Venezuelans
and Appalachians Unite!
Join Us July 8th for a Day of
Decentralized Action Against Climate Change!
Indigenous people in Venezuela are rising up against large-scale
coal development projects whose profits they know will not benefit
their local community. Mountain Justice Summer will be raising hell
in Appalachia this summer, igniting a mass movement to dethrone
King Coal once and for all. All over the world, power-hungry
politicians and unimaginitive policy-makers continue to support the
archaic fossil fuel industries, with coal leading the way; and all
over the world, local communities are resisting them.
Organizers in Appalachia have been in kahoots with organizers in
Venezuela, plotting a hemisphere-wide alliance of grassroots groups
fighting the coal industry. After all, the coal companies are
international; it only makes sense that the resistance be as well.
This network will ideally include folks from the coalfields,
indigenous people who's land and sovereignty are being threatened
by coal companies, environmental justice groups who are dealing
with the health effects of coal-fired power plants, and others who
are negatively impacted by coal extraction,
processing, transportation or burning.
Together, we are planning local actions for the July 8th Day of
Action Against Climate Change, originally a project of the anti-G8
organizing in Scotland. We will put forth a coordinated message
against the continuation of coal as a primary energy source, and
will use the flurry of international activity to highlight our
local struggles.
We invite you to join us! Is there a mercury-ridden coal-fired
power plant near you? Are you sick of seeing mountains being
bulldozed for cheap electricity? Organize an action in your neck of
the woods (or desert, or scrubland, or prairie…)! Use this
day of action to educate your community about a local social and
environmental hazard, or simply express your solidarity with
battles being waged in Venezuela, Appalachia, and elsewhere.
There are many links to be made between the
production/extraction end of coal development and the burning of
coal in power plants -- throughout the entire process, coal wreaks
havoc on the environment and people's health. We must, nationally
and internationally, make it clear that coal kills, whether it's in
the coalfields of Appalachia, the jungles of Venezuela, or
low-income urban neighborhoods where coal-fired power plants spew
asthma-causing, life-shortening pollutants into the air.
We are interested in making links with other communities
fighting against coal and for health and environmental justice; to
join the growing network of anti-coal activists, please email
communitiesagainstcoal@yahoo.com
or mountainjusticesummer@yahoo.com
or en español: noalcarbon@riseup.net
(Coal in Spanish is called carbón)
Abigial Singer- Mountian Justice Summer Campiagn.
|