Apparently, Black Pike is here to help us realize God's great plan. And all they're asking us to let them do, is cut the top off our mountain. Well, my people pioneered this valley when George Washington was president of the United States. And as long as we've been here, the story's always been the same: the big money men come in, take the timber and the coal and the strength of our people. And what do they leave behind? Poundments full of poison slurry and valleys full of toxic trash! Yeah! You know what happens when 500 million gallons of slurry breaks loose? The gates of hell open!
Those poundments are built strong to keep the slurry back.
The gates of hell open, and all that waste rolls down through the hollers and poisons the water and the land and everything it touches! Mining company has a has a word for those leavings doesn't it? "The spoil. The spoil"! And that is what our lives will be if Black Pike has their way with our mountain.
With all due respect, Mrs. Bennett, Black Pike will replace the mountaintops and leave money a lot of money in the pockets of the working people of Bennett and Harlan counties.
Is that a fact?
Yes, ma'am, that is a fact.
Well, that's something to consider. 'Cause it ain't an easy life here. No, ma'am. To an outsider, it's probably hard to understand why we're all not just lining up and saying, "Where do we sign?" But we got our own kind of food, our own music. Our own liquor! We got our own way of courting, and raising children! And our own way of living and dying. And to protect all that, we have got to say "No, thank you" to Miss Carol Johnson here and Black Pike Mining.
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