“What’s Your Connection? Digital Media Brings Appalachian Coal Mining to Your Backyard”

“470 mountains destroyed for coal. Are you connected?” asks iLoveMountains.org. Enter your zip code and you will see a Google Earth map tracing the connection between Appalachian mountaintop removal coal mines and your local electrical grid. What is mountaintop removal? It’s the process of blasting off the tops of mountains to more easily mine coal. In Appalachia, more than 700,000 acres have been destroyed through mountaintop removal.

“iLoveMoutains.org was the brainchild of a group of organizations, spearheaded by Appalachian Voices. They wanted to find a way to tell the stories of people in Appalachia and communicate the devastating impact of mountaintop,” explains Dana Kuhnline of the Alliance for Appalachia, a collaboration of thirteen regional organizations.

iLoveMountains.org is a sophisticated website that uses a diversity of interactive digital tools to educate people and inspire action. Maps generated through Google Earth linked with video testimonials and concrete information is found throughout the site. In fact, Appalachian Voices, the grassroots organization who manages iLoveMountains.org, was just named a Google Earth Hero for their skillful use of Google Earth maps to communicate their message.

Organizing nationally is essential to the effort to protect Appalachian mountains. Ms. Kuhnline explains, “Our legislators don’t care about us because they are bought and paid for by the coal companies. We’ve been able to bypass our legislators and create a national campaign.” iLoveMountain.org has played an essential role in helping regional Appalachian organizations to advance federal legislation such as HR1310, The Clean Water Protection Act and S696, The Appalachia Restoration Act as well as protect specific mountains slated for mountaintop removal.

Local Appalachian residents organizing in their communities are featured throughout iLoveMountains.org and provide the foundation for the national organizing effort. Stephanie Pistello, the National Field Coordinator of Appalachian Voices, explains, “We’ve been able to get the voices of people heard. We have the ‘Most Endangered Mountains’ page on the website where people who live near those mountains can talk about the impact that mountaintop removal would have on their communities. It humanizes the issue. It also shows that this is a grassroots, community-based effort, ”

Making people feel connected to the devastation left by mountaintop removal is the first step in motivating them to take action; making it easy to contact their legislators and tell their friends is the next step. In addition to ‘What’s Your Connection?’ and the ‘Most Endangered Mountains’, the website uses other engaging tools such as the ‘Blogger’s Challenge’ which shows a map of over 2000 participating bloggers and the location of the people they have directly and indirectly activated. Embeddable videos, coal tracking widgets, RSS feeds, and customizable “Spread the Word” widgets encourage the campaign to be shared with any number of the suggested social networking and blog sites.

“When people search for mountaintop removal, iLoveMountains.org is the first website that pops up,” says Ms. Kuhnline. With over 38,000 members registered, iLoveMountains.org has been successful tool to reach out to and educate people. Some supporters just receive action alert emails, while others are contacted by Appalachian Voices to help convince their legislators to co-sponsor federal legislation. Ms. Kuhnline comments, “I don’t know how we could to move federal legislation forward without this listserve and website.”

Ms. Pistello gives an example, “How do you get a legislator from California to sign on to an anti-coal mining bill about Appalachia? We tried for a year to get a meeting with one representative from southern California [about the Clean Water Protection Act]. Then we found a constituent from that legislator’s district who came to DC to lobby. A month later, the legislator, Grace Napolitano, signed onto the bill.”  Indeed, moving the online organizing off-line has produced critical results.

Online organizing combined with regular lobby visits has proven to be an effective strategy for the campaign to protect Appalachia. “Because of this grassroots movement, fueled by people using these online tools to reach their legislators, we have a record amount of support in Congress,” says Ms. Pistello. “We’ve seen the Administration take steps and they are being asked about [mountaintop removal] on regular basis.”

In cooperation with a national coalition of environmental groups, Appalachian Voices recently launched a massive online action to stop mountaintop removal on Coal River Mountain, a mountain with wind power potential in southern West Virginia. ”In one day, over 11,000 people sent an email to the Obama Administration from iLoveMountains.org. Total estimates run as high as 68,000 emails sent in support. Once they send the letter there are triggers to share the call to action with friends,” says Ms. Pistello.  “We do online actions every two weeks but this is our biggest online campaign yet.”

Yet, with the daily barrage of digital information – what makes people enter their email address for yet another listserve? What makes iLoveMountains.org such an effective online organizing tool? Perhaps it’s hearing the story of people like Betty Tackett from Buffalo Mountain, West Virginia who survived the nightmare of seeing her community flooded with toxic, black, coal soaked water released from a broken dam. Buffalo Mountain becomes closer to Brooklyn when you see the line drawn from her home to mine. iLoveMountains.org makes it easy to do something – just simply click.

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