Larry Gibson, with his extended family, and his fellow activists, did what few people have ever done--said NO to the coal industry. Larry's story is that of an unexpected American hero, a man with little education or power in Appalachia who created power by showing others what was happening and working together to let the world know how wrong it was.

 

Short, poor, with less than a third grade education, speech defect, and Appalachian drawl, he ended up passionately speaking and transform minds and hearts at the White House, the United Nations, college campuses, churches, and public hearings. On his family's land on Kayford Mountain, he hosted celebrities, scientists, dignitaries, filmmakers and journalists, and people from around the nation and globe at his mountain to show them the dangerous realities of mountaintop removal coal mining--the poisoned or buried streams, the demolished forests and mountains, the ruined air quality and small town economies, the dying and ill from the toxic air and water.

 

He said, "I am not collateral damage. I am Larry Gibson," and he encouraged everyone wherever they are to stand up for what is most precious to them, what can't be bought or sold.

 

                   "Whoever heard of blowing up a mountain?"