they want to save their marriage which i agree with. that they want to stop the experience from. caught in the middle in the battle for blair mountain corporations versus miners miners versus environmentalist and even miners against each other so who will come out victorious in appalachia and what does it show about the struggle between labor and corporations in this country. and those corporations well they're obama's fix for america's job problem yes the same companies that ship u.s. jobs overseas so where does the answer really lie to uninvite.

was. an early release for the cop seen here shooting and killing oscar grant back in two thousand and nine so after serving less than a year of the sentence are police getting away with murder we hear from oscar grant's uncle. good evening it's monday june thirteenth i'm lauren lyster coming to you from here in washington d.c. and you are watching our team now ninety years ago coal miners rose up in the largest insurrection since the civil war it became known as the battle of blair mountain some credit with launching the labor movement and creating the middle class america that exists today but the battle is not over some of those coal miners descendants along with activists and environmentalists march this last weekend in what's being called the second battle of blair mountain archie's own

kill and pork was there and she has the story. in the mountains of west virginia a battle is raging. for the feet of a mountain it's cool it's joe. and it's. of resistance in appalachians the same cause let's see. more than three hundred miners activists and environmentalists marched at blair mountain to demand an end to mountaintop removal. technique that blasts right to get a call seems within which environmentalist say send debris reading down causing flooding in contaminating rivers water through water they retrace the steps of more than ten thousand coal miners who in one thousand twenty one took up arms for the right to unionize and survive to fifteen thousand coal miners forming an army and marching up the mountain that's right behind me you know and fighting you know

against an army paid for by coal operators chuck amy's great grandfather led the charge is the president of the west virginia miners union but it's a history he didn't learn from textbooks this is a history that has been concealed from west virginians the only time you see the word union in the book is when they used union carbide the chemical company my great grandfather my grandfather i thought it bob schultz worked in the mines for thirty seven years oh my god that's what we need this house missing. i got it from the very same core that gave him black money making breathing and working difficult every doctor that the coal companies sent into the green and i can't work i have in iraq for me to want to. control it is not able to work. but these lawyers say it's not because the plaque on his wife debbie says he's paid with his health. you can't do what he wants.

i want to go prisoner and from my home bob's family fought alongside checks in the miners' water but bob won't be marching they want to save blair mountain which i agree with. but they want to stop me and my friends and my family from mining and that's how we make really. cool is virtually the only living to be made in logan county ninety years later. thank you because some of the worst prescription drug abuse in america that's all there is called if you're not in the call of the drugs it's one or the other. nearly a century later at the coal companies still wield incredible influence and political power. marchers found public roads blocked with boulders and campsites shut down the coal companies call them up and said if you let these marchers stay at your campsite and that everybody in your family is going to lose

their job which side are you. are you. are you. more than one hundred forty protesters trespassed and coal company land like the miners are part of core companies before them ninety years ago these activists say they intentionally wrist arrest by trespassing on the mines property that's right tension to the second battle of blair mountain they say the resistance isn't ending anytime soon and that appellation will rise again i'm more so angry that. the people you know the people of appalachia the hillbillies have been beaten down for so long and been you know it's been held under the boot heel of the coal industry for so long where mounting for both sides its everything its resources its coal its history and its symbol its part of operation it's a battle that neither side is willing to surrender killing for it r.t. blair west virginia the second battle of blair mountain deals with protesters

paying against corporate interests and what activists call a horrific. working conditions and the mount top removal mining techniques in the area that have allegedly polluted the water and cause health problems and even deaths now this case affects local residents but here to put these issues in context in the united states is labor journalist mike alkies covered a number of these stories also has deep roots in the labor struggle movement i would say that you think that's fair my question to you in this case you have miners could it against corporate interests and of course the issue of corporations putting profits before people profits before safety this is just one case but i'm curious of how representative you think it is of the modern day struggle in the labor movement in this country or you know it shouldn't you know being there was a study that came out last week that showed that union miner are we safer than fifty percent safer than non and these situations constantly it's about safety it's also about providing for somebody situation and unit really provide for it for

people to express themselves on the job and this is what's really at stake what about movement it's a symbol but from what i understand there are union mines in blair mountain or the certain union mines and blue moment and there are throughout which would you know of the mountaintop mining you know there's very few you know i mean part of the reason coal companies shifted to mountaintop you wouldn't find it was so that they didn't have to deal with you know i'm just curious in a bigger picture because you have covered a number one of these a number of these labor struggles if you see this you know because i think people could see this story and say ok this is you know this affects just these people that are there struggling against this one company is that the case is it's just you know these miners struggling against one corporation or do you see this is symbolic of labor struggles that are going on against corporations all over this country and i think what is happening in appalachia is really the canary in the coal mine of what is happening with corporate power across the united states corporations can come to just about any community use it up often as they do in

whole communities want to call runs out they've been in the town the time goes by. or if it's not already pour and then just again and i think this is really symbolism and blair mountain being a site where the united states government bombed union protesters bomb them with airplanes is a symbol it's a secret symbol for the labor movement in the fact that we're going to destroy it is unheard of i mean this is like destroying the bankers who were destroying gettysburg for the labor this is an absolute crime against history well one of the things that stuck out to me is that in march of two thousand and blair mountain was placed on the national register of historic places but then reportedly call operator pressure on state agencies caused them to change that and to get rid of that delist at nine months later making it easier for companies to mine there i'm curious if you're surprised that call operators influence the state and why you think there was a change of course and what you think it says about the relationship between industry and government and policy you know cooperators of often behave like

through dictators you know the only government there is no other industry and keep for instance what happened in coal river mountain there's coal river mountain west virginia is an area where they could put up a lot of wind mills a lot of wind farms the corn history one allow it even though they're not going to mine that mountain coal river for coal they're not going to allow that now on top to be used for wind farms because they don't want to be anything else and then this is emblematic of the power that coal companies have throughout the state of west virginia why do they have so much power and is this just coal companies or do you see this as a trend of corporate power over politics in this country i think is the trend of corporate power throughout this country because companies especially western i think with a worse situation i mean for instance there was a big case a few years ago about on top of mining before the west virginia state supreme court before the case just to make sure that you know the mining company would get it when the court case the c.e.o. of massey energy don't play and ship went on to be cation in the french riviera with the state supreme court chief justice i mean and you know on top of being one

of his biggest campaign funders this is how they've. business roger well it may have more broadly i know you and i have both covered the labor struggle in illinois at the honeywell uranium plant and that's a situation where we know that c.e.o. is a major or that company is a major donor to politics and it has and you could argue influence and politics i just want to know if you see this as. as corporations kind of broadly winning out over the rights of workers in this country i think the brother you want to know but i think you know even look at what's happening with the people getting arrested in blue mountain people resisting going to continue to exist and that's something that's very tough to get rid of so little time for corporations of trans workers many times in this country even to the first battle. of the lips of their mom is that you can't cut a liberal that people remember fights and people rise up again but on the flip side you know in that story i think it points out kind of the complexity of these struggles you have a miner who has black lung he can't work anymore he's very ill at the same time he

says hey no way am i going to go march against these coal companies these are the only jobs in this region if i march against them there goes my job there goes my friends jobs is it better to have a job and suffer than to have no job i don't have this is a zero sum situation we can create different types of jobs in our watch or you can create you know when firms you can create manufacturing to do all types of things and. history of course is that they're not very good jobs if you look at anywhere with coal mining you see the highest levels of poverty and in the united states and that's for a reason and coal companies have always cut out other industries because nobody wants to really work in court nobody wants to work in the dangerous conditions nobody wants to get back on and so cool companies have been able to keep this hour and they've been able to miners against community members that would prefer something better because miners don't see the other way and we as a country have to present another way if we ever want to move past the problem called global warming so upon whom do you place the burden of this situation do you

blame the corporations for these practices do you. blame the government for not regulating it in the way that it needs to in order to have workers have living wages and have the conditions and order to work or do you blame you know the public for not understanding these things are unions for not maybe representing the best interests of their workers all the time i think i think you have to blame corporations and unions both for the problem not just you know the united mine workers has never spoken out against it and it's impoverished appalachia. corporations have pushed it so i think they both need to be blamed and i think we as a general public we tend to ignore our watch we're going to look a bit of white trash or some sort of other and i think really we need to have a broader discussion about appalachia because we can heal the problems of clean energy into we heal the the wounds of appalachia that's been caused by coal mining well what about more broadly who do you blame in what you say it's kind of the struggle of of corporations versus labor and corporate power in this country but i

think more broadly it's the governments which have not created conditions in which people can organize well and which people can have access of the voting pools you know the fact that you're able to buy supreme court elections in the state of wisconsin the highest bidder can put in millions of dollars but i'm limited so most moment is a big issue and i think something that you know we all share a certain amount of blame with and you know we need to be more vigilant and i think what's happening in blair mountain is really a wake up call for the rest for the rest of the country i want to get to much for putting it in context with your reporting that you've done that was labor journalist mike elk now u.s. president barack obama for one is relying on u.s. corporations for solutions to discount trade jobs problem now he met with his jobs council today for a plan to discuss it and the council's made up a c.e.o. it's from big corporations and it's headed by general electric's jeffrey immelt here's what here's a little on them. but these are leaders who have decades of experience in running

some of america's best businesses creating jobs understanding what it takes to grow our economy and strength of our middle class. now meanwhile activists such as the hacker group anonymous see a totally different solution to the country's economic woes they do not see corporations out of the solution they see civil disobedience and resistance as the solution they're calling to get rid of the corporate and big bank influence over the economy and politics and fact and yet another solution we're seeing being blazed by the state of idaho they're looking for help from the chinese from chinese companies to invest in their states project now here to help us all break it down is author and journalist david de graw thanks so much for being with us now i know tomorrow several groups are launching a nonviolent protest movement protesting the economy aimed at ending kind of campaign finance influence ending too big to fail breaking up the fed ordering ben bernanke you to step down one of those groups is the hacker group anonymous and

they actually released this video targeting ben bernanke i just want to show a little bit of that and take a look at this excerpt do you have what degree of confidence in your ability to control this hundred percent. percent. because you were very much for your. district. large request. for your shoestring which we treated with. bush that you're looking at now david i know you support this larger resistance plan tomorrow i know there's never a protest planned around the country i'm curious what exactly is going to happen tomorrow and what are you calling for. what was starting a movement some are as you said essentially a nonviolent movement with two primary objectives and they are objectives that

anonymous as touched on previous videos as well they are to end the system of political bribery which is campaign finance law being and the revolving door and the other main objective is to break up the federal reserve and it's too big to fail banks you know if you are one of the ninety nine percent of americans you have a core common sense goal to achieve to go but what are we actually going to see time are we going to see large scale demonstrations are we going to see people there at all advantage or you know what's going to happen is anonymous going to our reserve what's the plan here well as of the specialized movement i don't know exactly what's going to happen but what i do know is going to happen is there's going to be protests in twenty three different cities there's also going to be people taking individual actions we're going to be removing that money from the big banks you know whatever individual actions can be taking along with these pro

publica protests in twenty three cities tomorrow at eleven am i will be at one chase. we're going to round up some people and then by one o'clock we're going to head to liberty park which is now called the car park down in the financial district and people we occupy in that car indefinitely and still the vans are bad as far as campaign finance lobbying and in the federal reserve and it seemed they felt been ok now so we'll have to see how long that last how long that take out last may we can talk you out there campaigning but my question for you this is obviously a very different approach to solving the problems of this country than what we see and washington and then the approach that we see president obama for one night with his. jobs and competitiveness council which he has touted to promote job creation but it's made up of twenty six private sector leaders headed by c.e.o.

of general electric so implied in this council is that you know by touting private sector corporate leaders to solve the job problem is that corporate interests are aligned with the best interests of workers and unemployment in this or excuse me an employment rather in this country do you agree or disagree with that. well i completely disagree and you know if you look at it objectively the interest the one set of the one percent of the u.s. population does not go down well for ninety nine percent of the population i mean if you look at these leaders that they've been or during jobs or short millions of jobs you know the inequality of wealth is that an all time high as forty four million people on food stamps their record breaking numbers of people living in poverty i mean the statistics speak for themselves i mean we're out of point now where the democrats and the republicans have been bordereau campaign on the revolving door and lobbying and unless we step forward and start doing this

nonviolent civil disobedience politicians are not going to represent the as they have been doing i mean we see we're seeing. the war ok. so you see action as kind of the antidote to the money that we see flowing into washington from big corporations and that sort of thing that's your solution i want to show. em all solution he wrote a at a tauriel in the wall street journal today i just want to show the data point of what this committee is calling for to create a million jobs quickly wanted to train workers for today's open jobs another is to streamline permitting to facilitate small business loans to construction workers back to work but in the two million who don't have jobs in this country so those are some of the solutions that they say oh it's those jobs and travel and tourism so those are the solutions that the jobs commission is calling for that the jobs are is calling for but i want to call attention for a minute to immelt record as c.e.o. at g.e.

and their record of job creation so let's bring up that chart a graphic that i have since m.l. became c.e.o. of g.e. the company has actually shed thousands of u.s. jobs that's according to their annual report and it become more reliant at the same time on foreign workers say you can see right there and i'm sorry david you can see that all time paris. at the end of two thousand there were one hundred sixty eight thousand u.s. workers for g.e. and that was about fifty four percent of their workers and then it go to two thousand and ten the beginning of that year one hundred thirty four thousand g.e. workers in the u.s. and it dropped down to forty four percent of their workers so my question to you i was going to say but i want your analysis you know should someone like him of he's been touted by the administration to create jobs be walking the walk and does this show that he's not and that corporations don't really have the will to implement maybe some of the policies are calling for. you know these policies they all sound

nice and the sound like they're going to do good things but look at their track record as you stated it's horrific you know or shortage of jihad or any taxes i mean that was all about you know you know sacrifice. our population. well how about do you think a dollar and i mean this. this is just absurd i mean how long are we going to keep rolling for their propaganda and i just thought and remain well the future is literally going up in flames economically but the question i want to just point to a little bit more of g.e.'s track record and the track record of these corporations on obama's council because you mentioned offshoring you mentioned a g.e. has not paid taxes i think they paid zero for their corporate taxes this year a lot of has to do with tax havens with foreign investment we're taking our investments and investing in other countries and in fact if we can bring up this graphic showing g.e.'s foreign investment their investment abroad has jumped from

forty seven billion dollars in two thousand and six to ninety four billion dollars in two thousand and ten that is according to their disclosure filings and according to bloomberg study a lot of the corporations that are represented on this jobs commission represent similar trends of rand best that are brought in an increase and i'm curious with you does this kind of underscore the difference between corporate interests and national interests i think what the american people are really starting to understand is that these are our global corporations they have no loyalty to the american public you know those shortages showed their best the money in emerging markets and they are concerned globally they have a lot of concerns of the american middle class they see the american middle class as an obstacle to further profits. record breaking profits a record breaking in and so my question to you corporations are always going to be beholden to their shareholders to profits that is how. they operate but a popular view in the u.s.

is that the economy is spurred by private sector job growth that the private sector is who need to get this going so my question is is the current economic system out equipped to deal with today's challenges in the u.s. not a not for the lord your god delusion you know we're there is war presented. ok and really quickly could the solution be and having other countries invest in the u.s. we see idaho and their governor kind of blazing the trail asking chinese companies to come and invest in their projects there we see chinese companies being interested in a few different projects the fertilizer plant technologies goan they're actually building some solar panels there five hundred people employed to do that traditionally we've seen a lot of resistance in the u.s. to allowing chinese companies to buy american companies do you think that we should be alarmed in the us of this or do you think that this is the solution. well is part of the solution i see this is you know you have all these centralized economic

workers that are going to order so what we need to do is used in a drawer was going to go to the local low and you know i was used to banks and i would walk all over you central. solutions that's the way we have to go so don't fear china bring them in have them buy companies that was author and journalist david de graw with that analysis thanks so much now maybe you remember the case of oscar grant he is was a twenty two year old unarmed man who was shot and killed by a police officer on new year's day back in two thousand and nine all he was laying face down in oakland train station well it's igniting protests now take a look. right . now protests yesterday that you're seeing there protests continuing today the cop who was found guilty on the charge of involuntary manslaughter in grant's death was released so that is why you are seen as reaction this was after serving just eleven

months of his two year sentence now the officer you may recall he admitted to shooting grant but he said that he thought it was his taser gun and he was using and he was actually convicted of a lesser offense than the second degree murder that prosecutors were seeking ignited protests back at that time and that sentence was handed down activists say they see this is a message to people of color that their lives don't mean anything the cop in this case was white grant was an african-american and also they're reportedly protesting because they think that the criminal justice system gives lenient treatment to police officers as well who shoot and kill young black men now see if it's johnson he is the uncle of oscar grant and he joins us now in our l.a. studio i want to thank you so much for being here first of course you know how do you feel now that this officer has been released has justice been served and the case of oscar grant. no justice have not been served and.

you know what is important here is that a mother has lost a dear son she loved dearly daughter has lost a father that she really. has lost. and yet we have had our family destroyed. because honestly claims that he put his taser instead of his weapon it is obvious. and people of color that that was not an accident that was intentional and he has not been held accountable for that. now i want to ask you and you kind of touched on this a little bit but i know a lot of activists see this not as just about the case of oscar grant but as a testament to the state of race relations and also criminal justice and justice in the case of police violence in this country i'm just curious how you

being a family member see this is this about broader injustice then then just your your nephew and what is that broader injustice. it is much broader than just you know he's brought light and has woken up the consciousness of the people in the community to begin to really speak to this issue says nine hundred seventy six to two thousand over two hundred seventy nine black and grown brown men have been killed by police officers prior to members of the only search that actually been brought to trial. one found guilty. before murder and that was. the office that i killed now is going to detroit that officer didn't receive any time now with mentally he was found guilty on the gun charge as well as involuntary manslaughter we don't accept unknown slaughter of charge or verdict but

gun enhancement we knew would bring our prison term so there was some accountability and some form of justice that we felt going to jury came back that birgitte judge robert perry the same judge that was over the rampart case again and showed just how races this criminal criminal justice system is he took that burden that the jury came back with and decided that he was troubled by it and overturned it thereby reduce an are. just involuntary manslaughter granted him the phone call right to give him a two year sentence good time sir to serve less than eleven months just for context you point out the number. that were killed by police officers that ten thousand five hundred seventy eight do you know how that compares to. white people killed by police officers there and i think there is any other racial i don't know exactly how that compares but i do know that there's an extreme major difference. and many

of those young black and brown men kill being killed by officers where they allege that they either felt they. were in danger or the individual happened to be reaching for a weapon and this is repeatedly johannes mills only claimed that night he shot. that there was reaching for a gun and he kept this story for a week and then somehow someway decided to change the story to he was reaching for his taser so then he goes to show the extreme. greta's haney is police officers committed when it comes to african-american young men when they want to use the justification that they're reaching for a weapon or did not have a weapon on him nor was the reach of pro weapon and that surprised look on his face had more to do with the fact that i didn't have a gun. we certainly want to thank you for.