Honest, paywall-free news is rare. Please support our boldly independent journalism with a donation of any size.
Press play to listen to Junior Walk and Rose Aguilar on Vocalo:
Junior Walk grew up in the shadows of Coal River Mountain.
After graduating from high school, one of Junior's few job prospects was working as a security guard for a coal mine. The same coal mine that he believes caused pollution-related health problems for him and his neighbors.
Getting his paycheck from the mine made him feel, “like a miserable human being.”
Now he works for Coal River Mountain Watch, fighting against strip mining and mountain top removal, and he makes coal industry executives shake in their boots.
This story came to us from Rose Aguilar, a contributing writer for TruthOut.org and host of Your Call Radio on KALW 91.7 in San Francisco. Read Rose's piece on Junior for TruthOut here.
Click here, to listen to more audio productions from Truthout's partnership with Vocalo.
Produced by Lucy Hall with help from Sarah Lu. Music by Northbound.
Thanks to Sari Gelzer and Maya Schenwar at Truthout.
Media that fights fascism
Truthout is funded almost entirely by readers — that’s why we can speak truth to power and cut against the mainstream narrative. But independent journalists at Truthout face mounting political repression under Trump.
We rely on your support to survive McCarthyist censorship. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation.