FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA ADVISORY
August 31st, 2009
CONTACT: Charles Suggs 304-854-7372
PETTRY BOTTOM, W.Va. – After six full days in an 80-foot-tall poplar tree, Nick Stocks will voluntarily come down at 10:00 a.m. today. Since Tuesday morning, Stocks has been living on a platform 30 feet from Massey Energy’s Edwight Surface Mine, preventing further blasting over the community of Pettry Bottom. Stocks will turn himself immediately over to the State Police. Fellow tree sitter Laura Steepleton remains in a neighboring tree with no immediate plans to come down.
Stocks stated “To this day the DEP has acted as a thin, weak delegate for big coal in West Virginia. They have circumvented, sidestepped, dismissed and lied to communities and individuals who look to them for protections that ought to assure healthy children, safe drinking water and a continued existence in the valley. To this day they have not done their job to even the slightest degree. When the government fails in its obligation to protect its people and communities are made unsafe and unlivable, it is the responsibility of all concerned people to turn attention to that failure and do all in their capacity to ensure the safety of the community. If the DEP doesn’t do it, we must do it ourselves, and we will go beyond. We will stop the devastation of this mountain and protect the communities below. We will end mountaintop removal.”
Stocks and Steepleton have endured 24-hour sleep deprivation tactics and the brandishing of a chainsaw. All day and all night Massey security personnel have flashed bright lights, sounded air horns, and banged loudly on metal buckets in an effort to prevent the tree sitters from getting any sleep. “The security guards’ actions with the lights and air horns are making the situation less safe,” Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice volunteer Charles Suggs said. “Depriving sleep from people who have to maintain safety systems to prevent a fatal fall endangers their lives.”
More details at: www.climategroundzero.org
Tags: DEP, Edwight Surface Mine, Massey, Nick Stocks, pettry bottom, tree sit
I do not wish any harm or would support it towards these two. They have to know that for every action there is a reaction. If you are going to be bringing up these reasons as to why they came down, you can not hold back the fact that you know it is going to happen. You see we are as ademant about what we are doing as you are. I ask if these wind jobs you are talking about come will I see you out of staters here in the employment line next to us?
Who exactly is interested in investing money in wind energy on coal river mountain? No one seems to know .
good question watcher!
How bout it Rory , show me the money.
Still waiting ?
stocks had to descend because he was do in probation court. you people lie so bad. his tree was only cut down or even touched with a saw after he was gone. the reason they decided to cut it down was so that no other protester would ascend. steepleton came down when she knew that no one would use the tree that was already prepared for a sitter.
Actually Progress Miner, I was prepared to stay up there myself just fine thank you very much! I only came down when trees started coming down beside me and the one closest to me was notched out! I was planning on going onto the middle rope connecting the two trees, but the logger then said he would cut it with me on it. I did not trust those guys, i knew they were trying to scare me, but they also told me that they knew a state trooper was not there and when trees started falling beside me, I knew they were not concerned for my safety whatsoever! My only regret is that I was not a tad bit braver!
I think Ms Steepleton actually came decended when nature called and her support runner got caught and couldn’t deliver “necessary supplies.
We better be getting some new types of jobs in here because the demand for coal is in the decline and will continue to decline until it is no longer used. Kids under 10 years old today are not going to have a coal mining job around here. We need to start thinking about them. We can argue back and forth all day, but in the end it means little. It would be better if we joined forces and demanded new jobs for Coal River.
Still waiting Rory, name the investors.
[...] Ground Zero announced that Nick Stocks (at left in above photo, looking down) planned to voluntarily end his protest and [...]