On my new hashtag, #UnOccupyTheMines

#UnOccupyTheMines — that’s my new hashtag.

I read a report in the Sowetan this morning about the recovery of the body a missing miner who had been presumed dead. The article stated that this was the 117th mining death in South Africa this year. Before you gasp, twice that number of mine workers will be killed every month in China this year. And the Coal Mountain blog tries to aggregate every one of them.

From the environmental disasters of strip- and mountaintop removal mining documented by Jeff Biggers, Tricia Shapiro, Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood, and so many others to the monumental cost in global miners’ lives documented for years here at Coal Mountain, #UnOccupytheMines is a hashtag that desperately needs to trend.

#UnOccupyTheMines