Elizabeth Warren Natalie Tennant and Mountaintop Removal

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) traveled to Shepherdstown, West Virginia today to appear at a rally for West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, who is running against Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) for U.S. Senate.

Warren’s message in a nutshell — Capito represents Wall Street and Tennant represents Main Street.

Unless it comes to Wall Street and its coal corporations.

Then they both represent Wall Street.

Earlier this year, the Charleston Gazette ran an opinion article by Bob Kincaid titled “The Sound of Silence.”

Kincaid is co-founder of the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Campaign and president of Coal River Mountain Watch.

“The number of West Virginia’s leading politicians who remain silent on the health crisis exploding along with the 5.5 million pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil explosives going off every business day in Southern West Virginia’s Mountaintop Removal zone is a shameful reality: Shelley Moore Capito, Joe Manchin, Jay Rockefeller, Nick Joe Rahall, David McKinley, Earl Ray Tomblin,” Kincaid wrote.

“None of these politicians have ever dared publicly ask why people living in Southern West Virginia suffer disproportionate levels of heart disease; why they die from shocking levels of cancer in their Mountaintop Removal communities; why unconscionable numbers of birth defects afflict them; why excess deaths stalk our towns and ‘keep the lights on’ in our funeral homes.”

“We know by her own silence regarding the scientific reports showing all the toxic horrors inflicted upon Mountaintop Removal communities that Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, the presumptive Republican nominee for the seat being vacated at the end of the year by Sen. Rockefeller, cares not the least about disease, suffering and death in the southern West Virginia Mountaintop Removal zone. Her silence is ample evidence of her disdain.”

After her rally today,  I asked Tennant if she would stand with those regular people in the coal fields of West Virginia who are suffering at the hands of Wall Street’s coal barons.

“Why don’t you take a position on mountaintop removal mining?”

“Hey what are you up to?” Tennant asked.

I’m up to asking you a question you have refused to answer.

Earlier this year, Tennant came to Berkeley Springs, and she refused to answer any questions about mountaintop removal mining.

So, what’s your position on mountaintop removal mining?

“It’s a balanced approach,” she says and walks away.

Do you support a moratorium?

No answer.

Do you support a moratorium?

No answer.

In his Gazette op-ed earlier this year, Kincaid asks whether Tennant will “join in Capito’s silence?”

Apparently yes.

“Does Ms. Tennant have the strength and courage to lend her voice to those who have none?” Kincaid asked.

Apparently not.

“If elected, will Ms. Tennant commit to introducing a Senate version of HR 526, the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency (ACHE) Act?”

Apparently not.

“This critically important bill provides a way for people to find out why and, more importantly, how they are being poisoned in communities near Mountaintop Removal sites,” Kincaid writes. “It would also have no impact on anyone currently working on mountaintop removal sites already permitted to operate.”

“How could a person of conscience not support such a bill?” Kincaid asks.

Good question.

 

 

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