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Mountaintop removal coal mining is destroying the mountains and threatening the health and lives of communities across Appalachia. But people in Appalachia are standing up and today they need your support. Residents of Blair, West Virginia have noticed increased activity from mining company Arch Coal around Blair Mountain — site of the largest labor uprising in American history. Residents are becoming increasingly concerned about Arch’s activities and fear they will move forward with plans to mine the historic location. Take action today – call Arch Coal to save Blair Mountain. Arch Coal has four planned operations on Blair Mountain, some of which intrude onto the battlefield. Today, this multi-billion dollar company will announce its profits from the fourth quarter of last year. Whatever those earnings are, the company has a responsibility to the community in which it operates. Folks in Appalachia won’t stand for Arch Coal’s plan to destroy their community and our nation’s history just so the coal company can increase its profit margin, and we shouldn’t either. Call Arch’s St. Louis headquarters: (314) 994-2700 To allow Arch Coal to destroy Blair Mountain would be to tear out a crucial page of American labor history and burn it. But even more important than the history are the lives of the people living at the foot of this mountain today.
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Blair Mountain …
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Blair Mountain used to be an idyllic place in southwestern West Virginia where the hills rolled for miles. Blair is also a historical treasure—the mountain is the site of arguably the most important post-Civil War battlefield in the US. Now, Arch Coal is planning to decimate this historical treasure for the tiny seams of coal that lie beneath the mountain. This is mountaintop removal coal mining at its worst. These devastating coal mining practices could not happen without nine big banks (Bank of Montreal, BBVA, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial, Royal Bank of Scotland, Union Bank, and Bank of America as a lead lender) pumping $250 million dollars into keeping Arch coal afloat last November. Protect Blair Mountain and tell these 9 big bank CEOs to STOP funding Arch Coal. Blair used to be a thriving community of 700 people—and now has merely 50 residents because of the extreme dangers posed by existing mountaintop removal mines near the town. And the people who stayed behind live with constant dynamite blasts behind their town, carcinogenic dust rolling off the mine sites, and heavy metal contamination. Enough is enough. When bank financing enables Arch Coal to displace an entire community and wreack havoc on mother nature we cannot remain silent. If we want to protect the future of these communities and our climate we need to cut funding for coal.
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CONGRESS: Pass Restoring Veterans’ Trust Act
Like many veterans, when I returned home from Iraq, I sought care at a VA facility near my home.
So you can imagine why the politicization of the disclosures at the VA facility in Phoenix has gotten me down. The truth is, we’ve all known for some time that the veterans’ health system needs real reform.
And while President Obama and Secretary Shinseki have done admirable work to reduce the backlog, we’ve long needed solutions that get to the root of the problems.
This week, the U.S. Senate has a chance to take meaningful action to improve veterans’ health care, and I hope they take it this time.
Here’s what the bill does:
1. Authorizes the VA to hire new doctors and nurses, closing the gap between a growing number of veterans returning home to seek care and the number of health care professionals able to deliver it.
2. Allows the Department of Veterans Affairs to increase the number of locations delivering care by leasing twenty-seven new health facilities in eighteen states.
3. To address long-term needs, the legislation awards scholarships and forgives student debt for health care professionals willing to accept positions at the VA.
These are important steps Congress should take right now in order to improve short and long-term care for our nation’s veterans.
Tell the Senate to support the Restoring Veterans’ Trust Act of 2014.
http://action.votevets.org/va-reform
In late February, right-wing Senators led a filibuster against similar legislation that would have struck at the root of problems within the VA system.
It’s time to end the talk and take some action.
Jon Soltz
Iraq War Veteran and Chairman
VoteVets.org
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An Idea Becomes Reality
Momentum Builds As Seattle City Council Unanimously Approves $15 Minimum Wage
Last month, we wrote about the tale of two Washingtons: just a day after 41 Republican Senators in Washington, DC prevented a federal minimum wage increase to $10.10 from even being debated, Seattle, Washington announced a plan to raise its minimum wage to $15 per hour.
On Tuesday, the city made that deal official, with the city council voting unanimously to approve a $15 minimum wage. It will be phased in over the next seven years and will be the highest in the United States.
The minimum wage has been advancing in cities and states around the country, and not the halls of Congress, for some time. But the ambition of Seattle’s increase has sparked a particular flame for other cities and states considering a bigger increase. The Seattle Times reports that “organizers who pushed a $15 minimum wage in Seattle are looking at their next targets,” including Bellevue, Spokane, or an increase in the state minimum wage.
“It’s expanding the range of the possible,” said Paul Sonn, general counsel and program director for the National Employment Law Project. “Seattle was a breakthrough.”
Think Progress, meanwhile, has published a detailed investigative report on the fight to bring a living wage to Seattle, featuring a coalition of a millionaire, a socialist, and some Taco Bell workers. While it notes that “some things about that process may be unique to Seattle,” the ingredients for a $15 minimum wage “are completely portable, and could soon come to a city near you.”
At the same time, the ambition of Seattle’s increase — a full-time minimum wage worker making $15 per hour will earn over $30,000 annually — has generated broader discussion among national thought leaders and policy analysts. The Seattle entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, a prominent supporter of the $15 campaign, spells out the argument in favor of the increase in a New York Times column entitled “Well Paid Workers Strengthen Local Economies“:
If the minimum wage had tracked productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.70 today; had it tracked the wages of us in the top 1 percent, it would be $28. Raising it to only $15 in a city as prosperous and expensive as Seattle isn’t a risky experiment. The risky experiment has been the 30 years of trickle-down policy that enriched a few of us while eviscerating the middle class.
The most insidious part of trickle down isn’t the idea that if the rich get richer, that’s good for the economy. It is that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. A $15-an-hour wage isn’t a risky and untried policy in Seattle. It is the natural evolution of common-sense economic thinking.
BOTTOM LINE: Conservatives really believe that the economy grows from the top down – that if we give more to CEOs and billionaires it will trickle down to the rest of us. But decades of trickle down policy has done nothing but give millionaires and billionaires more, leaving middle and worker class families with less and destabilizing our entire economy. Seattle’s $15 minimum wage is a bold alternative approach–one that will help the economy grow from the middle class out and build an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few. And it appears that the wave could be catching on.
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Brad Schenck, Rainforest Action Network
Photo: Chelsea Matthews / RAN
June 5th is World Environment Day, and Thomas’ Langurs monkeys need your help.
This highly localized primate—sometimes called “punky monkeys”—live only in rainforests on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, in Indonesia. Indonesia has the largest rainforest in all of Asia and it’s a global hotspot of animal and human diversity, home to hundreds of distinct cultures and over 3,000 animal species like this one. Conflict Palm Oil is destroying their only home and is one of the leading causes of climate change—but you can change that.
With your help, we’re calling out 20 of the top snack food brands that are using palm oil tied to rainforest destruction and demanding that they change their ways.
No punky monkeys—or Sumatran tigers, or orangutans, or any other wildlife that calls the rainforest home—should lose their homes for cheap snack foods.
Can you chip in $5 to help stop Indonesia’s rainforests from being bulldozed for Conflict Palm Oil?
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Be a Seed for Change 
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