It’s time to listen to the people

Ronnie Ellis, a journalist who attended our recent mountain witness tour with the members of the House A & R committee, wrote a fantastic op-ed about his experience and the people (KFTC members) he met.

Rep. Harry Moberly is right: It’s one thing to listen to testimony about mountaintop removal — it’s another to witness its effects firsthand.

But the physical evidence at Montgomery Creek in Perry County pales compared with the eloquence of those who spoke to lawmakers Monday during a tour of a mountaintop removal site. McKinley Sumner, Evelyn and Sam Gilbert, Truman Hurt, Ricky Handshoe and Carl Shoupe aren’t your everyday environmental activists. They aren’t in all cases the most worldly or sophisticated spokespeople for a cause. But they have lived the experience of coal — most of them from both sides.

"I have a complicated history with coal,â€ author and musician Silas House said. "My family was able to rise above poverty in large part because of the jobs provided by the coal industry.â€ His mother was proud to be a coal miner’s daughter and his grandfather lost a leg to coal mining, but six months later returned to the mines and worked in them another 20 years.

Read the whole piece here.