Today RAN and our good friends from Appalachia along with renowned climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah and more than a dozen Appalachian residents and allies were arrested crossing onto the property of leading mountaintop removal coal mining company, Massey Energy. This was Dr Hansen’s first arrest in an act of civil disobedience and today he and others put their bodies on the line to protest Mountaintop Removal mining and the enormous human health, ecological and climate impacts that result from the practice.
Dr Hansen said: “I am not a politician; I am a scientist and a citizen,” said Dr. James Hansen. “Politicians may have to advocate for halfway measures if they choose. But it is our responsibility to make sure our representatives feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not what is politically expedient. Mountaintop removal, providing only a small fraction of our energy, should be abolished.”
More photos and video to follow – stay tuned!
Twitter Updates
PLEASE provide more information, such as the state in which this happened! Very frustrating.
This was at Coal River Valley in West Virginia. Check out the HuffPo article-http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=94911187619&h=C1Lvg&u=g3OST&ref=nf
This is becoming very frustrating.It seems that everytime
a group of people speak their minds the cops come and arrest them for it.It’s like there’s no freedom of opinion.
I don’t believe that civil disobedience is something people need to be arrested for.The police have more important people to catch than the environmentalists.We are just trying to do our part in the world.We are just trying to save what is ours.Is that such a bad thing to do?
Hi Mandie, it’s important to know that being arrested is necessary in some cases in order to heighten public awareness that a crime is happening here- and that the law is arresting the wrong people, those who are drawing attention to it. As Martin Luther King said, ‘sometimes it’s necessary to dramatize the injustice’ and that is very true today as we see the world’s climate at risk; kudos to all of those who participated, you are being true citizens.
- Lyn from Toronto