Soul Full of Coal Dust

Soul Full of Coal Dust
Author: Chris Hamby
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2020-08-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0316299499

In a devastating and urgent work of investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hamby uncovers the tragic resurgence of black lung disease in Appalachia, its Big Coal cover-up, and the resilient mining communities who refuse to back down. Decades ago, a grassroots uprising forced Congress to enact long-overdue legislation designed to virtually eradicate black lung disease and provide fair compensation to coal miners stricken with the illness. Today, however, both promises remain unfulfilled. Levels of disease have surged, the old scourge has taken an aggressive new form, and ailing miners and widows have been left behind by a dizzying legal system, denied even modest payments and medical care. In this devastating and urgent work of investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hamby traces the unforgettable story of how these trends converge in the lives of two men: Gary Fox, a black lung-stricken West Virginia coal miner determined to raise his family from poverty, and John Cline, an idealistic carpenter and rural medical clinic worker who becomes a lawyer in his fifties. Opposing them are the lawyers at the coal industry’s go-to law firm; well-credentialed doctors who often weigh in for the defense, including a group of radiologists at Johns Hopkins; and Gary’s former employer, Massey Energy, the region’s largest coal company, run by a cantankerous CEO often portrayed in the media as a dark lord of the coalfields. On the line in Gary and John’s longshot legal battle are fundamental principles of fairness and justice, with consequences for miners and their loved ones throughout the nation. Taking readers inside courtrooms, hospitals, homes tucked in Appalachian hollows, and dusty mine tunnels, Hamby exposes how coal companies have not only continually flouted a law meant to protect miners from deadly amounts of dust but also enlisted well-credentialed doctors and lawyers to help systematically deny much-needed benefits to miners. The result is a legal and medical thriller that brilliantly illuminates how a band of laborers — aided by a small group of lawyers, doctors and lay advocates, often working out of their homes or in rural clinics and tiny offices – challenged one of the world's most powerful forces, Big Coal, and won. A deeply troubling yet ultimately triumphant work, Soul Full of Coal Dust is a necessary and timely book about injustice and resistance.

Digging Our Own Graves

Digging Our Own Graves
Author: Barbara Ellen Smith
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1642593931

Employment and production in the Appalachian coal industry have plummeted over recent decades. But the lethal black lung disease, once thought to be near-eliminated, affects miners at rates never before recorded. Digging Our Own Graves sets this epidemic in the context of the brutal assault, begun in the 1980s and continued since, on the United Mine Workers of America and the collective power of rank-and-file coal miners in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields. This destruction of militancy and working class power reveals the unacknowledged social and political roots of a health crisis that is still barely acknowledged by the state and coal industry. Barbara Ellen Smith’s essential study, now with an updated introduction and conclusion, charts the struggles of miners and their families from the birth of the Black Lung Movement in 1968 to the present-day importance of demands for environmental justice through proposals like the Green New Deal. Through extensive interviews with participants and her own experiences as an activist, the author provides a vivid portrait of communities struggling for survival against the corporate extraction of labor, mineral wealth, and the very breath of those it sends to dig their own graves.

Black Lung Benefits Restoration Act

Black Lung Benefits Restoration Act
Author: United States Congress
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Total Pages: 76
Release: 2016-12-28
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9781334802218

Excerpt from Black Lung Benefits Restoration Act: Hearing of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, Second Session We did get a slight modification, but it is still extremely difficult for coal miners or their widows to get benefits. We want to mine coal. I live in coal mining territory in deep southern Illinois. I want to see that we use that source of energy. But I do not want to do it at the risk of the health of coalminers, or at the risk of marring the future of the coal miners and their families who 've this Nation our energy. We ought to use coal, but we ought to a so protect coal miners in the process. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Summary of H.R. 5159

Summary of H.R. 5159
Author: United States. Congress. Joint Committee on Taxation
Publisher:
Total Pages: 26
Release: 1981
Genre: Coal
ISBN:

Legislative Calendar

Legislative Calendar
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities
Publisher:
Total Pages: 382
Release: 1996
Genre: Legislative calendars
ISBN: