KFTC Blog

In the final week of November, KFTC members Russell Oliver, Stanley Sturgill, Henry Jackson, Teri Blanton, Roger Ohlman, Mary Dan Easley and Mary Love converged in Charleston, West Virginia – alongside hundreds of other concerned people – to testify to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) against the agency’s proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan.

“Now that we have cleaner, safer and cheaper ways to generate energy, the only question should be: how can we create more of those new jobs right here and right now in Appalachia? I know this because not only have I lived it, I’m still trying my best to keep living it,” said Stanley Sturgill of Harlan County, a retired coal miner and KFTC member.

For the past several years members in Scott County have hosted an art and dessert auction known as the Arty Pie Party! This years event was another rousing success, with over 50 pieces of art or baked goods being up for auction.

The patrons of the Scott County Arty Pie Party have been incredibly generous, with local artists donating original pieces, members donating works they have collected over the years, delicious baked goods, and originals by well known Kentucky artists. Every year this event is the chapter’s fundraiser, and this one did not disappoint!

Heyra Avila, an animated young woman from Florence, addressed a group of us fellow northern Kentuckians on a Wednesday night at the end of long day. Her energy was infectious. Her story made a deep impression. She opened up about a precarious, hard-to-imagine trek that she and her family made over a decade ago between Mexico and the U.S.

Her parents, wanting to give their children a more solid future, had chosen to leave their small, metal sheet roofed home not too far from the U.S. border and try their luck over here. Heyra described herself as “lucky.” The dangerous journey they made across the dessert when she was four was safer than it was for most pursuing the same route. Her family had the good fortune of finding a car, providing them with overnight shelter and preventing them from complete exposure to the desert elements or predators—likely both animal and human.