Hard Road of Hope w/ Eleanor Goldfield

 

On this edition of Parallax Views, the coal industry may be dying, but the business refuses to go without taking others down with it. Case in point with the Appalachia regions of Amerca, which is simultaneously bombabrded with propaganda from the coal industry and fed false promises by the fracking industry. In the new documentary Hard Road of Hope, activist and artist Eleanor Goldfield examines the exploitation of West Virginia by these corporate interests and the fight that across that cuts across lines of race, class, and gender against those interests.

In this conversation we discuss:

- The West Virginia Mine Wars, 20th century fights against labor exploitation and SCABs, and how those fights relate to today's stuggles in Appalachian region of the United States

- Coal company corruption in West Virginia, fracking, the poisoning of water supplies and the effect on the community

- Talking to people from different cultures as an activist

- The propaganda used against the populace, coal company front groups like Friends of Coal, fear of the Left

- Indigenous struggle, solidarity, and much, much more