Tag: Protest

August 11, 1958: Congress of Racial Equality Launches Sit-In Movement at Charleston Lunch Counters

On August 11, 1958, the Congress of Racial Equality—or CORE—launched a sit-in movement at several Charleston lunch counters. Prior to this time, African-Americans in Charleston could order takeout food at many white-owned diners but were not allowed to sit down and eat.

The Charleston protests occurred four years after the U.S. Supreme Court ended segregation in public schools through its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. While the Brown decision integrated public schools, it was left up to civil rights activists to break the color barrier at privately owned businesses.

In 1958, the newly formed CORE chapter targeted three Charleston eateries. Protesters organized sit-ins at the Woolworth, Kresge, and Newberry five-and-ten-cent stores. Faced with a backlash of bad publicity and boycotts, the three stores soon changed their policies and began allowing African-Americans to eat in their establishments. These successful sit-ins occurred a year and a half before the more famous civil rights sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, in early 1960.

While the CORE sit-ins started a trend toward integration, many businesses in Charleston and other West Virginia cities remained segregated through the 1960s.

Residents Speak Out Against Mountaineer Gas Pipeline and Rockwool at Public Hearing in Shepherdstown

The West Virginia Public Service Commission traveled to Shepherdstown this week for a public hearing to address concerns about a pipeline expansion project in the Eastern Panhandle. About a hundred people showed up to rally before the event. Dozens went on to speak during the hearing – and many took the opportunity to mention the controversial Rockwool manufacturing company.

Martinsburg resident Stewart Acuff was one of several people who spoke against the pipeline and Rockwool at the PSC’s hearing Wednesday night.

“The people of the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia have said over and over and over again in huge numbers, we don’t want this damn pipeline, and we don’t want Rockwool,” Acuff said.

Many attendees asked the PSC commissioners not to approve Mountaineer Gas’ expansion pipeline into the Eastern Panhandle.

That pipeline is being built between Berkeley Springs and Martinsburg, and construction began in March. It will be more than 22 miles long.

Project developers Mountaineer Gas and TransCanada say the pipeline will bring natural gas to Jefferson and Morgan Counties.

Mountaineer Gas has proposed to invest nearly $120 million for infrastructure replacements and system upgrades from 2019 through 2023, including roughly $16.5 million for ongoing investments to expand and enhance service in Morgan, Berkeley and Jefferson counties.

But several residents at the hearing shared concerns about the pipeline’s impact on the Panhandle’s karst geology of sinkholes, springs and caves.

Speakers also mentioned a controversial insulation manufacturing plant being built in Ranson just a few miles from public schools and homes. The plant, Denmark-based Rockwool, will make stone wool insulation. The Ranson facility would feature two, 21-story smokestacks releasing chemicals like formaldehyde.

Rockwool has said the gas pipeline would be crucial for its operation.

“Rockwool has been working with Mountaineer Gas Company,” said General Counsel for Rockwool North America Ken Cammaroto. “And we have committed to being a loyal gas customer to Mountaineer Gas.”

Of the roughly 100 people who came out to the hearing, about five spoke in favor of the pipeline and Rockwool plant.

PSC Communication Director Susan Small says the commission will now have two months before making a ruling on December 28. The public can still submit formal comments on the issue online.

Gov. Justice 'Fully Supports' Rockwool Project, Despite Local Opposition

Gov. Jim Justice announced Wednesday that he fully supports the Rockwool development project in Jefferson County, despite the level of pushback to the project from local residents.

The company will manufacture stone wool insulation on previous orchard land next to an elementary school and up the road from three other public schools. The plant will feature two smokestacks releasing a range of chemicals like formaldehyde and benzene.

Thousands of residents are in an uproar over the project.

Justice said in a news release that the company has worked closely with state and local officials to approve the project. He noted the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has and will continue to follow it closely.

“Rockwool will provide West Virginia with another significant economic and jobs development project and I am in complete support of their efforts,” Gov. Justice said. “This is good news as we continue to bring viable businesses to our state and keep moving forward. We are excited that Rockwool has chosen us as the location for this plant site.”
 
“Rockwool has followed all the required procedures during the permitting process and the WVDEP will continue to review and make certain that the law is followed and that the health of our citizens and the environment remain as the top priority,” Gov. Justice added. “Rockwool has demonstrated for many years at other facilities they operate in Mississippi and Canada that they are a green company and that they take the steps needed to ensure that their manufacturing operations don’t endanger the health and welfare of the public or the environment.”
 
“Again, the WVDEP will remain diligent in making sure that all regulatory requirements are met,” Gov. Justice said.

The Denmark-based company’s Jefferson County project was first announced over statewide media in July 2017. The company received approval for its air quality permit from the state DEP in April.

Construction is expected to be completed by 2020.

Hundreds Protest Trump Outside Greenbrier

President Donald Trump’s address to Republican congressmen at The Greenbrier resort in southern West Virginia drew several hundred protesters with signs and chants criticizing him and calling for living wages, protecting Medicaid and Medicare, defending immigrants and decrying hate speech.

Corralled by dozens of West Virginia State Police troopers, who blocked the entrances to the resort, the demonstrators marched more than a half-mile along White Sulphur Springs’ main street.

They generally kept to the sidewalk and listened to a handful of speakers allowed by troopers to set up outside the Greenbrier’s main gate. The crowd then dispersed back down the street to the buses and cars that brought them.

“It’s the entire GOP from my perspective. They put Trump in to advance their agenda,” said Arthur Blair, 68, from Silver Spring, Maryland. A social worker who worked with juveniles, he was disabled at 56 with bone degeneration, he has a 28-year-old son with schizophrenia is now getting along with medications and housing from federal programs, he said.

“They have Social Security under attack, and everything under Social Security … and Medicaid and Medicare that many people are in need of,” Blair said. He believes half the people broadly criticized in the U.S. by Republican politicians for not working have mental illnesses that prevent it.

Angus MacIvor and his wife, who came from nearby Lewisburg, carried a “No Hate in My Holler” sign made by a neighbor. The 71-year-old retiree said he used to think George W. Bush was the most damaging president he’s seen, but Bush at least seemed to like people and Trump doesn’t.

He faulted Trump for “the shame he’s brought on our country and the damage he’s doing to the poor and the dispossessed in our country.”

Protest organizers said the lavish Greenbrier’s estate location in West Virginia, a state with a high rate of enrollment in federal safety net programs, is symbolic. They said it’s the first in a month of planned actions in states where politicians want to impose work requirements for receiving Medicaid, including Kansas, Arkansas, New Hampshire and North Carolina.

About 525,000 of West Virginia’s nearly 1.8 million people are enrolled in Medicaid. Down the road from The Greenbrier, several storefronts have restaurants and small businesses. Some are empty.

Hundreds Rally in Shepherdstown During U.S. Democratic Senators Retreat

Hundreds of protesters gathered across the street from the Bavarian Inn in Shepherdstown Thursday morning as the United States Democratic Senators held their annual retreat inside.

On Thursday morning, Harpers Ferry resident Cheryl Kemp joined some 250 people gathered outside the Bavarian Inn in Shepherdstown. She says she came out because she wants the senators to know they have her support.

“It’s time to start fighting, and that we’re behind them; that we, you know, we’re against the Trump agenda about what he’s doing to our democracy,” Kemp said.

Senator Joe Manchin’s office confirmed Wednesday that Manchin organized the retreat to be held in West Virginia, but it’s unclear what the senators are discussing. The retreat is closed to media and the public.

Some Donald Trump supporters came out to protest the rally, including Shepherd University sophomore Nicholas Mantegna. He says it’s important he and other Trump supporters are there to remind Democrats who’s in office.

“Because he’s our president, and they need to accept that. It’s as simple as that,” Mantegna explained.

Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren spoke to the crowd around 10:00 a.m. Thursday morning. Manchin’s office says he and his fellow senators will be in Shepherdstown through Friday.

Final Day Protest Calls on Voters to 'Remember in November'

Editor’s Note: For the latest updates on the final day of the legislative session, be sure to keep checking our live blog.

As lawmakers made their final decisions inside the House and Senate chambers, hundreds of protesters gathered just outside the Capitol to voice their displeasure with the 2016 Legislative Session.

The protestors’ rallying cry, “Remember In November,” was a call to action for voters to express their outrage with lawmakers at the polls in the coming election.

At issue with the group was the passage a number of pieces of legislation that organizers said attempt to silence West Virginians in favor of special interest groups. These include the passage of Right-to-Work, the repeal of prevailing wage, and the passage of a bill requiring the drug testing of welfare recipients. Protestors also denounced the legislature for their consideration of the Religious Freedom Protection Act, which they said simply gave license to discriminate.

Joe Solomon, who works at Taylor Books in Charleston, organized the rally.

“I saw so many people coming in the shop with looks of despair and depression on their face,” Solomon said, “You see every day in the paper another op-ed or another article that’s crushing the soul of the state and discriminating against another group of people. And I thought, ‘This thing is isn’t going to end on a whimper, is it?’”

Solomon said he expressed his concern on Facebook, which quickly gained support from various groups. Speakers at the rally included members of the NAACP, Fairness West Virginia and the Appalachian Workers’ Alliance, among others.

“I think the peoples’ message is pretty clear. They’re saying, ‘Look, we might have our difference but we’re all united because we’re being silenced, and everything we could possibly dream of for our causes are being trampled on. We’ve got to come together, build power together, and build enough people power to drive home a true peoples’ agenda.’”

Sabrina Shrader, a resident of Mercer County, has filed in the November elections to run for the House seat for the 27th District. Shrader said she saw number issues that influenced her decision to run.

“I grew up in McDowell county, grew up in a generation of poverty,” Shrader said. “For most of my life I felt like I didn’t matter. I few years ago I started to get involved in the political process, and saw that it was working wrong for the people. I want to run to speak for the peoples’ issues.”

At the rally ended with members of the crowd pledging to register to vote, register their friends and encourage others to get the polls. 

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