Tag Archives: Mining

Host: Gillian L.

Where: Rep. DelBene’s office, Bothell

When: Friday at 12:00 p.m.

What: Join us at Rep. Delbene’s office to ask her to vote no on fast track Trade Promotion Authority. Currently before Congress, this bill would pave the way for quick passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive trade deal referred to as “NAFTA on steroids.” Rep. DelBene has not yet said that we can count on her vote against fast track, so we’ll deliver shoes with the message “Don’t walk away from workers.” Bring an old pair of shoes if you have them!

Can you join us in Bothell on Friday?

Click below for more details and to RSVP:

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Chick-fil-A

05/07/2015 Nativegrl77

Help The Simpsons Co-Creator Sam Simon Take a Bite out of Chick-fil-A’s Animal Cruelty

Sam Simon and Mercy For Animals

Sign Sam’s petition

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Don’t miss the final story in our Product of Mexico series: Children work the fields

12/19/2014 Nativegrl77

Dear Readers:Meet Alejandrina. She was 11 when Los Angeles Times journalists first began reporting her story. Alejandrina, a little girl who likes lip gloss and longs to go to back to school, works 14 hours a day picking chile peppers for a farm that supplies a U.S. distributor.

Mexican law requires workers to be at least 15, but Alejandrina is among an estimated 100,000 children younger than that who work the fields. As she told The Times: “I work because we don’t have any money and we need money to eat things.”

Times reporter Richard Marosi and photographer Don Bartletti tracked Alejandrina’s nomadic existence for a year. Read her story, which is also the story of so many others: Children harvest crops and sacrifice dreams in Mexico’s fields

This marks the fourth and final piece in our Product of Mexico series, an investigation into conditions on Mexican farms that supply Americans with much of our tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and other produce.

We’ve told readers about unbearable conditions at labor camps and taken them into Bioparques, a supplier to Wal-Mart and one of Mexico’s biggest tomato exporters, where Mexican officials found workers held captive. We’ve examined company stores, where a lack of price tags and big mark-ups leave many farmworkers trapped in a cycle of debt.

I want to thank all of you for reading this important series and sharing it with others. Here’s a sneak peek at a video coming Monday that features Marosi and Bartletti talking about the reporting behind this eye-opening series.

Davan Maharaj, Editor

P.S. We’ve created some extra content available only to our subscribers. Bartletti, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist whose interest in photography dates back to his service in Vietnam, has covered Mexico for decades. He shares some of his best photos and memories of what it took to capture the images.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Emergency call to Save Blair Mountain …Amanda Starbuck, Rainforest Action Network

06/07/2014 Nativegrl77

Tell Arch Coal To Stop Mining Blair Mountain

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 CEO, Steven Leer, today and tell him that Appalachian communities should not fall victim to pad his profit margin.

Call Arch’s St. Louis headquarters: (314) 994-2700
Call Arch’s Charleston, WV headquarters: (304) 760-2400

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.

		For the mountains and for healthy communities,
		Amanda Starbuck Energy & Finance Program Director Twitter: @DirtyEnergy

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Don’t surface mine Livingston Mountain

05/07/2014 Nativegrl77

We strongly urge the Board of Commissioners to accept the unanimous recommendation of the Planning Commission to remove Livingston Mountain from the proposed update to the Surface Mining Overlay. The residential density of Livingston Mountain, along with unsuitable roads for this type of operation, makes this area a completely inappropriate area for mining.

The negative impacts to residents in an area around a mining operation include dangerous traffic conditions; loss of peace and tranquility due to the use of noisy, heavy trucks; damage to structures from shockwaves caused by mining explosions; and health hazards from silica-rich gravel dust. Additionally, mining operations have a severe impact to the surrounding area’s surface water runoff, as well as the underground aquifers, wells, and wetlands in the area.

Given that there is already a mining concession on Livingston Mountain which is detrimental to this part of Clark County, we implore the Commissioners to take the necessary steps to ensure proper monitoring and enforcement of standards that protect public safety, water quality, noise, and traffic concerns that hurt the public good. We support appointing a mining ombudsman to oversee the current mining operation to ensure compliance with appropriate public safety standards.

Finally, we insist that if there be any future proposals for mining on Livingston Mountain that they continue to be subjected to the legislative type IV land use review standards since these standards offer the greatest opportunity for public input.