Category: Appalachia
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Some Things Worth Remembering on National Miner’s Day
While it is certainly important to lift up those who provide the energy and materials necessary for others to enjoy their comforts and conveniences, we must be careful not to allow specific organizations to use this holiday as a way to spread good PR about their . I am speaking of course, about mining companies,…
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A Letter to J.D. Vance
Dear Mr. Vance, I read your book Hillbilly Elegy last year. Actually, my family and I listened to it as a free trial on Audible while traveling back and forth to visit my grandfather in the hospital. He was a career coal miner by the way. Several friends and colleagues had advised me not to…
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The Love-Hate Relationship of Exporting Appalachian Coal
Since the fall of the steel industry in this country, the majority of Appalachia’s metallurgical coal reserves have been going overseas. Some goes to Europe to foundries producing highly engineered, high quality products. Most ends up in China and India where companies can get by with minimal pollution controls and low wages among people with…
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The Only Way Out for Appalachia’s Coalfields
The boom and bust cycles of coal markets have always worked to the advantage of coal companies more than Appalachian communities. In some of Central Appalachia’s coal-producing counties, over 90% of the mineral rights are owned by absentee owners—owners who manipulate local and state governments to keep property taxes low on their holdings. When markets…
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Voting against their best interests
People ask me “Why do Appalachians vote against their own best interests?” Some are friends who are honestly trying to understand the situation from a point of concern. I know that they seek the cause for the discrepancy, rather than assume coal mining families are incapable of making intelligent political decisions. The question still stings…
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Appalachia’s Captive Workforce
To believe that the coal industry has given up their desire for cheap, expendable labor, is, for the lack of a better term—ridiculous.
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Trump Isn’t Creating Coal Jobs, He’s Helping the Industry Make More Money
Before coal miners rejoice the end of “Obama’s War on Coal,” they should realize the war on their jobs isn’t over—that war began well before Barack Obama took the oath of office. Amid the name-calling, political propaganda, and willful ignorance that came as a result of coal industry’s “War on Coal” campaign, many Appalachian miners…
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Without the Union…
I had been raised union and knew the benefits that came with it, but in its absence, I ended up joining thousands of other young men naive enough to believe we didn’t need a union.
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The Problem with Environmental Activism in Appalachia
June 5, 2025: I wrote this not longer after defending my undergraduate thesis on negative environmentalist stereotypes in Appalachia. I later continued this course of study at Virginia Tech as a master’s student in sociology. There, I learned about the non-profit industrial complex and that some larger environmental organizations actually thrive on creating division between…
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The Modern Day Company Town
Most Appalachians raised in coal country can easily describe what a “company town” is. They are littered throughout Appalachia, rows of identically built houses with a few larger homes built on the hillsides for the shift foremen and superintendents. Company towns existed during a time in our history when the coal companies ruled our lives.…
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Everything They’ve Taken, Everything They’ve Left
There are many days I think about all that has happened in our mountains, all that we’ve sacrificed, and I can’t help but have a cathartic release. This was one of them. Nick Mullins, June 5, 2025 I recently made the following comment on a story posted by WVNS Channel 59 entitled “Coal Mining: Then…
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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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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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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…