There are a lot of challenges to running and winning in Easten Kentucky. 

But is all hope lost? 

Heck no!

               - Mike Dixon

In partnership with Wellstone Action, KFTC organized a Candidate and Campaign training this past weekend in Hindman with 30 participants.  The focus was overwhelmingly on running for office in Eastern Kentucky, but some members from other parts of the state came as well.

The goal was to encourage people to run for office or to help their friends run by providing a top-notch campaign training focusing on campaign planning and budgeting, telling your story, grassroots voter contact, fundraising, base-building, stump speeches, developing a winning message and more.

"KFTC nationally is held up as a kick-ass gold standard of community organizing," said Ben Goldfarb, Director of Training Programs for Wellston Action.  "I'm a little nervous to be training you all, but I think it will be great."

Local members with experience in Eastern KY races joined us to add what they've learned locally to the Wellstone model of running for office including Mike Dixon (mayor of Blackey), Bennie Massey (Lynch City Council), Carl Shoupe, (Benham City Council) and Randy Wilson (recent candidate for his Jackson Rural Electric Co-op).

"A big part of running is getting out there and talking to your neighbors, getting to know them, and talking about issues that they care about.  A lot of us are doing that anyway and we should be doing it even more."

This is the fourth time Wellstone Action has visited Kentucky and KFTC members have participated in each of the trainings.  We're considering another training if the Voting Rights constitutional amendment gets on the ballot next year. 

We're trying to schedule a smaller candidate training based on what we learned this weekend, tentatively in October in Lexington to replicate pieces of this training.  We'll put it on the KFTC Calendar as soon as we settle on a date and location.

It was 28 years ago that KFTC became "official."  According to the book Making History: The First Ten Years of KFTC,

"Twenty-six people from 12 counties formally organized and named the Kentucky Fair Tax Coalition on August 17, 1981. They also agreed on a statement of purpose:

The Kentucky Fair Tax Coalition is a group of community based organizations and individuals promoting more effective and efficient community services through a fair and equitable taxation system throughout the state of Kentucky, with a particular interest in coal counties.

Also at that meeting, members "passed the hat for the first time. They netted KFTC's first funds, $38.

This Hazard meeting was not the first meeting of this group of people who were coming together from across eastern Kentucky. The group had met on several prior occasions to explore the possibilities of working together on common issues. Shared concerns included the quality of (or lack of) community services and public education in coal counties (which suffered from gross inequalities in the tax system) and the rights of landowners.

Many of the people involved were organizing in their respective home counties around these and related issues. The decision to launch a new organization was based on the understanding that the issues were all related and shared a common underlying roots cause: "the inequality of life with a single dominant industry – coal – that was not contributing its fair share."

"People, especially in eastern Kentucky, were getting to know each other. All around the region there was a loose network of people who had worked together with each other in various ways over the past 15 years or so. What we didn't have in those days was a structured connection between us. There was a no interlocking of these community-level efforts, until KFTC" — Herb E. Smith

Thanks to everyone who is helping KFTC continue to make history! If you're not a member click the here or Join button at the top of the page and become a part of the next 28 years!

Kentuckians For The Commonwealth strongly believes that we need better candidates if we want better decisions made in state and local government – and we want YOU to seriously think about what it would be like to run for office or to help one of your friends run.

Come to a powerful, energetic weekend at the beautiful Hindman Settlement School where we’ll build skills, connections, and confidence to work on elections or run for public office.

Led in partnership with Wellstone Action, a national center for training and leadership development for progressives, workshops topics will include campaign planning and budgeting, telling your story, grassroots voter contact, fundraising, base-building, stump speeches, developing a winning message and more.

For more information and to register online, Click Here.

     

Levon Baker was a Knott county KFTC member from up on the Right Fork of Beaver. He worked for many years as a deep mine engineer for Southeast Coal Co. He's been a KFTC member for the last 5-6 years. He became involved with KFTC when CONSOL opened up a deep mine and created a big valley fill on his property without his permission.

He liked to say, "I've sat on both sides of the table, with the coal company and with the citizens and I can tell you this; when a new law is created, the coal companies don't try to figure out how to comply with the law, they always try to figure out how to get around the laws."

I'll miss Levon, he had the strength and the courage to stand-up in front of hundreds of miners, many of them he knew, at the Hazard hearing on Mountaintop Removal and tell them that what we are doing to the land and the people is wrong. I remember riding home with him in the car and he told me, "The truth is fifty percent of the men in that room agree with me. And another twenty five percent will agree with me on their ride home. And the last twenty five percent just never will agree with me."

Levon had been suffering for many years with complications from black lung. He passed away over the weekend from a heart attack.

The funeral will be in Hindman at the Nelson Frazier funeral home Tuesday April 20th at 11:00 AM.

If you have other stories you would like to share about Levon please post them in the comments.

The Knott County chapter of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth introduces a new film series, Movie Night for the Commonwealth. The chapter will show a new movie related to issues that impact eastern Kentuckians on the second Thursday of every month at 6:30 p.m. at the Hindman Settlement School. The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served and a short, optional discussion will follow for anyone interested in talking about the movies.

The first movie will be shown this Thursday, January 8, at 6:30 p.m. at the Hindman Settlement School. In this month's film, "Kilowatt Ours," filmmaker Jeff Barrie offers hope as he turns the camera on himself and asks, “How can I make a difference?” In his journey Barrie explores the source of our electricity and the problems caused by it. Along the way he encounters those who are leading the way, using energy conservation, efficiency and renewable, green power all while saving money and the environment. More information and clips from the movie can be found at: www.kilowattours.org

The February 12 movie will be "Sicko," a documentary that takes a close look at the U.S. health care system, and the March 12 movie will be "Democracy's Ghosts," an exploration of voter disenfranchisement.

For more information, contact Sara Pennington at sarapennington@gmail.com. Or call the Whitesburg KFTC office at (606) 632-0051.

In May of this year, four KFTC members visited the coalfields of Colombia with a Witness for Peace delegation to the area. During this trip, these Kentuckians spoke with both the communities affected by these enormous open-pit coal mines as well as labor unionists who work in the mines. Tomorrow, Jesús Brochero and Estevinson Avila, two trade unionists from the two different mines the KFTC members visited will arrive in Lexington to begin a week long tour of Kentucky.

Come out to the following public events to listen to Jesús and Estevinson speak about the labor and environmental issues in Colombia. During these events, KFTC members Sara Pennington and/or Rully Urias will also speak, drawing connections and distinctions among the coalfields of Kentucky and those in Colombia.

Here's the list of events, with further information below:

Thursday, November 13

5:00 PM
Oswald Auditorium
Cooper Campus of Bluegrass Community and Technical College
Lexington, Kentucky

Click for flyer

Saturday, November 15

3:00 PM
Grapevine Community Center
Phyllis, Kentucky, in Pike County

Call the Whitesburg KFTC office for further directions: 606.632.0051

Click for flyer

Monday, November 17

7:00 PM
Hindman Settlement School
Hindman, Kentucky, in Knott County

Click for flyer

KFTC will have a potluck dinner for our guests starting at 6:00. Call the Whitesburg KFTC office if you'd like to join the potluck or need directions to the Settlement School: 606.632.0051

All presentations will begin with a slideshow by KFTC members illustrating their trip to the Colombian coalfields before Jesús and Estevinson speak. In addition to the lax environmental regulations that affect both the workers in the mines and the communities near the mines, trade union leaders are also at risk daily as Colombia is the country with the most assassinations of unionists in the world. This year alone, more than 41 unionists have been murdered, and the company that owns the mine where Estevinson works has been accused in United Stated courts of hiring paramilitaries to kill three of its unionized workers. With the Bush administration pushing for passage of the Colombia free trade agreement--which is held up in Congress due to Colombia's poor human's rights record, including the assassinations of labor leaders--these presentations are timely, and ones you won't want to miss.

Estivenson Avila is President of the Sintramienergetica Coal Miners’ Union, which unites workers from the Drummond-owned and operated mine of La Loma, Colombia. Jesús Brochero is a top leader of Sintracarbón, the National Union of Coal Industry Workers, which represents employees of the multinational-owned Cerrejón Mine, Colombia.

We had a big Letcher County phone bank on Saturday evening, and an even bigger three-county (Pike/Letcher/Knott) phone bank from Hindman Settlement School yesterday in which we had lots of great conversations and connected a lot of people with rides.

Today, members are focusing on just physically getting people to the polls.

All of this ground work is despite most of Letcher County not having drinkable water for the last few days.

 KFTC members from all across the state participated in our non-partisan Voter Empowerment campaign leading up to the May 20th primary election to register, educate, and mobilize thousands of voters and strengthen our democracy.

Thirty-two percent of registered Kentucky voters showed up to vote in the election, smashing the previous record of 26.5 percent turnout in 1992.  These numbers included 43 percent of Kentucky's registered Democrats (many excited about the long presidential primary they had a rare opportunity to influence) and 18.9 of registered Kentucky Republicans. 

We’ve collectively built a database of thousands of voters we’ve registered, and other voters we’ve had contact with over the last few years and play a key role in our democracy by getting them non-partisan information about where candidates stand on issues.  Our “Voter Guides” have responses straight from the candidates, and we got thousands of them into people’s hands to help them make decisions. 

Apart from our powerful statewide voter guide, many KFTC chapters organized voter guides for local races and got them out in their communities, including races for city governments and Kentucky legislative races.

We put all of the information from the voter guides online at www.Kentuckyelection.org, as well, and encouraged people by phone, email, and online networking sites like Facebook to visit.

The voter guides were useful, because it’s the candidates in their own words, unfiltered, talking about issues that I really care about – not just the talking points from some campaign commercial.  This kind of basic information is necessary for our democracy and I’m glad we help get it out.” - Central KY member Danny Cotton

Having registered and educated thousands, KFTC members then made sure that they got out and voted, reminding people by phone, community events, door-knocking, email, and also much more creative means.  More than 4,500 people also pledged to vote through KFTC’s Facebook page.

 
- In Madison County, chapter leaders called hundreds of other members to remind them to vote over several solid days of phone banks.

- In Lexington, KFTC members called our lists for a week leading up to the election, gave rides to the polls, passed out information, and ran several sound cars around town on election day to remind people to vote.  “It was really great and really fun.  People definitely noticed us and reacted,” said Jenn Myatt, one of a dozen members who used the sound car throughout the day.

Former felons (who lose their right to vote in Kentucky) spearheaded voter mobilization calls in Lexington on several days, participating in the democratic process through the votes of others.  KFTC's close allies at the Lexington chapter of People Advocating Recovery were especially active.

We’re an asset to this democracy, not a liability.  If my feet were on the ground in my home state of Texas, I’d be allowed to vote in the election, but my feet are on the ground in Kentucky, so I can’t.  We need to change things so that former felons can participate all the way in the democratic process by voting – but until then, we’ll participate in other ways like this.” - Howard Jones, a former felon, KFTC and PAR member.

 - Knott County chapter members did a phone bank to publicize the KFTC candidate forum, amongst other activities.

- In Perry and Harlan County chapters did voter registration efforts at in many places and a distributed a local voter guide for the 84th district. A dozen volunteers from both chapters helped put together the mailing.  They also publicized a local candidate forum and distributed KFTC local voter guides there.

- In Bowling Green, members made calls over the course of a week (even one on vacation and from out of the state), knocked doors, ran a sound car around town to remind people to vote, and also a parade of bikes with “Vote” signs to creatively get people's attention.  

“KFTC wants people to raise their voices, and it worked! People really raised their voices!” reflected an excited Greg Capillo, in response to local voter turnout numbers in neighborhoods the chapter worked in.  

At one point, KFTC member Dana Beasley Brown was leading a pack of a dozen bikers through one of the busiest intersections in town.  At two opposite corners were the Obama campaign folks and the Clinton campaign folks, each trying to out-shout the other. As the KFTC crew blew through, bullhorning "Just VOTE!" someone from the Clinton camp yelled out, "Yeah, that should be what we're saying.  It doesn't matter who you vote for, just vote!"

- Pike County members conducted voter mobilization phone banks and registered lots of voters  at the Hillbilly Days festival.

- In Northern Kentucky, KFTC members lead by former felons who couldn’t vote called hundreds of people who had signed KFTC petitions.

KFTC’s Voter Empowerment Campaign in the primary election was sizable, but nothing compared to what members have planned leading up to the General Election on November 4th.  We’ll contact 15,000 voters three times each and will develop a system of “Community Captains” to mobilize friends and neighbors with a deeper connection.

Watch the calendar and volunteer.    

            By Wendell Berry

With my son and David Maehr, a member of the University of Kentucky's Forestry Department, I recently paid a visit to Pioneer Forest, which is to the south of its headquarters in Salem, Mo.

Pioneer Forest consists of various tracts, totaling about 40,000 acres purchased by Leo Drey, mostly in the early 1950s. Most of the tracts at the time of purchase had been severely degraded by bad logging. From the beginning of Drey's tenure, Pioneer has been a commercial forest, continuously logged. There are seven "active timber sales" in various stages of work.

The difference between this and nearly all other commercial forests, and what makes this one worth going to see, is that for the last half century, by Drey's prescription, Pioneer Forest has been sustainably managed.

Sustainable, like organic and natural, has become an empty word, useful mainly for misrepresentation in marketing. But I have looked closely at examples of sustainable forestry in Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia and Missouri, and those particular examples make sustainable again a respectable adjective.

Sustainability, in forestry, rests on the single principle of keeping the forest ecologically intact. That is to say that, after logging, the forest remains an "uneven-aged stand" of trees in their natural diversity of species and sizes, and the canopy remains unbroken except for scattered small openings that allow for natural regeneration.

                     For the complete Op-Ed in the Herald-Leader, click here.

   Despite finals week, more than two dozen UK students and activists from KFTC, as well as UK Greenthumb, Kentucky Heartwood, and Sierra Club members, came together to rally one last time this semester, just prior to the UK Board of Trustees meeting, to encourage board members to protect Robinson Forest and to move away from the proposal to log it.

   They lined the first floor of the Patterson Office Tower lobby and chanted, holding signs as the Board of Trustees entered one by one to attend the meeting high above on the 18th floor.

I'm glad that students are rallying together and showing opposition.  Robinson Forest isn't just an environmental issue for the people in Knott, Perry, and Breathitt Counties - it's a human rights issue,          - Joan Braun, a UK KFTC Member 

   Many members of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth from counties touched by Robinson Forest have participated in the campaign by writing letters, emails, and faxes to the UK Board of Trustees members, giving them a perspective from the communities that this logging will directly impact. 

By and large, it seems that the board has a tendency to ignore UK students and community - most recently on Robinson Forest, but also on UK workers that want to organize.  It's not a good trend.       - Joe Gallenstein, UK KFTC Co-Coordinator 

 
   Through conversations with board members, it seems unlikely that we'll be able to halt this particular experimental logging proposal, but the Board of Trustees has come back to the issue of Robinson Forest time and time again over the decades to look at strip-mining and/or logging different sections.  Many fear that the move to log parts of Robinson Forest is a prelude to another strip-mining action, first weakening the basis of the Lands Unsuitable for Mining status by reducing the environmental value of the forest, then challenging that protective status.

   Students say that if the board tries that, they'll be ready and the campaign this semester laid down a lot of the foundation for a powerful deterrent to mining. 

We have enough energy and enough fight in us to get our voices heard, no matter what they put in our way."      - Scott Beckmeyer, UK Greenthumb activist