No one in Washington, DC–outside of President Obama–will determine the future of clean water and health care in the Appalachian coalfields more than EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.

This Wednesday, December 1st, marks the end of the public comment period over her agency’s proposed guidelines to crack down on the egregious and irreversible impacts of mountaintop removal mining on federally protected streams, watersheds and Appalachian communities.

After forty years of reckless devastation and criminal violations, after all the shoutin’ is over by Big Coal lobbyists and their bankrolled politicians, the fate of clean water and human rights in the Appalachian coalfields is now in the hands of Lisa Jackson.

Will the EPA stand up to the Big Coal lobby and their misleading ad campaigns, and stand by their own guidance rules based on the Clean Water Act and science?

Or will Lisa Jackson and the EPA falter and make some compromise that will allow Appalachia to be needlessly crucified for another generation of mountaintop removal mining?

(photo by Chad Stevens)

With a growing health care crisis in the coalfields, besieged residents now are literally dealing with the rising deathtoll from reckless coal mining in their communities.

Here’s the truth: Providing less than 8 percent of national coal production, highly mechanized mountaintop removal mining is crucifying Appalachian streams and watersheds, and jobs and any economic diversification in the most impoverished communities in the nation, and the health and lives of American citizens.

Says Coal River Valley resident Bo Webb, the recent winner of the Purpose Prize, who lives beneath a mountaintop removal operation in West Virginia:

“The EPA, in the interest of public health, should use its power and authority to immediately place a moratorium on all mountaintop removal operations until a thorough health study can be conducted in mountain communities that are daily exposed to more than 6 million pounds of diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate explosive fallout.”

Returning from her holidays, Jackson and her EPA associates might have seen the grossly misleading Big Coal ad blitz in the Washington airports with the headline: Don’t Let the EPA Destroy Appalachian Jobs

Funded by a widely denounced Washington, DC lobby firm, the ad campaign blatantly distorts the realities of job loss and overlooks the real devastation in the coalfields from mountaintop removal.

The real banner should have read: Dear EPA, Please Don’t Let Big Coal Destroy Appalachians.

You can make a public comment on the EPA’s guidance rules here by December 1st.

Written by Destiny Lopez for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

In the United States, Latinas are the group that would most benefit from the push to provide no-cost birth control to all women – because they are among the ones least able to afford birth control. According to a recent survey commissioned by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Latinas in their prime childbearing years, ages 18 – 34, are more likely than all other young women to use prescription birth control methods – like the Pill – inconsistently because they cannot afford the insurance co-payments.  Inconsistent use of birth control lowers its effectiveness. 

As a Latina leader on reproductive health care, I know that young Latinas are the women most likely to have struggled with the cost of prescription birth control at some point in their lives.  These women ― our sisters, cousins, co-workers, friends, and mothers ― are balancing mortgage and tuition payments with putting food on the table for their families, not to mention paying for their own health care. Lacking sufficient resources to pay every bill, they will sometimes save money by not taking their birth control as prescribed. 

As the economic downturn drags on without relief for low-income women, this precarious financial juggling act has become increasingly harmful to women’s health. The doctors and nurses who staff Planned Parenthood health centers have seen a growing number of patients who must choose between basics like rent and health care costs such as monthly health insurance premiums and prescription co-payments. Read more

The American Family Association is confronting its designation as a hate group via its phony news service, One News Now:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is defaming a number of pro-family organizations by adding them to its list of “hate groups.”

The leftist legal organization has issued a list of alleged “hate groups” that includes mainstream Christian ministries because of their opposition to the sin of homosexuality. Dr. Gary Cass of DefendChristians.org, a ministry of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, tells OneNewsNow the American Family Association earned a spot in the ranks with other groups that are usually considered racist or violent.

“To say that anybody who has a principled objection to homosexuality [and] the impact that that sinful lifestyle has on individuals and on society is somehow morally equivalent to overt racism and violence is absolutely defamatory,” Cass contends.

However, just as in the case of the other supposed moral values groups who have cried foul over their designations as hate groups and profiles, it’s not what the AFA is saying that’s important. It’s what the organization is not saying.

Nowhere in the article is a quote from anyone in the AFA, nor does the article address a key reason why the organization is seen as a hate group by SPLC, i.e. the words of its director of analysis for government and policy Bryan Fischer:

The AFA seeks to support “traditional moral values,” but in recent years it has seemed to specialize in “combating the homosexual agenda.” In 2009, it hired Bryan Fischer, the former executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, as its director of analysis for government and policy. . . Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” (Ironically, the elder Wildmon was widely denounced as an anti-Semite after suggesting that Jews control the media, which the AFA says “shows a genuine hostility towards Christians.”) Fischer has described Hitler as “an active homosexual” who sought out gays “because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough.” He proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior in another 2010 blog post and has advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy. In a 2010 “action alert,” the AFA warned that if homosexuals are allowed to openly serve in the military, “your son or daughter may be forced to share military showers and barracks with active and open homosexuals.”

Gays aren’t the AFA’s only enemies. “Islam is a totalitarian political ideology,” Fischer said in August 2010. “It is as racist as the KKK. … Allowing a mosque to be built in town is fundamentally no different that granting a building permit to a KKK cultural center built in honor of some King Kleagle.” In late 2009, he suggested that all Muslims should be banned from joining the U.S. military.

The irony of Cass being interviewed in the article is that his group, the Christian Anti-Defense Commission, was profiled by SPLC but not considered as a hate group. Cass has called for an elimination of “taxpayers monies” to SPLC, something he has been advocating since April.

Cass also said in the article:

“To say that anybody who has a principled objection to homosexuality [and] the impact that that sinful lifestyle has on individuals and on society is somehow morally equivalent to overt racism and violence is absolutely defamatory.”

However, he did not address SPLC’s reasons for profiling his group. Nor did he address questionable things his organization has done in the past which may have contributed its profile, such as defending the work of the discredited Paul Cameron (a man who has in the past made up stories about gay men castrating children) or defending the actions of a church which sought to exorcise a “homosexual demon” out of a child.

Claiming to be victims of an “anti-Christian leftist conspiracy” may gain Cass and the AFA some initial support, but sooner or later they and members of other organizations profiled by the SPLC will have to answer questions regarding their actions.

You cannot continue to cry “victim” when there is a paper trail showing you to be a bully.

Related posts:

Concerned Women for America – endorsing hateful anti-gay comics and bad data

Why the National Organization for Marriage was profiled for its anti-gay hatred

The disagreement between the Southern Poverty Law Center and the new groups designated as anti-gay hate groups hit the Washington Post this week.

And while I am happy with the coverage, I am not happy with how these groups are trying to cover their tracks. They are trying to make it seem as if they are being attacked because they have made stands against gay marriage.

The key person pushing this argument is Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

Perkins has even had the temerity to demand an apology from the SPLC:

Family Research Council will continue to champion marriage and family as the foundation of our society and will not acquiesce to those seeking to silence the Judeo-Christian views held by millions of Americans. We call on the Southern Poverty Law Center to apologize for this slanderous attack and attempted character assassination.”

Let’s be clear about something – the claim that these groups, particularly FRC,  are being attacked merely for their stance against gay marriage or their stance against homosexuality is a lie.

FRC in particular has a long history of demonizing the lgbt community. Via studies, briefs, and research papers heavily reliant on junk science and fear tactics, FRC attacked the lgbt community long before discussions of gay marriage even came on the scene.

Unfortunately some of these past studies, briefs and press releases are no longer on FRC’s web page.  In December of 2008, I noticed this and emailed the organization asking for an explanation. I was told the following:

The papers that you inquired about have been removed from our website indefinitely due to the fact that they have outdated sources.

The email further pointed out that there were several other studies which remained on the web page.  The irony is that these studies used the same material the “outdated” papers used, which is another way of saying that FRC got rid of the papers but used the same bad sources.

Luckily for me though, John Aravosis of Americablog created a webpage which featured statements by the Family Research Council (and other religious right groups and figures) pertaining to the lgbt community. The following are just a few things said about the lgbt community:

“Homosexuals say they don’t want the children, but boy they put a lot of energy into going after them.” – Robert Knight of FRC writing in a Focus on the Family newsletter, quoted by People for the American Way, “Hostile Climate,” 1997, p.15.

“Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.” – “Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys,” Family Research Council publication, July 1999

“There is a strong undercurrent of pedophilia in the homosexual subculture. Homosexual activists want to promote the flouting of traditional sexual prohibitions at the earliest possible age….they want to encourage a promiscuous society – and the best place to start is with a young and credulous captive audience in the public schools.” – Robert Knight, Family Research Council.

“In the United States, homosexual activists are more circumspect about their efforts to gain access to children…homosexual activists publicly disassociate themselves from pedophiles as part of a public relations strategy”- “Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys,” FRC publication, July 1999

“You don’t have to eat the stale crumbs off the dirty floor, which is basically what lesbianism is.” – AFTAH (Americans for Truth) Web site interview with FRC’s Yvette Cantu.

I should mention that throughout all of the complaints and claims of persecution, neither Perkins nor any of the other persons or groups profiled by the SPLC have issued the short clarifying statements of “we have not done these things” or “our statements have been misconstrued.”

Make no mistake about it. These groups have been spooked by being called out on their lies and are on the defensive. And now they are attempting to flip the argument.

But you can’t make yourself look like a victim when a paper trial exposes you as a bully.

No matter how Perkins tries to spin the situation, he has a lot of answering to do at the very least in regards to FRC’s past statements against the lgbt community.

Perhaps he should be the one to make the apologies.

Related posts:

Newly named anti-gay hate groups plead victimhood but do not address charges

Talking Points Memo picks up the SPLC anti-gay hate groups story

Ignoring your hate group status won’t make it go away

Family Research Council, American Family Association named as anti-gay hate groups

18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda

10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked

The US is the fattest of 33 countries says a recent report from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, a group that advises governments on economic growth, social development and financial stability. Mexico and New Zealand are next runners up and the thinnest countries are India and Indonesia.

Half of Americans were overweight in 1980 and now 70 percent tip the scales as overweight says the report. (And that’s before Thanksgiving gluttony.) By 2020,  three-fourths of Americans are expected to be overweight, says OECD, And in 2030? Eighty-six percent of Americans will be overweight says an 2008 article in the journal Obesity.

It’s easy to see why US kids are becoming fat. Instead of playing outside like they used to (sometimes locked outside by harried Moms) many are videogame addicts and hooked on other indoor electronics. Instead of walking, biking or taking the bus to school and activities, they rely on Mom’s trusty taxi. (The New York Times says both adults and children who hoof it are less obese.) And instead of the occasional Tootsie Roll Pop, a  tsunami of high fructose corn syrup foods are huckstered to them.

Worse, many kids live in food deserts where the only “oases” are golden arches and Colonel Sanders. Ninth graders whose schools are close to fast food franchises are more likely to be obese says a 2010 study by the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. And school lunch programs are often dumping grounds for cheese, milk and meat thanks to USDA support of the dairy and meat industries.

Food is also cheaper than it was — especially bad food — with super-size prices at fast food restaurants and drive-thru restaurants. And, snacks are just plain more available, hawked in places that used to be food free like retail stores.

The demise of the sit down family meal is also a factor in obesity says the Star-Tribune. Structured family meals give a sense of safety and security to children at the same time they teach “healthful eating habits.” In addition to being fed with food, at sit down family meals, children are “fed” with parental attention, Leave it to Beaver style. Leave a person alone with a TV as a dinner partner, and they can easily polish off a entire pizza, especially because with no one is watching.

In fact, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found substance abuse — which includes food addiction –  is significantly lower in families that eat together three times a week.

Fashion also enables fatness. Yoga pants and leggings may have grown out of the fitness and body aware movement but they “fit” even as someone is packing on the pounds. So do baggy and low hung hip hop fashions. And clothes that aren’t stretch or baggy? Women’s size fives are now size zeros thanks to size inflation. In fact, size inflation is so dramatic, today’s size zeros can probably not slither into size tens at Goodwill and Salvation Army thrift stores! Even the arms won’t fit.

And then there’s the comparison factor. People don’t compare their own size to the last generation (who wore vintage fashions), they compare it to the people they sit next to. Unfortunately, the results can be as skewed as comparing what you eat at Thanksgiving dinner to what the person next to you had.

Apparently some organizations who are on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list and profiles of anti-gay hate groups aren’t happy about it and their spokespeople are addressing the issue.

But the venue that they chose to address SPLC’s list and the way that they are saying (or rather what they are not saying) raises some questions as to the accuracy of their complaints.

Coral Ridge Ministries’s Robert Knight, Concerned Women for America’s Wendy Wright, and Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition head Gary L. Cass all responded in outraged tones over SPLC’s either profiling or designating their organizations as anti-gay hate groups.

The venue where they choose to address the charges was on the pages of World Net Daily, an online publication which is infamous for its anti-gay rhetoric.

A writer on the site, Les Kinsolving, has in the past referred to the lgbt community as the “sodomy lobby.”

In October of this year, he called a judge’s order to stop enforcement of the military’s ban on gay and lesbian troops in the military as a “disease ridden judicial decision.”

In August of this year, the publication dropped conservative writer Ann Coulter as a keynote speaker from a conference it held because she earlier spoke at a conference held by a gay Republican group.

And in February of this year, another writer on World Net Daily, Molotov Mitchell, spoke out in favor of Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” bill, even evoking Martin Luther King Jr’s name in defense of it.

Joining Cass, Perkins, and Knight was Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in an official statement which may not have been put out to World Net Daily specifically but was still picked up by the publication.

The irony of appearing in an anti-gay online publication in order to complain about being unfairly targeted as anti-gay seemed to have escaped Perkins, Wright, Knight, and Cass. This is probably because they were too busy pleading victimhood.

Knight - “Smearing legitimate groups merely for disagreeing about homosexuality is a very hateful act.”

Perkins – “The Left’s smear campaigns of conservatives is being driven by the clear evidence that the American public is losing patience with their radical policy agenda as seen in the recent election and in the fact that every state, currently more than thirty, that has had the opportunity to defend the natural definition of marriage has done so . . .”

Cass – “We are going to form a coalition of organizations to lobby Congress to withhold funds from SPLC.”

Wright - “If they were to judge according to actions, they would have to have a special section for homosexual groups that vandalize and threaten people who oppose the homosexual agenda. We’ve had death threats against us posted openly on websites because of our work to uphold traditional marriage.”

Of course Wright did not say just which lgbt groups were threatening her organization. Nor did she, Knight, Perkins, or Cass directly address any of the charges lodged by the SPLC, which are listed in a detailed report.

For the record, Knight, whose name pops up several times in the report, is inaccurate when he said that groups are being smeared for voicing a mere objection to homosexuality. SPLC said the following in the report:

Generally, the SPLC’s listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling. Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups.

SPLC also gave a detailed description as to what these falsehoods are, including the claims that:

Gays molest children at a higher rate than heterosexuals,

Same sex parents harm children,

Gays have a lifespan shorter than heterosexuals, and

Gays controlled the Nazi party in Germany and helped orchestrate the Holocaust.

SPLC contends that these groups are knowingly pushing these falsehoods.

Now it would seem to me that through all of the whining and clinging to the cross of victimization done by Knight, Perkins, Wright, and Cass would be some type of declaration that these charges aren’t true.

Maybe some type of short statement such as “we never said these things” or “we were misconstrued.”

But none of the four denied the fact that their organizations are pushing these falsehoods.

So while it seems that these groups aren’t ignoring SPLC’s charges, it’s obvious that they are doing a insanely poor job of refuting them.

Released on the eve of the December strategy review, the Pentagon’s latest “Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan (.pdf)” shows that the insurgents’ momentum has not been broken, despite repeated claims by U.S. and NATO officials.

Here’s how the report describes the insurgency, emphasis mine:

“…Organizationally, the insurgency’s capabilities and operational reach have been qualitatively and geographically expanding, as evidenced by a greater frequency and wider dispersion of insurgent-initiated attacks; however, that spread is being increasingly challenged by the ISAF surge forces conducting operations. Despite the increase in ANSF and ISAF capabilities to counter insurgent attacks, the insurgents’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) continue to evolve in sophistication.”

Despite the boilerplate language attached asserting that new troops are “challenging” the spread of the insurgency, note that the report discloses that the spread continues. This description is virtually identical to that provided in the last progress report from April (.pdf):

“Organizational capabilities and operational reach are qualitatively and geographically expanding. …Insurgents’ tactics, techniques, and procedures for conducting complex attacks are increasing in sophistication and strategic effect. (p. 21)”

…as well as a previous assessment of the insurgency from late 2009 (.ppt):

“Organizational capabilities and operational reach are qualitatively and geographically expanding.”

In other words, the huge number of new troops sent to Afghanistan by President Obama over the course of this year has not stopped the spread of the insurgency.

The report’s clever phrasing, that the troop increase is “challenging” the spread of the insurgency without stopping it, invites the reader to give the Pentagon a grade of “E” for “effort,” like your kindergarten teacher used to do when your coloring projects didn’t turn out quite right.

The truth is that the generals deserve an “F” for “failure” on this war:

• The insurgency continues to grow and increase in sophistication.
• War-related violence in Afghanistan is up 300 percent since 2007, and up an additional 70 percent since last year.
• The number of civilian casualties is skyrocketing.
• This year is already the deadliest year of the war for U.S. troops.

Given the failure of the escalation strategy to produce even marginally strategically significant success, it makes no sense whatsoever for President Obama to extend this failing war through 2014. Doing so will cost the American taxpayer, on the low end, close to half-a-trillion dollars. We need that half-trillion dollars at home to put people back to work, not wasted on a war that’s not making us safer. If Congress and the president keep spending our dollars this way, no one should believe for a second that they’re serious about getting our economy back on track.

When we’re talking about spending half-a-trillion dollars, an “E” for “effort” isn’t good enough. This farce has hurt enough people and destroyed enough prosperity. The president should start bringing troops home immediately and finish doing so before the end of next year. Then we can use the money we’re wasting on this dumb war to create some jobs, for crying out loud.

If you are fed up with your government wasting hundreds of billions on a failing war, help us end it. Join Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook and Twitter.

Every day, more and more people are willing to state the obvious: the Afghanistan War isn’t making us safer and it’s not worth the cost. Now the president is losing a powerful constituency on his Afghanistan policy: almost half of military families say the troops should be brought home .

Let’s think for a minute about why a military family would oppose a war where their loved ones are fighting. There are a lot of possible reasons.

Military families may have become aware that the war isn’t making us safer. That’s supposed to be the military’s job–to defend our country. But military members and their loved ones get an up-close-and-personal view of the brutal nature of the war, of the incredible waste and corruption in the way our tax dollars are spent, and of the resentment caused by a drawn-out military occupation of another country. When they or their loved ones see first-hand that the Taliban’s momentum hasn’t been reversed even after a huge troop increase, it’s understandable they’d decide to oppose this war.

They may know that this year is already the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 450 of those families know this in a terribly personal way–that’s how many U.S. troops have died this year alone, so far, according to iCasualties.org. An empty chair at a Thanksgiving table is more than enough reason to decide it’s time to bring those troops home.

They may know that amputations among those serving in Afghanistan are skyrocketing. Through September 23 of this year, 77 service-members in Afghanistan had to have an extremity cut off, usually because of grave IED injuries. (That’s a 60-percent increase over last year.) A dozen had to have multiple amputations. (That’s double last year’s number.) In September, at the NATO Hospital in Kandahar, doctors amputated a major limb every other day. Seeing your loved one come home without an arm, or a leg, or all of the above is absolutely reason enough to decide you want this war to end.

These families may have a loved one who came home apparently unscathed by a near miss with an IED, only to discover they suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI), “a sudden trauma to the brain caused by force,” like that of an IED shockwave. These injuries can take quite a while to manifest their symptoms, but the result can be crippling. According to ProPublica’s fact sheet on TBI:

“A severe TBI can leave a person almost incapable of functioning. But even a mild TBI — a concussion — can lead to a range of debilitating symptoms: headaches, balance problems, hearing problems, lack of self-control, mood changes, ringing in the ears, problems sleeping and memory loss.”

Anywhere between 115,000 and 400,000 troops have a TBI. Military families may have watched a loved one struggle with strange symptoms from an injured brain, unable to sleep, focus, or balance their emotions, and decide that this war wasn’t worth another 100,000 people having to deal with this pain.

They or a military family member they know may have lost someone to suicide–one military member commits suicide every 36 hours. Last year, there were more than 1,800 suicide attempts by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Those statistics are intimately tied to traumatic brain injuries, especially multiple traumatic brain injuries.

They may be tired of losing their loved ones to multiple, harrowing deployments.

They may be tired of not having a person next to them at the holidays.

They may simply be tired of watching the hope of the next generation wasted on a war that’s not making us safer.

We are grinding our military families into the ground with this brutal, futile war, while its backers sacrifice very little to keep the troops mired in this brutal, futile war. Don’t think for a second that military families don’t notice.

The Afghanistan War isn’t making us safer and it’s not worth the cost. If you want to support the troops by bringing them home, join Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook and Twitter.

I am and have been transparent in my disdain towards Sarah Palin. She took stupid all the way to the bank; is a succubus of, and lightning rod for, the worst sort of Right-wing populist know-nothing nonsense; and is an expert performer of a particularly noxious type of rural blackface. Apparently, Palin follows through on the New Right’s due diligence in her new “book” and includes an obligatory attack on Michelle Obama’s patriotism and the then soon to be First Lady of the United States’ honest comment that, “for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback”

Michelle Obama was pilloried by the Right for daring to suggest that America had long erred in its treatment of non-whites, and that as an American of color she could now be fully proud because the country seemed to finally be living up to its radically inclusive and democratic potential.

The myopia of whiteness knows few limits. The myopic whiteness of Conservativism knows even fewer. As the 2008 presidential campaign reinforced, the White (Conservative) Soul is wedded to the idea that there is just one American story, one American experience, and one approved nostalgia laden narrative. The realities of white supremacy as foundational to a country where supposedly democratic citizenship was bounded by race (and gender, as well as class) is simply too much for some–if not most–to bear.

In short, conservatives need the good lie. It is a tale of a perfect America allows them to sleep easily at night. Unfortunately, not many Americans are afforded that luxury. But clearly, Sarah Palin is.

****

“Attack on Michelle Obama Shows Sarah Palin’s Ignorance of History”

By Richard Cohen

When I was 11, my father thought it was time to show my sister and me the nation’s capital. I have only vague memories of that trip – the heat, the expanse of the White House’s grounds, the Jefferson Memorial. I do remember we took Route 1 through Baltimore (no I-95 yet) and it was there that I saw my first sign with the word “colored” on it – a rooming house, I think. This was 1952, and the United States was an apartheid nation.

It is Sarah Palin who brings back these memories. In her new book, she reportedly takes Michelle Obama to task for her supposedly infamous remark from the 2008 campaign: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” Instantly, Republicans pounced. Among the first to do so was Cindy McCain, who said, “I have and always will be proud of my country.” It was a cheap shot, but her husband’s selection of Palin for the ticket and plenty of cheap shots from Palin (”death panels,” etc.) were yet to come.

Michelle Obama quickly explained herself. She was proud of the turnout in the primaries – so many young people, etc. Evan Thomas, writing perceptively in Newsweek, thought – as I did – that she was saying something else. He dug into her senior thesis at Princeton – “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community” – to find a young woman who felt, or was made to feel, “more aware of my ‘blackness’ than ever before.” This was not a statement of racism. This was a statement of fact.

It’s appalling that Palin and too many others fail to understand that fact – indeed so many facts of American history. They don’t offer the slightest hint that they can appreciate the history of the Obama family and that in Michelle’s case, her ancestors were slaves – Jim Robinson of South Carolina, her paternal great-great grandfather, being one. Even after they were freed they were consigned to peonage, second-class citizens, forbidden to vote in much of the South, dissuaded from doing so in some of the North, relegated to separate schools, restaurants, churches, hotels, waiting rooms of train stations, the back of the bus, the other side of the tracks, the mortuary, the cemetery and, if whites could manage it, heaven itself.

It was the government that oppressed blacks, enforcing the laws that imprisoned them and hanged them for crimes grave and trivial, whipped them if they bolted for freedom and, in the Civil War, massacred them if they were captured fighting for the North. And yet if African Americans hesitate in embracing the mythical wonderfulness of America, they are accused of racism – of having the gall to know more about their own experience and history than Palin and others think they should.

Why do politicians such as Palin and commentators such as Glenn Beck insist that African Americans go blank on their own history – as blank as apparently Palin and Beck are themselves? Why must they insist that blacks join them in embracing a repellent history that once caused America to go to war with itself? Besides Princeton, Michelle Obama is a graduate of Harvard Law School. It’s hardly possible that she is not knowledgeable about the history of African Americans – no Ellis Island for them, immigrants in their colorful native dress waving at the camera. Should she forget it all simply because she went to Ivy League schools – be thankful for what she had gotten and the hell with the rest? Why should she be more grateful than Cindy McCain?

Sarah Palin teases that she might run for president. But she is unqualified – not just in the (let me count the) usual ways, but because she does not know the country. She could not be the president of black America nor of Hispanic America. She knows more about grizzlies than she does about African Americans – and she clearly has more interest in the former than the latter. Did she once just pick up the phone and ask Michelle Obama what she meant by her remark? Did she ask about her background? What it was like at Princeton? What it was like for her parents or her grandparents? I can offer a hint. If they were driving to Washington, they slowed down and stopped where the sign said “colored” – and the irritated Palins of the time angrily hit the horn and went on their way.

As we huddle around our Thanksgiving dinner tables on Thursday, reflecting on the bounty of our nation, recently elected US Sen. Joe Manchin will have the choice to either break bread with West Virginia coal miners or dine at the table of the faltering and violation-ridden Richmond-based Massey Energy company.

As New Zealand mourns the loss of 29 coal miners, every American coal miner–and every American who relies on coal-fired energy in 48 states–should be thankful for the Blair Mountain battlefield and the unending labor union struggles for basic human rights and workplace safety.

On Friday’s November 26th deadline, Manchin will have the opportunity to either issue a public comment in support of saving the Blair Mountain Battlefield–the most important and endangered historic coal mining and labor heritage site–or silently acquiesce to Massey Energy’s application for a 554-acre strip mining permit that will destroy parts of the Blair Mountain battlefield.

To strip mine the hallowed Blair Mountain Battlefield–site of the largest armed insurrection for labor rights in 1921–would be like desecrating Plymouth Rock.

In the spring of 2009, our nation’s most prominent scholars, historians and archaeologists–including the president of the Society for Historical Archaeology, the former president of the American Historical Society, officers of the Appalachian Studies Association–made a direct appeal to then WV Gov. Joe Manchin:

“The Blair Mountain Battlefield is a unique historic and cultural treasure that deserves recognition and protection… No doubt much remains to be discovered, and scholars must be able to continue to study this important chapter in American history..We are concerned that the recent attempt to delist Blair Mountain from the National Register may be a first step toward strip-mining the mountain for coal production, which will destroy the historic site. The National Park Service found that the battlefield is both significant and intact, and we believe it must be preserved for future generations.”

This past summer, archaeologists revealed clear evidence in a new report that five areas in the historic Blair Mountain Battlefield in West Virginia — the most important historic landmark for coal miners in America — were being bulldozed into oblivion by reckless Big Coal mountaintop removal operations.

In 2005, United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts declared:

“The UMWA has always believed the Blair Mountain battle site should be preserved, and I began publicly calling for it back in the 1980’s. We believe a monument should be erected at the site explaining what happened there, and that the road running through the site should be renamed Blizzard Highway, in honor of Bill Blizzard, the miners’ leader at Blair Mountain. We support preserving the land immediately around the battle site, because we believe it’s important for future generations to stand on that ground, and understand the importance of what happened there. This is also a personal issue for me and thousands of others from coal mining families who have relatives and ancestors who fought at Blair Mountain. What they did is a source of pride and inspiration to our families, and helps give us the strength to carry on their fight for justice. We will never forget it, nor should America.”

Will Sen. Manchin and UMWA president Roberts speak up for Blair Mountain and coal miners and their labor heritage on Friday?

Will they publicly release their comments in thanks of the legacy of our nation’s great coal mining struggles for justice?

As United Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts told a gathering at Kayford Mountain in 1996, “It’s so important we not sell out our heritage. He warned against “out of state coal companies have abused West Virginia for 130 years.”

For more information on how to stop mountaintop removal mining and save the Blair Mountain Battlefield, see the Friends of Blair Mountain.