by Robert Browman
http://thecoalwar.com

Henry David Thoreau

Monday was birthday of the man who wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” That’s noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.

During his life, Thoreau wrote more than 20 books on a variety of topics, but he is best known for Walden, which he published in 1854. The book chronicles the two years Thoreau spent at his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cabin near Walden Pond near Concord, Mass.

Many see his experiment at Walden Pond as a radical rejection of society in favor of a natural, wilderness life. In reality, Thoreau’s beliefs were more practical and moderate than extreme. The cabin at Walden wasn’t located deep in the wilderness. It was just on the edge of his hometown, not far from his family.

He didn’t entirely reject human society, nor did he completely embrace the wild. He condemned mankind’s destruction of nature, and he sought to find what he felt was a proper balance between the natural world and the needs of man.

Nevertheless, Thoreau’s eloquent descriptions of nature, and his thoughts about conservation, have moved and inspired generations of naturalists and environmentalists, from the more moderate to the most radical.

About the inherently destructive nature of society, Thoreau wrote:

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”

And:

“If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”

He penned some of the most poetic and lyrical passages in the English language about man’s attachment to nature:

“We need the tonic of wildness - to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed . . . We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.”

And remarkably, in just seven words, he concisely articulated his philosophy about the world:

“All good things are wild and free.”

Happy Birthday Mr. Thoreau. Your spirit lives forever wild and free in the hearts of those you have inspired with your words.

by Robert Browman
http://thecoalwar.com

Lorelei Scarbro, center, took part in a candlelight vigil to honor the miners who died in the April 5, 2010 explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine. Massey Energy is the same company Scarbro is hoping to stop from mountaintop removal mining Coal River Mountain. (Chad Stevens / The Coal War)

Dorothy, WV, lies in the valley between Kayford Mountain and Coal River Mountain in Raleigh County. For decades Kayford Mountain has been the site of a major mountaintop removal complex. Many residents in the community complain of property damage and cracked foundations because of the blasting. The ridges of Coal River Mountain, in the distance, might instead become a 220-turbine wind farm, providing electricity to power 150,000 homes. (Chad Stevens / The Coal War)

On February 3, 2009, the first nonviolent protest on Coal River Mountain brought attention to the campaign to build a wind farm. Five protesters, including Rory McIlmoil, left, and Matt Noerpel, chained themselves to an excavator on a mountaintop removal preparation site. The five were later removed and charged with criminal trespassing. (Chad Stevens / The Coal War)

Storms rolled over a mountaintop removal coal mine near Pikeville, KY, in May 2007. Mountaintop removal coal mining is practiced Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. Appalachian Voices, an advocacy group that has compiled the industry’s data, totals the damage at over one million acres. (Chad Stevens / The Coal War)

Lorelei Scarbro spends each day on her ancestral land in an Appalachian hollow living in fear that a coal company will soon destroy the mountain way of life she holds dear. Scarbro, a 54-year-old grandmother and coal-miner’s widow, lives in a house built by her late husband in the shadow of one of the last untouched mountains in the area, Coal River Mountain. Massey Energy is poised to blast it to smithereens.

Massey holds permits to surface mine Coal River Mountain using mountaintop removal, a process where up to 800 feet of a mountain is blown up so coal in the newly exposed seams can be scraped out with heavy machinery. Debris from the blast is then dumped into adjacent valleys and streams, often causing severe environmental and health issues for surrounding communities. The non-profit group Appalachian Voices estimates that 1.2 million acres of Appalachian forest has already been destroyed by surface mining.

Scarbro, who was born and raised in Coal River Valley, has witnessed the devastation caused by mountaintop removal first hand. “I have seen communities - literally communities - destroyed, all for a greater profit margin for the coal companies.” she said. “If we are not successful in saving this mountain, then everything I have, and everything all my neighbors have, will be destroyed.”

Scarbro has been fighting for years to save Coal River Mountain from Massey’s bulldozers and dynamite. She is a currently trying to stop the blasting by seeking adoption of an alternative, sustainable-energy plan, The Coal River Wind Farm. The solution would fundamentally change the coal-based economy in West Virginia by halting mountaintop removal in favor of sustainable energy jobs, while allowing for continued traditional, subterranean coal mining.

Already, the wind farm has faced stiff opposition from West Virginia’s power brokers. Politics in the state has long been entwined with the coal industry.

Scarbro believes that by engaging in mountaintop removal, the coal companies are not acting in the best interest of the people of her state. “They have no heart, they have no respect for the living or the dead,” she said. “It’s almost like they don’t see us as living breathing human beings, we’re just to be erased out of their path. It needs to stop.”

Recent moves by the federal government suggest they want it to stop too. On April 1, 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency announced stricter regulations intended to limit surface mining in Appalachia. Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the EPA, said, “Coal communities should not have to sacrifice their environment, or their health, or their economic future to mountaintop mining.”

The announcement gave new hope to opponents of the environmentally destructive process. “The spirit and ethic of the EPA’s guidance was that they were curtailing mountaintop removal,” Rainforest Action Network’s Nell Greenberg said.

Scarbro interpreted the EPA’s new rules as the government’s first step toward abolishing mountaintop removal altogether. “This is the beginning of the end for valley fills and mountaintop removal. We are not leaving our mountains,” she told the Huffington Post.

Less than two month’s later, the government shattered those hopes.

In late June, the agency recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers approve a permit sought by the coal company Coal-Mac for the Pine Creek Surface Mine in Logan County, West Virginia. The proposed mine will level 760 mountain acres, fill three valleys, and destroy more than two miles of streams.

Opponents of mountaintop removal see this action as a clear reversal of the position the EPA took in April. Some see it as yet another example of the federal government pandering to the coal industry at the expense of the environment. “We have seen mountaintop removal permits simply rubber stamped in the past,” Amanda Starbuck of the Rainforest Action Network said. “This feels like more of the same.”

But to Scarbro, the EPA’s decision is not just about acres, valleys and streams. To her, it is a betrayal of a promise made directly to the people of Appalachia. She expressed her disappointment to the EPA’s Lisa Jackson in a letter excerpted here:

I have been involved in the battle to stop, not regulate, mountaintop removal coal mining since the coal mine moved in next door to my home at the base of Coal River Mountain in Rock Creek, WV.  I watched my husband die of black lung after 35 years as an underground union coal miner.  I watch as people I love get sicker each day from contaminated water after raising their family in Prenter Hollow, WV.

I have left my very peaceful home 3 miles up in Rock Creek and traveled to DC many times in the past 2 years to help the powers that be to really see the face of coal.  I hope that by telling the people on Capitol Hill how the decisions they make affect the lives of the people in the mountain communities they might begin to see us as valuable.  Too often we are treated like collateral damage or just the price of doing business. 

I was on the call on April 1 when you released the guidance for conductivity levels and I was very excited when I heard you say, “You’re talking about no or very few valley fills that are going to be able to meet standards like this.”  The release of this guidance and your words brought hope to many people that long ago lost it.  I have been very thankful for all of the steps this EPA has taken to improve life in the mountain communities of Appalachia, but I was heartbroken when I saw the decision on Pine Creek.  Although I live about 1 ½ hours from this area I stand with the citizens there and I fear that this is just the beginning of many more permit releases. 

We believed you when you spoke about “zeroing out valley fills”.  Where I am from, sometimes all you have is your word.  People here have historically made life altering decisions on nothing more than a handshake and their word.  I am a 54 year old widow of a coal miner and the most important thing to me is clean drinking water for my grandchildren.  I don’t believe that is possible if we continue to destroy and cover head water streams in Appalachia.  Once again, I have lost hope.  Please don’t let this be the final word on Pine Creek Surface Mine. 

With the federal government sending mixed signals, and pressure building from both activists and the coal industry, the future of mountaintop removal remains uncertain. What remains certain is that Lorelei Scarbro will continue to fight for her home, for the people of Appalachia and for their unique way of life.

Planet Green’s Rachel Cernansky writes:

‘The Coal War’ Shows Alternatives to Mountaintop Removal - But Needs Help on Kickstarter

We’ve already seen some great projects started with the help of Kickstarter, and we are already aware of some of the tremendous impact that coal has on the environment—at every stage of production from mining to the coal ash waste produced when coal is burned for energy.

Well, there’s a team raising funds on Kickstarter to complete its documentary, The Coal War, that will illustrate the devastation that mountaintop removal coal mining has brought to Appalachia and what woman is doing to fight it.

It’s an important film on an important topic, and the country will be better off if it gets made.

Read the full story on Planet Green.

Robert Browman is lead writer on the documentary film The Coal War.

The story is about the sense of betrayal felt by activists after the Environmental Protection Agency seemingly ignored their own guidance and recommended approval of a new mountaintop removal mine permit in West Virginia. It includes images by Chad A. Stevens, director of the documentary film The Coal War.

Read the full story by clicking the headline below:

Mountaineers Say EPA Has Backtracked

In April, a turn in the Environmental Protection Agency bouyed Lorelei Scarbro with hope. After many trips to the nation’s capitol to oppose mountaintop removal mining, the 54 year old grandmother and coal miner’s widow thought the EPA was taking its first steps to abolish the radical coal extraction process that threatens her West Virginia home.

But two weeks ago, the EPA seemingly reversed course. It recommended approval of a major mountaintop removal mine in nearby Logan County, WV, an operation that would level 760 mountain acres, fill three valleys, and destroy more than two miles of streams.

Read the full story on The Daily Yonder.

Freelance journalist Robert Browman is lead writer for the documentary film The Coal War. He reports on issues relating to the practice of mountaintop removal in Appalachia. Browman also writes Florida environmental stories for the online publication FloridaSphere.

Note: This is one of a series of in-depth articles I am writing on the coal industry and mountaintop removal as part of my role as lead writer and co-editor for the documentary film The Coal War. I write regular blog posts and articles for the site.

by Robert Browman
http://thecoalwar.com

Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship. (Public Domain)

On April 5, 2010, an explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia killed 29 miners. The incident was the worst coal mining disaster in the United States in forty years.

In the aftermath of the accident, much of the criticism of the company has focused on Massey’s CEO, Don Blankenship.

Opponents have long characterized the 60-year old Blankenship as an unscrupulous coal baron who flouts the law, buys political favor and sacrifices miner and public safety for the sake of profit. In the wake of the Upper Big Branch tragedy, investors and politicians are taking a hard look at Blankenship as well.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who is responsible for the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which holds $14.1 million worth of Massey stock, has called for Blankenship’s resignation. “Massey’s cavalier attitude toward risk and callous disregard for the safety of its employees has exacted a horrible cost on dozens of hard-working miners and their loved ones,” DiNapoli said.

Blankenship is no stranger to controversy. He is active in West Virginia politics, often employing tactics that ride on the edge of commonly acceptable business practices.

In 2004, Blankenship spent $3 million on a campaign to unseat a West Virginia Supreme Court justice he thought might rule against Massey in a case pending before the court. The campaign was successful, and when the case was heard, the new judge ruled in Massey’s favor.

A challenge to that case ultimately landed in the U.S. Supreme court, which overturned the state court’s ruling, finding that the justice’s failure to recuse himself was a Constitutional violation. In the Supreme Court’s majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “Not every campaign contribution by a litigant or attorney creates a probability of bias that requires a judge’s recusal, but this is an exceptional case.”

In an editorial about the case, USA Today called Blankenship’s tactics “venemous,” and wrote, “Blankenship has inadvertently done what no reform group ever could: He has vividly illustrated how big money corrupts judicial elections. It puts justice up for sale to the highest bidder.” The New York Times wrote “The majority’s recognition of the threat posed by outsize contributions amounts to a crucial statement that judges and justice are not for sale.”

Blankenship then set his eyes on the West Virginia Legislature, vowing to do “whatever it takes” to help the Republican party secure a majority in what has traditionally been a Democratic stronghold. According to the New York Times, winning candidates in the state usually spend less than $20,000 on their campaigns. Blankenship spent $6 million on various political initiatives, including donating funds to 60 candidates.

U.S. Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat from West Virginia, told the New York Times, “Don Blankenship would actually be less powerful if he were in elected office. He would be twice as accountable and half as feared.”

Blankenship’s effort to change West Virginia’s political landscape ultimately failed when at least 31 House Democrats he targeted for defeat retained their seats, leaving Democrats in control of the Legislature.

Blankenship is outspoken, and his personal political views have long riled environmentalists, organized labor, and some in the mainstream of the political spectrum.

In a speech at the Tug Valley Mining Institute, Blankenship lashed out at those who criticize him. “It is as great a pleasure for me to be criticized by the communists and the atheists of the Charleston Gazette as to be applauded by my best friends,” he said. “People are cowering away from being criticized by people that are our enemies. Would we be upset if Osama Bin Laden was critical of us?”

Blankenship is a staunch opponent of government regulation of the mining industry. He and Massey fight regulation by claiming the company acts responsibly towards the environment on its own.

But Blankenship’s views suggest he is less than concerned about pollution. “If Pelosi thinks that decreasing CO2 in this country is going to save the polar bears, she’s crazy,” he said during a speech. “If CO2 emissions are going to kill the polar bears, it’s going to happen. What we do here is not going to do it.”

Blankenship also denies the existence of global warming. “They can say what they want about climate change. But the only thing melting in this country that matters is our financial system and our economy,” he said.

In an interview with E&E TV a year later, Blankenship solidified his position. “I don’t deny the science behind global warming. I deny that there is any science that supports global warming”, he said.

Blankenship also believes energy conservation is a slippery slope which will lead to the erosion of the American way of life. “I have spent quite a bit of time in Russia, China and India in the last year or two, and I can tell you, that’s the first phase,” he said. “You go from having your own car, to carpooling, to riding a bus to riding mass transit, and you eventually get down to where you’re walking. And your apartments go from being nice apartments and homes with your own bathrooms, to sharing bathrooms and kitchens with four families, that’s what socialism and the elimination of capitalism and free enterprise is all about.”

Blankenship is a proponent of the controversial surface mining process called mountaintop removal. The process involves blasting up to 400 vertical feet off the top of mountains to expose underlying coal seams. Excess debris from the blasting, which often contains toxic byproducts from the mining process, is dumped in high volume into surrounding valleys and streams.

Opponents of mountaintop removal point to scientific studies showing severe environmental and health consequences resulting from the process, as well as irreparable damage to communities and culture as life-long residents are forced from their ancestral land.

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that “the impact of mountaintop removal on nearby communities is devastating. Dynamite blasts needed to splinter rock strata are so strong they crack the foundations and walls of houses. Mining dries up an average of 100 wells a year and contaminates water in others. In many coalfield communities, the purity and availability of drinking water are keen concerns.”

Blankenship disagrees. “Mountaintop mining does less damage than urban construction because it is temporary and properly managed with proper drainage controls and so forth. It is something that is ugly during construction, but if you look at it 20 years from now you can hardly see it.” Blankenship told WVIncOnline`.

Critics say the coal extracted via mountaintop removal can be mined by traditional means, without destroying pristine environmental areas, uprooting residents, and putting communities at health risk. They contend coal companies engage in the environmentally devastating process to reduce the amount of labor needed to mine coal, thereby improving bottom-line profit.

In 1950, it is estimated there were 125,000 coal miners working in West Virginia. By 2005, there were approximately 15,000.

The EPA reports that more than 700 miles of streams were buried under valley fills between 1985 and 2001, and over 800 square miles of mountains have been destroyed by blasting. The agency estimates that 2,200 square miles of forests will be destroyed to make way for mountaintop removal sites by 2012.

Proponents of mountaintop removal claim the process provides jobs for local communities while providing energy for the rest of the country. Environmental activists have long argued the health risks and damage to the environment outweigh those benefits, but their efforts have yet to stop the politically powerful coal companies.

As Massey begins blasting on one of the last untouched mountains in Appalachia — Coal River Mountain — local residents have embraced a new tactic: an alternative energy project. Activists with The Coal River Wind campaign say building a wind farm on Coal River Mountain would provide enough renewable energy to power 150,000 homes, provide new jobs for the local community, while allowing the coal company to mine coal underground.

Lorelei Scarbro, who is working to gain political support for the project, believes the choice for Coal River Mountain is clear. “One is clean energy that will last forever, and the other is dirty energy that is finite and will some day run out, ” she said.

But Blakenship believes that any move towards renewable energy makes the country less competitive. “Teach your children to speak Chinese, because if we’re going to play around with windmills and solar panels, we’ll fall behind,” he told NPR.

Massey is the leading practitioner of mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Blankenship is one of the most vocal advocates of the process.

Leading up to the recent tragedy at the Upper Big Branch mine, Massey Energy was cited for numerous violations by federal regulators. The mine has received more than 1,000 safety citations during the last five years, including 50 citations the month prior to the disaster. Two safety violations were issued the day of the explosion.

Blankenship has mocked regulators who work to make mines safe, saying, “the very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming. ”

Many are now questioning why Massey failed to act when notified of so many safety issues at the Upper Big Branch mine.

During an interview with Forbes Magazine in 2003, Blankenship was clear about his company’s approach to the regulatory process. “We don’t pay much attention to the violation count,” Blankenship said.

In 2005, Blankenship wrote a memo to mine superintendents that critics say illustrate his profit over safety approach. “If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever) you need to ignore them and run coal,” Blankenship wrote. “This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that coal pays the bills.”

This short trailer was produced for National Geographic Magazine in late 2009 as a promo for photographer Stephanie Sinclair’s cover story, The Polygamists, about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The men were from United States Customs and Border Protection, and they were the first to inform Tamez, who is the director of the graduate nursing program at the University of Texas at Brownsville, that the government planned to build a border fence through her property. They told her she needed to give federal officials permission to access her property so they could conduct a land survey.

When Tamez requested more information and told them she would not agree to anything over the phone, she says they took a more aggressive approach in an effort to incite fear as a means to get their way. She says they asked her, “Have you heard of eminent domain? If you don’t let us onto your property we will go to the courts and take it from you.”

These initial phone calls may have worked with some of the other landowners who live along the border in the mostly rural area of El Calaboz, Texas, but it backfired with Tamez. According to the latest available Census Bureau information, approximately 98% of the population of the area is of hispanic heritage, and 41% live below the national poverty line.

“They are counting on people being scared, they are counting on people just going ahead and going along with them,” she said. “They know we have no resources, we are being put at a disadvantage. They think they can do whatever they want with us, and that is pretty scary.”

Tamez decided to fight the government and stand against what she feels is unjust treatment. She told the federal government they could not access her land.

The Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was enacted on October 26, 2006, calls for more than 700 miles of fence to be built along the nearly 2000 miles of border between the United States and Mexico. The effort, which financial analysts estimate could cost in excess of $50 billion, has been controversial. Both critics and supporters of the fence point to segments of fence already erected in California and Arizona to support their arguments.

Opponents claim that since the fence will only cover a portion of the border, it will do little to curtail illegal crossings, and the physical structure of the fence creates new challenges.

James Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, says, “It is more difficult for them to patrol the border because you have people right on the other side of the wall that they can’t see. They are going to need to be on the Mexican side of that wall all the time, whereas before they had greater range in tracking and looking for people as they were crossing.”

Proponents, such as Shannon McGauley, president of the Texas Minutemen Project, say it will provide a much needed obstacle to slow the flow of illegal immigration and drugs across the border. “The fence works pretty effectively in San Diego, it works pretty effectively in El Paso, we are going to need the fence,” McGauley says.

The US Border Patrol agrees. They say the number of people caught while trying to cross the border has dropped from an average of 600,000 during the 1990’s to 153,000 in 2007.

But even a staunch anti-immigration advocate such as McGauley takes issue with the government’s plan for the fence in South Texas and the way private landowners are being treated. He says the decision to build the fence on the north side of the Rio Grande River levee creates a potentially dangerous situation for Border Patrol agents and needlessly infringes on the property rights of landowners such as Dr. Tamez.

McGauley says if he were a landowner presented with the governments plan he would resist as well. “I would come up with two plans. One to fight them completely, and two to come to a middle ground,” he says.

Tamez agrees. “If we were being asked to give up our land for something sensible, perhaps we would be inclined to be more cooperative,” she says.

Fighting the government’s immigration policy is not her mission, however, nor is she just fighting for herself and her own land. She says she is also fighting for her neighbors, most who are also indigenous to the area and whose families have owned their property for centuries. Many are too poor, or too fearful, to take on the federal government.

“When I think about how my father and my grandfather worked that land to carve out a living for us, it not is easy to give up even a small portion of what is left,” she said. “Some people are being completely relocated from the area, taken away from their land completely, and they cry themselves to sleep. They come to me and say we want you to fight. We can’t do it, but you can do it for us.”

As the government promised in their first phone call to her, they sued Tamez to gain access to her land, along with 50 other property owners in Texas. Tamez subsequently countersued.

US District Judge Andrew Hanen ordered the government to first try to negotiate the price of temporary access with the landowners, and on March 7, 2008, in a 32-page ruling, he gave them two weeks to prove they had made a legitimate effort to negotiate with Tamez. “Dr. Tamez correctly asserts that negotiations are a prerequisite to the exercise of power of eminent domain,” Hanen wrote.

Less than a week later, the federal government offered Tamez $100 for six month’s access to her property so they could survey the land. Once again, she refused.

In mid-April, Judge Hanen ruled that this failed negotiation was a sufficient effort by the government and he denied Tamez’s motion to dismiss the condemnation lawsuit. “This is certainly a case where the parties are unable to agree on a reasonable price,” he wrote. Tamez was ordered to give the government access to her land.

During the subsequent survey, the government determined they would give Tamez $13,500 for the land needed to build the fence, but they have so far refused to disclose the formula employed to determine that figure. Tamez says she doesn’t know if they took into account the land which will be on the other side of the fence once it is built, which she says will largely be worthless, and which combined with the area the fence will be on, accounts for three-fourths of her current three acres.

Still, she feels luckier than some of her neighbors. “One of them said that the government offered him $5,900 for his home, a brick home, a home that is all paid for,” she said.

Recent home sales reports of the area show single family homes on less than an acre selling for more than $40,000. Homes currently on the market nearby are listed for sale between $45,000 and $80,000.

Tamez’s fight isn’t over. In February, she filed a lawsuit, and others have joined it, against Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, which claims, among other things, the Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully by misinforming property owners of their rights and failing to offer equal protection for those involved.

The judge has yet to certify that case. Tamez, the other residents in South Texas, and the government await the next round of legal wrangling.

The delay caused by litigation, however, is welcome by some. “Whichever administration comes into power in January will probably stop or slow down the wall, so the Bush administration is moving as fast as it can it get it done,” civil rights attorney James Harrington says. “There hasn’t really been any effective legal hook to stop the government, and the best that has happened so far is that it has been slowed down.”

Still, government officials say their original goal is within reach. “It was something that was anticipated,” Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Jason Ciliberti says of the lawsuits. “Our goal is to have 370 miles of total fencing on the border by end of calendar year 2008.”

Tamez, who served 17 years in the army and worked as a nurse in Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals for 27 years, considers herself a strong patriot. “I may come across as being against the government, but I am not. What I am for is the respect and compliance with the constitution,” she says. “If government officials refuse to follow constitutional law, then I, as an American citizen, want to call it to their attention. It is an American given right to speak up when that happens, because that is the essence of a democracy.”

A year of fighting has not weakened her resolve to exercise those rights, or to fight for her land. “I would go out there with my mother when she would prepare lunch for my father and we would walk out there to make sure he had something to eat. The land is mine in my heart,” Tamez says. “I am not going to allow myself to erase that heritage, it is all I have to hang on to.”

Photo by Bob Croslin

Three weeks ago I introduced my 20-month-old son David to one of the great loves of my life. From the time I was a small child growing up in and around the waters of South Florida I have had a life-long romance with the sea. My love for the water has taken me on countless surf trips up and down both Florida coasts and on adventure-filled surf treks to exotic lands.

I never feel more alive than when I am in the sea, and for years the ocean was one of the driving forces in my life. While my friends dreamed of becoming doctors, lawyers or businessmen, my career goals centered on things like lifeguard, boat captain or surfboard shaper.

I do not remember exactly when the switch happened, but at some point, other ambitions took over and I followed them to new places. These days, instead of the warm sand and salty surf, I find myself surrounded by the pulse and energy of the New York City streets.

Not long after my son was born, I began to feel the water calling me back, making me yearn to hear the rolling surf and be surrounded by the ebb and flow of the tides. A recent visit to family and friends allowed me the opportunity to share my old friend the ocean with my son, and my son with the ocean.

When David stepped into the water for the first time, he bravely stared out towards the horizon, hanging on to my hand for support and at the same time pulling away from me towards deeper water.

My wife was amazed at David’s reaction to the ocean. After playing in it for a while we brought him back to our blanket, but as soon as his feet hit the sand he turned and ran as fast as he could right back to the water. We couldn’t keep him away. The ocean was like a magnet pulling him in.

As I stood in the shallow water holding David’s hand, I felt the intense bond between father and son, and son and the ocean. I realized that if I let go of his hand — as I inevitably will have to do one day — he would pull away towards that which was tugging at his soul. In that moment, I recognized in my son the same adventurous spirit I had when I was younger.

I stood there facing that vast body of water and thought that if the ocean allowed me one wish, it would be that David gives in to his true, youthful spirit longer than I did mine.

Watching the news as Hurricanes Hanna and Ike slammed into Haiti brought back some memories of the people I photographed there during the 2004 political crisis. Those memories and emotions inspired a personal essay about my short time in Haiti and the way journalists approach stories during conflicts.

The Poynter Institute published the essay, Witness to Human Suffering, Natural and Man-Made, along with one of my images from Haiti, on October 1, 2008.