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  • A Call to My Appalachian Brothers and Sisters
  • Kathy Mattea (bio)

This is the text of a speech made at the I Love Mountains rally at the Kentucky State Capitol Building on February 7, 2010.

It is an honor to stand with you today, here in Frankfort, as a fellow hillbilly, concerned citizen, and lover of the Appalachian mountains. I grew up in West Virginia, next door, and both my grandfathers were coal miners. My mother worked for the umwa as a young woman, and coal and mountains have shaped my life since the day I was born.

I have spelunked through the caves of West Virginia with miners helmets and carbide lamps, I have hiked and climbed many of the mountains back home, run trout lines, caught minnows, gone frog-gigging, and dug for greens on the mountain hillsides. It is a place I know, and it is part of me.

Since learning about mountaintop removal, I have felt an ache in the pit of my stomach, a deep yearning to advocate for the mountains I know so well and love so much, and to help amplify a message coming from those who sometimes feel they are small voices screaming in the wilderness.

And yet, I find that speaking up has brought into sharp focus a larger struggle—a struggle for control, and for tradition: a covert war to decide who holds the power here, and what our values are.

There is a terrible environmental destruction going on, but there is a deeper human cost here as well. Not just for future generations of Appalachians, but for those living in the coalfields today, right now. These people, conveniently tucked away in the hollows and hills, are living in their own personal hell. I know these are strong words, but there is no better way to describe black water coming from the faucet, mine cracks in the front yard, air so filled with dust that it builds up inside a closed freezer, and valley fills behind the house where a trail up the hollow used to be. Many of these families have lived on their land for generations. The sense of anguish they feel is not just for themselves, but for all their ancestors as well. Roots go very deep in Appalachia.

If the prosperity of some is built on the exploitation of others, everyone loses. And yet, if we simply exchange one group's version of "hell" for another's, we still lose. The people who depend on the mining industry [End Page 45] for their livelihoods cannot be tossed away, either. We must consider all people's needs as we try to find a solution to this problem.

Everyone needs a safe place to live, a way to make a decent living, and a sense of security for themselves and their family.

So how do we have a conversation about this, in the midst of such pain and rage and fear? This is the hidden question I have come to believe is most important at this crucial moment in our history.

There's a sense of inevitability here, running like a screensaver in the background: "Well, it's the coal fields, that's just how it is. That's how it's always been. …"

But I believe there is a way to move towards a civil conversation. And it starts with the realization, the remembrance, that we are not enemies, we are brothers and sisters in conflict. And, I believe this conversation is crucial: crucial to the development of any solution that can stand for the long run, for all coalfield residents.

What we need, in Kentucky, in West Virginia, in Virginia, in Ohio, in Tennessee and, yes, in Washington, D.C. is leadership. We need leaders who care more about the long-term prosperity of their constituents than their own political careers. We desperately need a way of having this conversation that goes beyond the short term. We need courageous leaders who are willing to step into the center of this vortex and hold the vision of the long-term solution, through all the desperation, the noise, and rage, and fear.

Everyone is scared. If my house...

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