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For Julia “Judy” Bonds

You have stolen our land, and used despicable stereotypes of mountain people to justify yourselves to national media. You consigned hundreds of thousands of men and boys to horrible working conditions with great loss of life and limb. You took away freedom and dignity and trampled on civil liberties. You brought violence to bear against people who stood up for their rights. You evicted the widow and orphans from their homes. You polluted our rivers first, then our groundwater. You polluted and corrupted and cheapened the political process in this state, and made a mockery of government by the people. You abandoned our communities without sewage and water systems and left our school systems in poverty. You shifted your tax burden onto the people of this state. You condemned miners to the living death of black lung while denying them just compensation. You destroyed our roads with overloaded coal trucks and bragged publicly about breaking the law. You condemned those counties most dependent on coal to the greatest and most intractable poverty in this state. You filled our rivers with silt and increased the dangers of flooding. You tore families apart. You destroyed the habitat of our native animals. You deny workers the right to organize. You discourage the development of alternative energy sources. You lay off WV deep miners to employ out-of-state strip miners. 27 years ago today, you killed 125 men, women and children on Buffalo Creek and dared to blame it on God. You are flattening our mountains and filling in our hollows, and this is the last evil you will do.

—Denise Giardina, Coalfield Justice Rally, February 1999