and the other worked in factories and started a business in New York." I thought it was going to be awkward but I almost went off telling a whole story.

One guy explained how Industrial Agriculture put people more or less in the Coal Mines. We broke into groups to discuss diversificatin ideas. There were maybe 5 but I only remember Renewable Energy and Sustainable Agriculture, which I was in. You have soil issues, mainly near MTR sites. It's not like in the city where easily you start group projects. Everyone is spread out. Yea so, I'm not sure we made too much progress. So need radical demands to bring Just Transition.

After dinner there was a concert with Reverand Billy & others but I went to a small discussion for those risking arrest. There were only 50 people. First I talked to this guy Ned who everyone knows for hanging a Green Jobs Now! banner in some official building, which he was arrested for. I also talked to a guy who I met at a 350.org workshop at the US Social Forum. He was like 5 years older than me, named Terry. He worked with the Tar Sands hero in Utah.

Then they told us what the plan was. We were going to remain stationary on the sidewalk in front of the White House, which is illegal, and refuse to move until they arrested us. Two older people from appalachia told us that they really admired the CD of the Civil Rights Movement, and wanted to show the people back at home something really dignified. This woman with strait, gray hair and a lot of energy, our expert on CD, explained that we could do Jail Solidarity, which is where everyone refuses to give their name or pay the fine. This jams up their system and keeps the drama going longer, possibly bringing more attention to us. This woman from Appalachia told us that there is a long history of Coal Country Civil Disobedience. It started with a woman called the Widow Combs, who with her two sons, sat in front of a bulldozer, launching the Strip Mining Resistance Movement. The woman said she had been waiting for this great day to come, and to not think of ourselves as outsiders.