Portside

Living with the monsters

Coal mining destroyed Appalachia's mountaintops. Then came the floodwaters.

Appalachia's fracking boom has failed to deliver on promises of jobs and benefits to local economies, according to a new study. The analysis concluded that about 90 percent of the wealth created from shale gas extraction leaves local communities.

My part of the world is full of people who, according to most of my liberal friends, “vote against their own interests”.

Here be Socialists; NYPD apologizes for Stonewall raid; Straight Pride; Fairstein's penance; GOP red (state) handed; Trouble in conservative paradise; The real Appalachia

Saving the land cannot be separated from saving the people, their livelihood, health and the best of their way of life, from the reach of profiteers. The first peoples, the new pioneers of mountain farms, veterans of mining, labor in unions and not, coal-resistance activists have tales that can teach their more modernized would-be helpers. Learn to listen. It will take patience and perseverance to renew coal country, and the rest of the Earth too.

In the infancy of the Trump presidency, a new community defense network is espousing anti-racist and anti-capitalist politics to build coalitions in cities, small towns, and rural areas across America. Redneck Revolt recruits predominantly poor and working class white people away from reactionary politics. The organization advances an analysis of their class condition and white supremacy’s role in upholding the wealth and privilege of a small, white elite.