Larry Easterling

Larry Easterling

Larry Easterling

Millstone, KY

In the year 2000, TECO Coal Company moved in to Choppin’ Branch in McRoberts, Kentucky. We started having problems with blasting, dust, had some fly-rock go through the roof of a woman’s house. Then right around spring, when the rains come, my mother got flooded out five times in three months, with major floods. We started calling the state mine inspector, but we didn’t get much accomplished.

A few of us started having meetings at the community center. My mother and I went down there. There sat Kevin Pentz, an organizer for Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. I started asking him questions. He explained the organization to me. He got the community of McRoberts organized. 

We had a media group, we had a group that talked directly to TECO, we had people who’d write letters, and we had people who’d call folks. We were well organized. We started contacting the media, wrote our letters, made our phone calls. Things started happening then. 

My mother made a joke one time, said “Larry, wouldn’t it be funny if we got the New York Times down here?”  So I went home and got on the computer, popped up the New York Times page, found their contact list, and I wrote them a little hillbilly letter. Two days later, Frank Klines with the New York Times called me. He said he was coming down. He came down, and did a story, and they published it in the New York Times.

Now, its 2005 and I’m still with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth because I like sharing the wealth with everybody else. I like helping people. Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, they’ll lay the tools on the table for you. If you ask them, “I need information on something,” they’ll help you find it. But they won’t do it for me – I have to do it myself.

I don’t like to see people get stepped on. Seems like these big corporate businesses, they’ve got more money than what we’ve got, they’ve got more power. That’s a dangerous thing, because they get their way with poor people. 

I also found out too that one person alone can’t do it. You can’t do it by yourself.  You’ve got to have a group of people to do it. At every little demonstration I’ve been on with KFTC, we’ve always had a big group of people going with us. Right there turns heads, and it makes front-page headlines on newspapers. It draws attention to folks.  Our government officials – they don’t like that.

I feel good to be a part of that. I try to share the wealth, my what I’ve learned, with folks. I try to steer them in the right direction, try to give them hope, give them faith that you can do something about it. Lots of people here in eastern Kentucky, they feel like there’s no hope, that its not going to get better.  But it can get better. I believe that. I won’t stop believing that.

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth is a good organization, a great organization.  They’re based upon membership fees. That’s how they operate.  I believe they do get a few donations, here and yonder, but its very important for us to get more members, because there’s what helps pay rent for buildings, car insurance, pay the light bill. I wish we could get more members.
 
My interest is a future for my kids and everybody else’s kids. Because right now, kids get out of high school, or out of college, and they head out of here. There’s nothing here for them. Parents even tell them to go somewhere else besides the coal mines. I’ve got two boys. I don’t want them to leave here. I’d like for them to find them a good job here.

In KFTC, it’s membership-based. It’s not one person runs the show. Everybody helps run the show with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. I’ve sat in on some very important topics in Steering Committee meetings. Decisions there aren’t made by the paid staff of KFTC. Our members have a say-so in the decisions. And our views count.  My say-so counts in the Steering Committee.”

I feel like things that I fight for are important. I’m not doing it for the fame or glory of it. I just do it because I feel it’s right. People should have good roads. People should have good water. People should be able to sit on their front porch without eating dust or mud. People should be able to go out and buy a car and drive it up their holler without ragging it out for the roads being so rough. People have got the right to speak out.

I would like to see KFTC do a little more rallying and a little more lobbying. I think that draws a lot of attention. We’re a non-violent group, and I hope we stay non-violent. But I think we need to get out and let ourselves be known a little more. A lot of people don’t know who KFTC is. They don’t realize that it’s just not about coal issues. It’s not about truck issues. It’s about all sorts of issues, like tax justice, where the rich man gets tax breaks and the poor man has to pay. That’s a concern for me. They ought to have to pay their own taxes too, same as we do. What’s fair is fair.

A KFTC organizer told me a story when I first joined KFTC about a black community in another part of Kentucky. They’d been trying for years to get a sidewalk in their neighborhood. Somebody finally got with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and bam, it went along then – sidewalk in. That’s what people deserve. People pay their taxes. People work hard. It seems like in eastern Kentucky, we get the short stick all the time.