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The VRH (Virginia River Healers) is a civil disobedient environmental group. The Healers use science, prayer, and group tactics to help equip local communities and Virginia citizens with the knowledge, instruments, and professional support to monitor local waterways and industrial...

virginiariverhealers

Coal ash is a metal laced byproduct from burning coal. The VRH has been targeting Dominion Power’s coal ash dumping grounds and running independent analyses of ash samples taken from various coal ash ponds and landfills. From these tests the organization has produced public documents shedding light on the toxic content of coal ash accumulating in rural towns across Virginia.

With the original sample the VRH has paired up with local inorganic scientists to fingerprint the coal ash samples. Citizens that have experienced recent toxic leeching in their drinking wells and watershed will hopefully be able to use the fingerprint and track the coal ash strain back to the original source and file suit- Dominion. God Bless.

youpatdogmaster

Virginia River Healers are doing independent chemical analyses of Dominion Power coal ash sites.

studiotwothree

Brooke Inman is an artist and teacher, inspired by introspection, social progression, and environmental preservation. She will be teaching a three-week Experimental Screen Printing Technique Workshop at Studio Two Three starting this Monday, April 7th. http://bit.ly/1dXImr1

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thejogging

good luck w/ that, 2013

book, found broken dentures, pillow

∞–™∞–¡ª•™

americanguide

PROPOSED RAM COAL TERMINAL - IRONTON, LOUISIANA

Audrey Trufant Salvant’s father is buried less than 50 feet from her front door, in a little mausoleum that sits like an ornament in her yard. As we walk towards it, we pass no fence, road, or anything else to signify that we’ve left her property and entered a communal gravesite. She stops a few feet before the tomb and begins to speak above the wind of a coming storm that passes through the scattered single-wides of the town. Her family, she explains, has been living in Ironton for five generations. “This is home for me,” she says. “My dad’s buried here. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

Ironton is a tiny working class black community, just three large blocks spread out along the natural levee of the Mississippi River in the coastal parish of Plaquemines. There are perhaps 60 standing structures in the whole town, many of them mobile homes placed among the devastated ruins of Hurricane Isaac. Standing at the grave, Audrey boasts about the pastoral appeal of the town. We glance around and see small homes, thick woods just upriver, and open fields that run along the distant highway. A slim boy in sportsman’s camo hikes his way over the nearby levee to hunt the batture woods along the Mississippi River. A neighbor nods to us as he washes his car. For all the industry that’s encroaching on this hidden place, you’d never know it just by looking.

The Phillips 66 Alliance oil refinery is located less than two miles upriver; and the Myrtle Grove Midstream Terminal—a mid-river grain elevator—less than two miles towards the coast. A coal export terminal, characterized by massive piles of exposed coal, is three miles downriver. United Bulk, another enormous open air terminal, is right across the river from that. On rainy days, pet coke and coal runs visibly from these terminal sites and into nearby ditches and waterways. Scott Eustis, an environmental wetlands specialist who oversees coastal use permits for the Gulf Restoration Network, captured this image, showing coal runoff making its way into the Mississippi River. On dry days, the wind catches sheets of pulverized mineral dust from the massive piles that sit bare along the river and spreads them for miles around. A film of grain, coal, and particulate from other surrounding industries is evident everywhere in Ironton: on cars, on porches, and inside homes. This dust, many environmentalists and residents worry, contributes to asthma rates in the community.

After returning to Audrey’s house, we settle around her dining room table as she laments the coal-dust piles, smoke stacks, and grain elevators that surround her community on all sides. “We feel that it’s environmental racism,” she says after a pause. “You don’t see this kind of thing anywhere else in the parish other than black communities. I mean,” she stands up to run her finger along the chandelier that hangs above the table, and holds out her hand to reveal a thick cake of dark grey dust on her fingertip, “I justed dusted this thing last week.”

And the situation, she fears, may soon get worse. In 2011, RAM Terminals LLC bought 602 acres of land just north of Ironton with the goal of building yet another coal exporting facility, significantly increasing the amount of coal surrounding the community. Air monitoring by community members indicates that the air particulate pollution levels in and around Ironton are already higher than what is deemed safe by international standards. There is tangible anxiety that the construction of yet another open-air coal terminal will only continue this trend.

RAM also plans the extension of a local railroad line to make transportation faster and easier. This would mean open coal cars traveling throughout Plaquemines Parish, potentially contributing to the dust and overall air pollution. The company and the local government have not yet decided where the new rail line will go, but during a community meeting convened to discuss the plan, two of the three options presented to the community would have the train routed directly through the heart of Ironton, yards away from residences.

As this drama plays out in the small Louisiana parish of Plaquemines, domestic and international demand priorities within the coal industry are shifting. The U.S. is slowly phasing out coal-fired power plants, while coal consumption in other regions of the globe is on the rise. Coal is one of the cheapest energy sources available, and many developing nations argue that it is the fastest way to modernize their infrastructure and bring power to their population. Rapid industrialization in Asia, especially in China and India, means that the long-term survival of the U.S. coal industry is increasingly linked to consumers thousands of miles away.

Read more and hear from Ironton residents in Part 2.

* * *

Darin Acosta has spent his entire life exploring and documenting the wetlands, oil infrastructure and forgotten blight of South Louisiana and studied urban and environmental planning at the University of New Orleans. Breonne DeDecker was born near the headwaters of the Mississippi River and now resides at the end of it. She has degrees in photography and sustainable development.

Their current work, The Airline is a Very Long Road, is an experimental biography of Louisiana, which you can find at airlinehighway.tumblr.com.

believermag

An excerpt from The Afternoon Interviews with Marcel Duchamp by Calvin Tomkins from Paul Chan’s publishing house, Badlands. An interview with Chan ran in our 2012 art issue.

Calvin Tomkins: Today I’d like to ask you about your life in New York before the First World War. You’ve...

babylonfalling

season’s greetings

going up on the hill, back before the new year

HARVARD IMPLICIT TEST

This is the online test Matt mentioned that identifies unconscious bias

With Help, Afghan Survivor of ‘Honor Killing’ Inches Back http://nyti.ms/11wgZd4

"A Palestinian rides a bicycle past a mural on the controversial Israeli barrier depicting the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (L), at Qalandiya checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah November 26, 2012. The body of Arafat will be exhumed on Tuesday, eight years after his death, in an investigation to establish if he was murdered, a Palestinian official said on Saturday. REUTERS/Marko Djurica (WEST BANK - Tags: OBITUARY POLITICS)"

KQED DOCUMENTARY TAKE THIS HAMMER FEATURING JAMES BALDWIN, SAN FRANCISCO, 1963

"WOMEN ARE POWERFUL AND DANGEROUS."

"It is fashionable today (still?) to claim that there is nothing new beyond our horizon of art, that everything worth doing has been done. But this seems to me an altogether specious claim, for it ignores the vast undiscovered country of things that ought to be undone. In these great times, the terror of action and inaction shapes the burden of history. Perhaps the task of art today is to remake this burden anew by suspending the seemingly inexorable order of things (which gives the burden its weight) for the potential of a clearing to take place, so that we can see and feel what is in fact worthless, and what is in truth worth renewing."

babylonfalling

“PROVOS DESCENDED on the startled residents of Beverly Hills this week as they continued their program of “taking from the poor and giving to the rich.” The Provos said they had been down to the ghetto to collect discards from the impoverished population to help their rich friends. Most such “gifts” were refused but a few quickly taken.”

Los Angeles Free Press (1967)

Inspirational song. mewithoutYou- Allah, Allah, Allah

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