Take a look at the video below and this comment left on the earlier post about Charlotte.

John Watterberg Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 11:26 am e

I am one of the climbers from Tuesday’s action at Bank of America on Tuesday and I would like to contribute one of my personal reasons for participating in this campaign. One of my close friends is named Kerry “Chad” Albright. I had the distinct pleasure of working with Chad for a few years in New York City. Chad was born in Buffalo Creek, WV, a tiny, Appalachian mining “town” which is probably more of a network of country shacks sparsely strewn throughout what was once a pristine mountain valley. When Chad was just 9 months old a dam containing coal sludge (yes, it’s technically called “sludge”) from the nearby mines burst releasing a sludge flood through the valley. Chad’s mother was home with his older, 5 year old sister while his father was deep below the earth in a nearby coal mine. The flood was so huge and severe that Chad’s mom grabbed he and his sister before it consumed their home. She was running for higher ground up the valley with Chad in one arm and his sister by the hand when the flood reached them. His mother knew that she and his sister would not make it so as the sludge enveloped them she threw baby Chad by the leg as far as she could up the valley wall. When officials later surveyed the sludge lake that was once the valley they heard what they thought was a cat’s cry coming from what looked like the leg of a baby doll protruding from the black waste. When they hauled the leg from the muck it turned out to be baby Chad’s nearly severed leg hanging by sinew and a few ligaments. They cleared the mostly dead baby’s air passages of sludge and took him to a nearby shack farther up the valley wall to await it’s impending death.
Officials summoned Chad’s father from the mine to inform his him wife and daughter were dead and his only son would soon join them. The baby wasn’t breathing when his father stepped through the door and breathed his son’s name, “Kerry?”
At the sound of his father’s voice, Chad began to cry, the first noise he had made since the “cat’s cry”. Chad was taken to the closest hospital miles away where his leg was amazingly reattached. Chad’s survival earned him the local celebrity of the “Buffalo Creek Disaster Miracle Baby” which is still celebrated annually to this day. Chad’s father retired from the mine to raise the only surviving member of his family alone, never remarrying in the wake of his grief. It goes without saying that “Mr. Mom” is no small miracle in itself for a back country mountain coal miner from West Virginia. Chad eventually grew up to become a professional dancer follow his dream all the way to New York City where we met. He is probably dancing in a Broadway show bringing joy to untold masses even as I write this.
So you see, I have deeply personal, very real reasons for behavior which may seem to some as “extreme”. So I ask, what is more extreme: hanging a piece of cloth from a crane, or the above story and the myriad other detriments that come from coal, the techniques used to mine it, and institutions like Bank of America who continue to fund such physically and emotionally devastating ecocide?
When I was on that crane, about to go over the edge in the soft morning light, I said a prayer for safety and justice. “This is for Chad”, I prayed. “This is for Chad’s mom and big sister whom he never had the joy to know.” But most of all it truly was for every current resident of these communities and the victims who continue to suffer at the behest of greed and industry, for, sadly, stories like Chad’s are not uncommon. His is just one of millions that persist to this day. SO for anyone who still doesn’t understand why we engage these campaigns, I implore you to seek more truth and separate the facts from the fiction. Oh, and sorry about the delay on your way to work…