This Side of the Mountain

This Side of the Mountain George Brosi I first lived in Berea, Kentucky, in the summer of 1963 and then lived here again in 1967, both times working for the Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM). I moved my family here in 1979, initially to work again for the CSM, and we have been here since except for a couple of years around 1990, living near Cherokee, North Carolina. In all that time, there has never been a weekend I'd rather have been in town than the week-end of last April 22nc* and 23r(L On those days, Berea College was sponsoring a Campus-Community Partnerships for Sustainability Conference and Kentucky authors who have organized to oppose mountain top removal coal mining were meeting here and giving a public forum to promote our book, Missing Mountains. Our last reading had been in Frankfort on February 14tn' and I had served as MC at Poor Richard's Bookstore. Nevertheless, my wife, Connie, and I were not in town. We were in Louisville to attend the memorial service for Anne Braden (1924-2006) who died March 6"L From the 1950s until she drew her last breath, Anne Braden was an activist for social justice. Her career focused first and foremost on issues of racism, but she was also involved in any issue which involved peace or justice. The civil rights movement simply had no stronger White ally than Anne Braden. Nothing could have kept me from paying tribute to such a stalwart of good causes. I was briefly on the staff of the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), the organization that she and her husband, Carl, who died in 1975, led from 1966-1973, but I often saw Anne before and after that time. The memorial service was a kind of reunion of people who worked with the Bradens. What a joy to hear Bernice Reagon (who I first heard sing when she was still in high school at her father's church in Albany, Georgia, when Martin Luther King, Jr., was in jail there), the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who bragged of making Bull Conner into a steer in Birmingham, Angela Davis and others. It was great also to visit with old friends includingAl McSurely, the SCEF worker who was charged with sedition in Pike County, Kentucky, in 1967, for helping local land-owner Jenk Ray and others oppose strip-mining. He's now a lawyer, working on the case against the Duke Lacrosse team. Of course any mention of the Bradens brings to mind the fact that they were often accused of being Communists. Ann Braden was one of the last to die of the many Americans whose lives were dramatically affected by the red-baiting of the cold war era. In this region, Myles Horton and Don West are remembered as two of the most prominent leaders who suffered this way. What a shame that such decent people and such energetic workers for a better world were cruelly used to discredit their good causes. Yet, how effective it was for supporters of the status quo to so easily disrupt and too-often to divide and conquer "the loyal opposition." I have always been a staunch opponent of such smear tactics. I recognize that on rare occasions an individual can bring such disgrace to an organization that others just have to quit, but activists realize that organizations and people within them are imperfect, and we know we have to work to improve advocacy groups as well as support them. Once activists start putting more energy into shunning those who have "unacceptable" beliefs than they do trying to involve as many people as possible, it becomes awfully hard to achieve positive and needed changes. We need to close ranks when those who oppose change fight us with guiltby association rather than rational arguments. These very difficult questions are extremely important right now. For example, sometimes environmental organizations are attacked on the grounds that some of their supporters have been connected to sabotage. I sure don't want to be part of a group that endangers people or even property, but I'm not going to be easily fooled into...