Green Walk for Jobs and Justice
By We don’t discuss specific activist campaigns much here and I need to do a better job of it. I’m particularly interested in smaller movements that are doing amazing work to create change. We can talk about Occupy (and I have from time to time) but the different groups that make up the faces of protest and activism in this country that come together during times like Occupy can often be forgotten about.
One such group is the Earth Quaker Action Team, which is a leader in the anti-mountaintop removal movement in Pennsylvania. I’ve discussed the horrors of mountaintop removal coal mining before, including the destruction of entire mountains, massive levels of pollution, and the serious degradation of Appalachian communities. EQAT is in the middle of a march from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to draw attention to mountaintop removal and the stranglehold that the fossil fuel industries have over Pennsylvania’s economy. EQAT’s reason to end in Pittsburgh is to hold a rally at the PNC Bank building, hoping to convince PNC to pull out of investing in mountaintop removal. Several banks in the U.S. and Europe have already done this, including Bank of America, but PNC has not, perhaps not surprisingly given its location in coal country. Yet PNC has tried to greenwash its actions for years, winning awards for its green building construction while at the same time being one of the two largest funders of one of the two greatest on-going environmental disasters in the United States (along with the disappearance of southern Louisiana).
Today, EQAT is holding the second of their three big rallies during the walk, at the statehouse in Harrisburg. If you are in Harrisburg, stop on by. As most of you aren’t, you should follow the walk on Twitter at the very least @eqat or on Facebook. These are the people who are on the ground trying to save Appalachia from discussion and wean us off our addiction to coal. They deserve our attention and support. Moreover, any of you with a PNC account could close it and tell them you are doing so because they fund mountaintop removal.