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Carl Shoupe: Union Made
- The University Press of Kentucky
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Carl Shoupe Union Made The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people. —Cesar Chavez I’m sticking to the union ’Til the day I die. —Woody Guthrie, “Union Maid” Carl Shoupe is mad as hell. You can’t hear it in his voice or even see it in his eyes. The clench of his firm, mountain jaw—his inheritance from his Cherokee grandmother—is the giveaway. As he stands to address the Bank of America shareholder meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, he chooses his words skillfully, succinctly , ever the true Appalachian diplomat: “I came all the way from Kentucky because I am trying to save my homeland from total destruction caused by mountaintop removal coal mining, which Bank of America is a leading financier of. The southern Appalachian Mountains have some of the most biodiverse forests in the world. Mountaintop removal coal producers, funded by Bank of America, are exploding tops off these mountains and off our culture. This is not just about saving the climate, but also about the survival of our culture for our grandchildren and future generations.” Some of the shareholders and board members look at each other, brows crinkled in confusion. Many have never heard of mountaintop removal, let alone that their company, their own money, is subsidizing it. Others simply aren’t used to such straight talk. Carl Shoupe at miners’ memorial Park in Benham, kentucky. Photo by Silas house. [54.221.43.155] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:51 GMT) CARl ShOuPE More anti–mountaintop removal activists who have come from across Appalachia stand up to speak. The face of Ken Lewis, Bank of America’s CEO, is as red as a pickled beet. He has been ambushed. And now he’s mad as hell. It is reminiscent of another corporate confrontation nearly forty years ago, when striking miners from Brookside, Kentucky, in Shoupe’s native Harlan County, trekked to New York to say their piece at a Duke Power shareholder meeting. Chronicled in the Oscar-winning documentary Harlan County USA, it became a turning point in their fight for a living wage.1 Things are different today in Eastern Kentucky. The union has gone, having ceded its bloodied, hallowed ground to the companies and strip-mining operations. Deep mining is a lost art form; mechanization has long since taken over, replacing respectable underground miners with garish heavy equipment. But in many ways, it’s a place still at war over coal. The tactics of the coal companies remain the same: divide and conquer. On the other side, Shoupe and the grassroots organization he works with, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC), find themselves fighting to bring people together in a broad coalition in the wake of the union’s retreat. “I talk about it daily,” Shoupe says, seated—appropriately— at the Coal Miners’ Memorial Park in Benham. “At the grocery, at the speedway, wherever. I had a conversation yesterday morning; a very respected man in the community. A professor. He said, ‘You go, Carl, buddy, you get out there and you keep talking, you’re doing a great job.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you help me out a little bit?’ and he said, ‘Ah, buddy, I can’t say much; they’d run me off.’” He pauses long enough to breathe a shaky sigh of frustration. “So see, people know it’s bad, that it’s destroying our water, our culture, but like everything else, it’s about money. People ain’t speaking out about it. People are afraid of losing their jobs.” Shoupe, like so many others involved in this fight, believes SOmEthIng’S RISIng that once again King Coal is using the big lie that is the biggest weapon it has in its pocket—in this case, that mountaintop removal provides jobs instead of replacing them with machines. And they’re using it in full force. Shoupe isn’t about to back down from the fight. He responds with his own bombshell: “I’m a third-generation coal miner. If you can’t deep mine it, it ain’t worth getting out of the mountain in the first place!” Coming from a family of deep miners, Shoupe has certainly earned the right to make such bold statements. This pledge of allegiance to his mining heritage is the foundation for Shoupe’s current fight against mountaintop removal. His grandfather began working in the coke ovens around Lafollette, Tennessee, before moving to Wallins Creek in Harlan County...