“Mountaintop removal does exactly what it says: A mountaintop is stripped of trees, blown to bits with vast amounts of explosives, then pushed aside by giant equipment—all to expose a layer of coal to be mined.”
This type of mining for coal is practiced on a vast scale vastly practiced in the Appalachian region and has a tremendous impact on the environment and the people.
Tricia Shapiro, author of the book “Mountain Justice: Homegrown Resistance to Mountaintop Removal, for the Future of Us All“, was a guest at Western Carolina University at the beginning of March, talking to students about the effects of coal mining in central Appalachia while showing selections from the recently released documentary Low Coal by Mari-Lynn Evans and Jordan Freeman.
WCU Assistant Professor David Henderson talked with Shapiro on her book prior to the screening of the documentary.
Shapiro has been following and writing about efforts to end strip mining for coal in Appalachia since 2004, primarily as a freelance embedded reporter with the ongoing civil disobedience campaign against mountaintop removal. She is the author of more than 20 nonfiction books for children and young adults, published under the name Tricia Andryszewski. A native of Pittsburgh, Shapiro lives on a remote mountain homestead in western North Carolina, near the Tennessee border.
The march on Blair Mountain, June 6 -11, is the next major event in the campaign against mountaintop removal. Details and information on how to participate can be found at http://www.friendsofblairmountain.org .
