Author: Nick Mullins
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The Truth About Coal Ash
When I was a kid, they told us about acid rain in school. I even remember seeing a news broadcast in which the reporter, standing in the middle of a cemetery with an umbrella, explained the damage it was causing to the tombstones. The solution was to put scrubbers on all the coal-fired power plants, or…
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Friend of Coal? Read this…
A while ago I decided to do some investigating on who or what “Friends of Coal” was. What I found surprised me (well… not really). Friends of Coal wasn’t a group of coal miners and their families working to help one another during hard times. It was the coal operators. At first glance, their website…
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National Miner’s Day
Today, coal companies across the nation are “honoring” coal miners. Alpha Natural Resources put up an image of three women coal miners on their Facebook page supporting National Miner’s Day. I posted the following comment which sums up how I feel about coal companies and National Miner’s Day… “If they cared about their coal…
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Laid Off
Over the past few years, we have witnessed an amazing downturn in the coal industry. Mines all throughout Appalachia have closed, leaving thousands of coal miners and their families in dire straits. For as long as the coal industry has existed, the people of Appalachia have lived at the mercy of a boom and bust…
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The Religion of Coal
I usually avoid religion in my posts, but I can no longer ignore how I’ve hearing some folks apply it to coal and coal mining. “If God didn’t want us to use coal, he wouldn’t have put it here!” I’ve heard it a dozen times from friends and family back home.1 It’s even been preached…
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Present Day Coal Mining: Dishonoring our heritage.
Drive into the central Appalachian coalfields and you’ll see dozens of vehicles with stickers such as “Friends of Coal,” “Coal Mining our Future,” “Friends in Low Places” etc. I am not sure when the change came, but sometime in the last fifteen to twenty years, the ultimate goal of coal miners has gone from working…
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“Coal is all we’ve got”
My father told me and my brother on more than one occasion, “I wish I had’ve got you boys more when you were growing up. A lot of the guys at the mine were buying their kids new four-wheelers and things. They got bass boats and campers and took their families to the lake every…
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Reparation
Growing up on down my hollow, coal trucks were a part of life. They rumbled up and down the road every five to ten minutes starting at 6:00 in the morning and continuing until 6:00 in the evening. From our doublewide perched on the hillside, we could hear them coming, jake breaking into each curve…
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Buffalo Creek Disaster – 42 years Later & Still Remembering
Forty-two years ago people were suffering from the terrible loss of their loved ones and all they knew. The reason, a cheaply built slurry impoundment. Coal companies put profit before people. As much as things change, they stay the same. “This was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen in my life, I’m sorry God…
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Going Against the Grain
Many people consider me to be going “against the grain” when it comes to coal politics. I am, after all, very active in social justice these days and have been known to sit in front of buildings, participate in documentaries, testify at public hearings, and even have Op-Eds published in “The Hill.” In various Facebook…
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Remembering the South Mountain No. 3 Mine Explosion
December 7th, 1992 was a cold Monday morning. My brother and I were getting ready for school when the phone rang a little after 6:45 am. Mom answered and immediately went into the bedroom to wake my father. There had been an explosion at the South Mountain No. 3 mine and there was no communication…
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Fueling the Fires of Ignorance
If you take time to frequent a pro-coal Facebook page such as Count on Coal, you may or may not be surprised by the statements you find there, most of which aimed at the EPA. What is most disturbing however, is the amount of blind support they receive from the coal mining families. There is…
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Job Alternatives for Coal Miners
If you ask a coal miner about the “War on Coal,” chances are you’ll get an earful about the EPA, President Obama, and all of the environmentalists who don’t care about coal mining families. You’ll may also hear that “coal mining is all there is” in an area where few living wage job alternatives exist.…
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Telling it how it is….
I recently engaged in a conversation with people on the “Coal Miners Light” Facebook page, asking pro-coal followers if they wanted their children to become future coal miners. I was not entirely unsurprised to find that everyone was about saving “coal,” but I was surprised that no one would answer my question directly. I pondered…
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Are We Ignorant Hillbillies?
Previously titled “Ignorance – Fighting the Appalachian Stereotype” Appalachians have been looked down upon, made fun of, and dehumanized as “uneducated,” “backwards,” or just down right “ignorant.” I myself would often denounce such stereotyping, but as of late I cannot help but acknowledge that many Appalachian people are fulfilling the descriptions placed upon them. The…