An extra-large King of NASCAR Richard Petty T-shirt and patterned green and black camouflage clothing added to the local color of the public meeting. Decent hard-working people concerned about the air, water and land filled the room that night more than a decade ago in Dimock Township in Susquehanna County. Both pro and con, we listened to business-suit-wearing natural gas executives and political hacks make their case for the benefits of continuing support for fracking in the Marcellus Shale region.
Of course these slick corporate hustlers spun their story to envision a magical cash pile from an already magical landscape where local residents hunted, fished, raced off-road vehicles and otherwise lived off natural splendor. But neighbor had already turned against neighbor as big business pillaged the land and gasbag bosses took the money and ran.
Expect similar deception in Tremont Township in Schuylkill County where federal government pirates work with free-market collaborators as they plunder the countryside and quality of life of people who deserve much better than a proposed Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center that will hold up to 7,500 prisoners.
Trust neither Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro nor Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser to help terminate this prison camp plan for the former Big Lots warehouse built on land the federal government has already purchased for approximately $119.5 million.
Not since smug millionaire robber barons and coal company marauders looted Schuylkill County in the last century has this hardcore county faced such an existential threat. Tradition still matters among generations of coal field dwellers with deep roots in the region, people who work to survive and raise their families in little towns like Tremont, Ravine, Pine Grove and Tower City. Survival is difficult for many of these people, particularly those who might not make on Social Security what they once did in full-time jobs.
History matters little if at all to the ICE storm troopers. Neither does the hard labor that went into building little one-time coal towns where tradition is still worth fighting for and people hang on the best they can. Liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and independents must join forces to battle this armed and dangerous invasion.
The shale wars divided people into fierce camps. That long ago night at the meeting I watched pampered liberals mock working-class men and women who attended the gas meeting, people who lacked the formal education and sophistication some of the smug know-it-all “activists” possessed as they opposed the gas trucks and gas land workers that overran the environment and overworked the mountains. I also knew how some of the local rednecks snickered the second they smelled a lib in the room the way they boasted over cold bottles of beer they could smell a big-racked buck on the first day of deer season.
Pennsylvanians should have learned from our shared history that polarized us deeply.
Now is the time to push aside the Yuengling bottles and put away the college degrees. Shake hands with people on the other side and for whatever the reason stand together in opposition to the proposed Tremont Township ICE facility. The more of us who combat the detention camp the better the odds of stopping the federal government’s damaging plan. Whether you ride a dirt bike, four-wheeler or snowmobile through the mountains or study bugs and leaves as a student or professor, you must enlist to take down this disastrous plan to disrespect everything our ancestors worked to achieve.
My grandfather emigrated from rural Ireland to Scranton, worked underground for 45 years as a coal miner and died from Black Lung disease he contracted after inhaling toxic coal dust. My dad patrolled back roads near Tremont as a state trooper when I was a little boy and my family lived in nearby Lykens. My wife, Stephanie, was born in Lykens and grew up in Tower City. Her mother was an immigrant British war bride who met her father when he served as a captain in the 8th Air Force in England, returning to his Tower City hometown after World War II to serve as the town dentist.
The coal region lives and breathes as our literal common ground. That’s why we join others who share common values, respect decency, fight ICE cops and defy all pompous politicians who disrespect and patronize tradition as quaint and foolish.
Coal crackers, and I use the term as a badge of honor, have always been smarter than they think. We the people vs. the politicians who belittle us share a genuine stake in the future of our hometowns, our state, our nation and our world. Coal fields activists such as Mother Jones has been here before. Those of us who follow her spirit remain.
Underestimate us if you choose.
Go ahead.
Sell us short.
This sale won’t go as easy as you think.
