Posted on behalf of @Symbolman:
Image may be NSFW.
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I come from mining stock. One of my ancestors was blown to hell underground with a score or more of others, whose bones still lay buried under tons of rock in Colorado. My sisters blessed a statue dedicated to those brave men a few years back. I've placer mined gold with family in the bush of Alaska, using heavy machinery, and prospected for uranium in the bush of that incredible state by helicopters 18 hours a day for two summers, under a relentless sun. So I know something about this issue, it's in my blood.
This is what led me and my wife in 2006 to take a trip to West Virginia to film, document and witness firsthand the coal mining technique referred to as mountaintop removal. In earlier times generations of men and machinery wrested coal (and in some areas it's still that brutal) from the bowels of the earth with a pick and shovel. Many will stay there, forever, encased in coal, while families grieve and suffer in poverty.
Click for video of West Virginia graves being mined and continue reading...
