Junior Walk has seen mountaintop removal up close, real close. The young activist lives amongst the mountains of West Virginia, U.S. and has seen and experienced the damage being done by the fossil fuel industry in the area.
When Junior left high school a few years ago, his path was similar to many in the community. His dad worked for Massey Energy (now Alpha Natural Resources) and there was so suggestion of college, just get out and find a job, except there were few jobs to be had. Junior ended up working at Massey Energy, at times wading through coal slurry with no goggles or protection, according to his account on Earth Justice. He realized his life might get shortened by working in such conditions and quit.
Few jobs
As he recounted in Journey up Coal River, “After a year or so of going from minimum wage job to minimum wage job a family friend offered me a job as a security guard at a mountaintop removal site. While working there I felt like a horrible person for being even the smallest part in the machine that was tearing down that mountain and poisoning the community at the bottom.”
Coal River Mountain Watch
So he dropped into the NGO Coal River Mountain Watch to see Judy (Julia) Bonds, somebody who had known him since he was a child. He started volunteering for them, writing articles for their newsletter anonymously while remaining on his job as security guard. Eventually, the NGO offered him a job as office manager, which he continues today.
Extractive industries exploitation
“I think the Coal River Valley is one of the most amazing places on this earth, and I’d never want to move away from here,” he says. “Sadly, though, it’s also poverty stricken and highly exploited by outside extractive industries. I think if the Coal River Valley were prosperous it wouldn’t look all that different, but it would certainly have a better feel to it, a better climate if you will. Folks would be self sufficient and not have to rely on outside corporations to use them just so they could feed their families.”
Kicked out of his home
Junior has faced tough personal challenges in fighting the fossil fuel industry.
“I won’t forget the day I decided to work at Coal River Mountain Watch,” he told Earth Justice. “I told my parents that I took the job. My dad got really upset. He didn’t want to, but he knew he was going to have to kick me out of the house, or get fired. We sat there and talked about it for a couple hours, argued about it, yelled about it, and finally came down to it. The next morning I packed up my things and left.”
As he became more vocal in his role as an activist, many of his extended family stopped talking to him.
Every day the mountains are blasted
It’s a battle against time. “Every single day, they’re blasting the mountains and contaminating the water,” he told Earth Justice. “And every day more people are getting cancer and dying. There’s a 7-billion-gallon coal slurry dam above my house that could collapse at any moment, setting loose a 40-foot-wall of sludge that could wipe me out. It’s this sense of urgency that most people don’t understand.”
Junior was a keynote speaker at the 2011 PowerShift conference in Washington, DC, and recipient of the prestigious Brower Youth Awards in 2011.
Junior is just one of the many activists including the late Larry Gibson, and the late Judy Bonds, who have been labeled mountain heroes for their efforts to protect the environment.
Check out Coal River Mountain Watch.
Junior Walk , Mountain Hero, Earth Justice
Check out Earth Justice.
Junior Walk speaks at the 2011 PowerShift conference
