Saturday night, the City of Whitesburg was buzzing.  Appalshop was hosting their annual Seedtime on the Cumberland Festival while in downtown the main street was blocked off for a Bike Night, Art Walk, Farmers' Market and other festivities.  KFTC participated in the events by opening our office doors and having members display their art with a range of work showing from artist Vanessa Hall, Charlie Hall, Jeff Chapman-Crane, Sharman Chapman-Crane, Pam Meade, and Courtney Worley.  The response was great, with a steady crowd of people filing into the office to take a look and learn more about the organization.  Also that evening we hosted a screening of Deep Down at the Summit City Coffee Shop, and had a good turnout for that event as well.  All in all, it was a fun night filled with laughter, music and real community.

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.

     

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.

Longtime Kentucky activist John Cleveland passed away yesterday while working on his farm.  John has a long history of working with KFTC and other social justice organizations and hosted  two weekly radio programs on WMMT in Whitesburg.  He had recently begun working with the Sierra Club as an organizer on coal issues in Eastern Kentucky.  His untimely death is a blow to cause of environmental justice in Kentucky.  He will be missed.

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Environmentalist John Cleveland, 55, dies

John Cleveland, an environmental activist who worked on coal, gas, logging and solid waste issues in Eastern Kentucky, was killed Monday when a tree fell on him at his farm near Blackey in Letcher County.

He apparently had been cutting a tree and was trapped between it and another, said Sgt. Brian Damron of the Letcher County sheriff's office.

Mr. Cleveland, 55, was recently hired by the Sierra Club. He also had been associated with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the Democracy Resource Center, the Kentucky Resources Council and other groups. He was known as a local government watchdog.

"I think he probably attended more school board meetings and more fiscal court meetings that anyone else, probably including the elected officials," former Letcher County Judge-Executive Carroll Smith said.

Read more...

The visitation for John begins tonight at 6pm at the Letcher Funeral Home (102 Main Street Whiteburg, KY).  The funeral will be held Thursday morning at 11:30 at the Letcher Funeral Home.

In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that people make donations in John's honor to WMMT, the Appalshop, KFTC, or the Sierra Club.

For all donations, please put "Memorial Donation for John Cleveland" in the "For" part of your check or on a note accompanying your donation.

We encourage people to use the comments section below to share their remembrances of John and to celebrate his life.   To get us started, here is a piece written by local Sierra Club member and friend of John, Rick Clewett.

John Cleveland, our recently-hired Sierra Club activist working on mountain top removal and coal-fired power plant issues, died on September 22nd, while he was working on his 200 acre property near Blackey in Letcher County. He was killed by a falling tree.

John grew up on a farm near Frankfort and graduated from UK. He married and settled down in Letcher County over two decades ago. Ever since he has been working passionate for the people, creatures and land of eastern Kentucky. Some years ago, he conducted almost single-handedly a fact gathering effort that resulted in several county officials being sent to jail. He worked for a time as an organizer for Kentuckians for the Commonwealth struggling against the unreasonable and unlawful actions of gas, oil, and coal companies.

Teresa McHugh, his supervisor in the Sierra Club, remembers John in a way any of you who met him will appreciate:

John was warm and gentle, and at the same time tough, passionate and committed to the core. He was a natural story teller, whose humor, insight and gift for description could bridge gaps of culture and experience. When we interviewed John for the position of Coal Organizer in Eastern Kentucky he said that he was really excited to see our job opening. He explained that two decades of fighting coal and gas companies in Kentucky had made him unemployable by any entity but an organization like the Sierra Club.

I first met John on April 1st of this year at the community center in Grapevine, near Fishtrap Lake. A handful of Sierra Club people had gathered there, including Club lawyers from San Francisco and Vermont, to talk with local people about the problems local mining operations were creating. It was John’s first day of work and the first chance any of us would have to meet him. But John didn’t introduce himself. Instead, he let Aaron, our lawyer from San Fancisco, start the meeting. When Aaron got to the point of mentioning that our new organizer John Cleveland, was supposed to be there, John sort of pulled his sleeve and grinned a mischievous little grin.

I had the wonderful opportunity of spending ten or twelve days this summer with John scouting mountain top removal and contour mining sites for which Corps of Engineers 404 water permits had been sought. In the September issue of this newsletter, I mentioned all the fun I had had on these outings and the pleasure I experienced being introduced to various plants and animals. It was John who named the Luna moth for me. It was John who identified the Indigo Bunting’s call and followed it to a tiny little bird in a distant tree. It was John who pointed out two wild turkeys and a large flock of “doodles,” as he called the baby turkeys.

I spent enough time with John to really feel both his noble dedication to the task of opposing wrong and his very keep kindness. We scaled a steep and hugged mountain face to try to get a sense of where one mining project was going to be. We hiked for five hours, part of it semi-lost in a huge potential area slated, if the mining company has its way, to include ten valley fills. This was shortly before my hip replacement. John helped me up the mountain and found an easier way down. When we were lost, he was sure that all we had to do was manage to get down the face of the mountain and we would come out where we wanted to be. But we took an extra hour to backtrack so that I wouldn’t risk hurting my hip. It was with remarkable gentleness and naturalness that he leaned over to retie my boot once because I could not bend over far enough to do it.

John’s love for “criters” reminded of St Francis. The reason John knew the call of the Indigo Bunting so well was because he had once spent some weeks trying to nurse one back to health. He told me about how people in his neck of the woods often try to run over black snakes when they see one on the road. As a response, John used to carry a bag in his car. Whenever he saw a black snake on the road, he would stop, capture the snake in his bag, take it home, and let it loose on his land, where it would be safe.

It seemed as if John knew at least a quarter of the people in Appalachian Kentucky. When I went to Louisa, south of Ashland, to spend two days scouting a mining site with him, he connected with a legendary KFTC activist he had known for years. When we drove through a strip mining operation near Fishtrap Lake, a fellow driving a water truck for the mining company recognized him. They had coached little league baseball teams against each other when John son was small.

John was 55 when he died. Besides all of his activist work, he did a weekly pop music show every Wednesday night for a local radio station. And he was a devoted soccer referee for high school and college games through a large swath of southeast Kentucky. He asked me to loan him some Yoga DVDs, so that he could work through the tendinitis problem he had had recently in one knee. He needed to use little “granny” magnifying glasses to read maps; when he lost the cheap pair he was using on one mine scouting expedition, I had to read the map for him—a watered-down version of the halt leading the blind.

John had dyslexia. He told me that when he went to U.K., he really had trouble reading the books. He described himself as much more of an intuitive than an analytic. But he was a smart man and he compensated. He could be analytic when he needed to be. And he had absolutely amazing skills of perception that seemed to be somehow attached to disinclination for linear thinking. It seemed as if he could see and hear everything—all the smallest details. That made a wonderful tutor in the woods.

John spoke often of his wife, Artie Ann Bates, one of the few psychiatrists in their part of Kentucky. His devotion to her shown through whenever he mentioned her. We all share in her and his John’s son David’s grief.

I don’t think it an exaggeration to say that the example set by John Cleveland will be a resource for the area he loved. The rest of us are going to work harder to pick up the slack, but we will be strengthened by having known that someone like John existed.

Goodbye, John.

Nearly 30 concerned community and statewide residents, sportsmen, and KFTC members participated in a public permit conference hearing held the by State Department for Natural Resources, Thursday September 11th at the Oven Fork Senior Citizens center in Letcher County.

Under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977 residents have the right to submit public comments as the state is reviewing a coal company's mining permit application for official state approval.

Cumberland River Coal Company of Appalachia, VA has applied for a surface coal mining and reclamation operation permit affecting 1,299.25 acres of surface, constructing three hollow fills and five sediment ponds approximately 1.4 miles from the community of Eolia. The proposed operation would use the surface contour, area and highwall mining methods of surface mining along the Poor Fork of the Cumberland River near the Bad Branch Nature Preserve.

The Poor Fork is one of the headwater streams for the Cumberland River and is one of only six Kentucky designated class 1 streams for its pristine water quality and natural brook trout population.

Residents protesting the proposed mining permit are concerned about the impacts to the headwater streams of the Cumberland River, their communities and the future of Bad Branch.

KFTC members gave testimony in favor of protecting the streams and requested that the state deny the mine permit.

Local resident KFTC member, Jim Webb, quoted the late Harry M. Caudill, "reclamation is like putting lipstick on a corpse, I don't want to see Black Mountain become a corpse."

Local artist and KFTC member, Jeff Chapman-Crane presented the state with an analysis of Cumberland River Coal company's profit gains according to information combined from the Associated Press and Mountain Eagle reports published on July 30, 2008.

Cumberland River's parent company, Arch Coal Inc., reported that its second quarter profit tripled from $37.6 million in 2007 to $113 million in 2008.

But while Arch Coal officials and stockholders may be celebrating their profit margins the Appalachian region and its people are the one's who are paying the true cost of coal. We pay every time our homes are shaken off their foundations with each illegal blast the company sets off, the mountains pay one by one as they are blown up and made barren, and the streams pay into Arch's profits with each mile that is buried and contaminated."

Over the past 30 years jobs in the coal industry have decline significantly. Mean while the production of coal has increase and the price of coal has skyrocketed. This economic practice funnels more and more money to fewer and fewer people further jeopardizing our future.

--Jeff Chapman-Crane

Concerned citizens are awaiting for the state's decision to grant or deny Cumberland River Coal's proposed mine permit.

There was general consensus that the next step for community action is to monitor the permitting process closely. Residents need to make sure that the company does not begin to mine without a permit or decide to clear the land without permission.

    Members from many of our Eastern Kentucky chapters gathered in Whitesburg this weekend to hone their voter empowerment abilities, learn nuts and bolts skill like how to help someone fill out a voter registration card, and to practice having conversations with their neighbors. 

 

   We talked a lot about how KFTC does voter work - Long-term, issue focused, non-partisan work focused on expanding our democracy and educating candidates and communities alike about issues - and letting people know where candidates stand on those same issues.

I learned a lot of stuff about the KFTC voting project that I didn't know before" - Brittany Hunsaker, a new KFTC Community Captain in Letcher County.

It's always helpful to stop and take a good look at the Political Landscape and think about how we can change it - and we *can* change it - we *have* changed it and we can continue to" - Jeff Chapman-Crane, Letcher County member.

People think they can't make a difference because they're just one person.  Too many people forget that the power is with the people.  You can only enslave a people as long as they'll let you.  When a whole lot of ones come together, you'll be a hundred, then a thousand and more.  You can make a difference and we will make a difference."   - Truman Hurt, Perry County member and Minister.

In Whitesburg earlier tonight, a dozen women across Eastern Kentucky came together at Summit City to share the stories of current inmates in the Otter Creek Correctional Facility in Wheelwright, Kentucky.

KFTC member, Dale Mackey, organized Voices From Otter Creek as part of her work with the Thousand Kites project.  Tonight's event was a culmination of efforts over the last three months during which the women have gathered each week for creative writing workshops to write about their lives, beliefs, and concerns.

KFTC also used the event as an opportunity to talk about Restoration of Voting Rights for former felons who have served their debt to society - and staffed a voter registration table at the event.

       

We received a note today from John Cleveland, a long-time KFTC member who lives in Letcher County. His story is yet another example of how state budget cuts are making it impossible for public agencies to fulfill their mission of protecting public health and the environment.

John writes that oil and gas inspectors have apparently been told to ignore aspects of the law they are charged to enforce. This is not surprising, since the budget proposed by Governor Steve Beshear and passed by the General Assembly slashed the budget for the Kentucky Department of Natural Resources by 21%! Here's John's letter:

I had a State Oil and Gas (O/G) inspector show up at my house today. He told me that the State is not enforcing state law that requires an oil/gas company to register all tanks that collect oil or brine that are located at gas wells. He told me that he was inspecting an area, when he discovered a new tank and well that had not been there in the past. He couldn't find any info in his records of this tank, so he took a gps point for the site, and checked on it when he got back to his office. He was unable to find info there either. He asked his supervisor about this, and his supervisor told him that since the state budget cutbacks over the last few years, that they weren't registering these tanks any more, because they didn't have the staff to do the paperwork or the inspections.

He told me that the unregistered tanks he's aware of are mostly owned by Chesapeake and Equitable Gas companies. State law requires oil/gas companies to register all tanks that hold brine or oil. That doesn't mean that they don't have to do it if they don't feel like it, the law states SHALL register! So obviously some of the oil/gas companies are no longer registering storage tanks and the state is not assuring that they do.

What if there is a leak, or some vandals shoot holes in one of these tanks. How long might it be before someone happens to come by and see toxic brine water or oil running in the stream? There has been a massive number of new wells in the last two years in eastern Kentucky, so this is a disaster that will happen, it's just a matter of when.

Wouldn't complying with the law and assuring an adequate number of inspectors, be the right thing to do? When does too much cutting the budget start to endanger the water, fish, wildlife or even human life? It appears to me that we have reached that point or gone past it. I call on Governor Beshear to look at the long-term costs of cutting enforcement in oil, gas and mining, and fix this problem.

 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.