Editor’s Note, This speech was made by Maria Gunnoe at an event when Bernie Sanders spoke in West Virginia. Maria is a well known, long-time organizer for the people in Southern Appalachia.
Thank you Tyler Simmons, for your work on this! Thank you Jtsimmons@mvkm.productions.
My name is Maria Gunnoe. I am a woman of many titles, but I’m really just a girl from a holler in Boone County, WV, where our family will soon celebrate 75 years on the same land. I have spent 30 years organizing in communities throughout southern Appalachia. What I have seen would bring the strongest people to their knees. See motherjoneswv.org for more about my work.
In the past 30 years, I witnessed countless communities disappear… they were bought up by the coal and gas industries, demolished, and left in ruins. Rural West Virginia is disappearing while nearly everyone looks away. In the 2020 census, West Virginia lost 3.2 percent of its population.
Our communities are riddled with abandoned mined lands from the past 175 years of coal mining. The Abandoned Mined Lands Fund has the potential to put our people back to work repairing the damage caused to our place to belong!
I stand firm on the fact that our communities and our people are owed a future in the place that we all call home.
We share a deep love for WV, and that is our common ground.
As a child in these mountains, clean water was abundant. Now our water has been left toxic. Our mountains have been blasted and leveled for coal and gas, and our streams and wells have been heavily contaminated. Too many communities in West Virginia have no safe water and no wastewater infrastructure. Even the air is laden with toxic dust. There’s no investment, not even in our schools. Regardless, WE ARE STILL HERE and we matter too.
This is not our first battle against fascism and dirty politics; it’s just the next one.
The Trump administration has gutted the only protections we had against rogue industries, and our puppet politicians celebrated. The Republicans did away with the regulations that protected miners and communities and brag that it’s going to be a great thing for industry in WV. Well, what about the people of WV?
The Republicans celebrate the passage of a bill that takes Medicaid and SNAP assistance from some of the poorest, most abused people in our country. To be clear, Medicaid covers miners with Black Lung. How could any Appalachian politician ever uphold something so cruel?
West Virginians, stand up for each other! Don’t let politics divide you. We’ve historically stood shoulder to shoulder against the carpetbagging politicians and irresponsible companies operating in our state. We have to continue this stand for the generations of West Virginians to come.
These billionaire politicians have never done anything to help WV, and they never will. Big money and its bought politicians have always helped themselves to WV’s resources as if they were free for the taking. Now, with NO regulation and NO oversight of industries operating in our state, believe me when I say things are about to get MUCH worse.
West Virginians deserve a future, and we will accept nothing less. This is OUR state, and together is how we are going to take it back!
Maria Gunnoe is a 2009 Goldman Prize winner from Boone County, West Virginia who has organized in opposition to mountain top removal in Appalachia for decades.
