coal mining
April 20, 2022 -
This month marks one year since 1,100 members of the United Mine Workers of America went on strike at Warrior Met Coal in Brookwood, Alabama — a company that was formed from the bankruptcy of Walter Energy and that's now owned by hedge funds. A recent U.S. Senate hearing focusing on Wall Street greed featured testimony from striking Warrior Met miner Braxton Wright calling for passage of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act.
December 16, 2021 -
Four years of unprecedented rainfall left much of West Virginia devastated. Now residents, activists, and regulators struggle to reform the logging and mining industries that bear much of the responsibility.
August 27, 2021 -
This Labor Day weekend, people will gather in West Virginia to mark the centennial of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in U.S. history. We look at what led to the bloody battle — when 10,000 Black, white, and immigrant coal miners joined together to fight for union rights against coal companies allied with corrupt law enforcement — and how it's being commemorated.
July 26, 2018 -
Vernon Haltom of West Virginia's Coal River Mountain Watch was among those who testified about coal's future before a congressional subcommittee this week. The testimony of Haltom — whose group is working to end mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia — details what boosting coal means for the communities where it's extracted.
December 14, 2017 -
Daniel Boyd's graphic novel "Carbon" features a villain modeled on former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who just completed a prison stint for his role in the deadly 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia. We talked with Boyd about Blankenship's political aspirations and his state's troubled relationship with coal.
December 10, 2015 -
The UAW wins in Tennessee. A West Virginia coal boss is found guilty. A populist Democrat wins the governor's race in Louisiana. And firefighters organize in Mississippi.
September 1, 2015 -
Fossil-fuel apologists have accused the Obama administration of waging a war on coal, but the real war is the one coal companies have for years carried out against the health and safety of their workforce.
