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.
Help Truthout resist the new McCarthyism
The Trump administration is cracking down on political dissent. Under pressure from an array of McCarthy-style tactics, academics, activists and nonprofits face significant threats for speaking out or organizing in resistance.
Truthout is appealing for your support to weather this storm of censorship. We’ve launched a fundraising campaign to find 500 new monthly donors in the next 10 days. Will you be one?
As independent media with no corporate backing or billionaire ownership, Truthout is uniquely able to push back against the right-wing narrative and expose the shocking extent of political repression under the new McCarthyism. We’re committed to doing this work, but we’re also deeply vulnerable to Trump’s attacks.
Your support during our fundraiser will help us continue our nonprofit movement journalism in the face of right-wing authoritarianism. Please make a tax-deductible donation today.