Original subtitles

We'll extract every lump of coal. We will extract the gas and oil. And West

Virginia will do her part. We've always done our part.

The people of West Virginia and Appalachia, we've become a sacrifice

We're dying here.

I don't think we expected to end up in such a deep story.

Follow the dollar is all you have to do in anything. Follow the dollar.

The word dropped like boulders. Senator Joe Manchin suddenly threw President

Biden's Build Back Better agenda into new turmoil.

So what does this mean for the fight against climate change now then?

How much farther down here are they?

It works different in this state.

You have no grounds to arrest me, sir.

Yes, ma 'am. I sure do.

We set out to explore the influence of big money in politics and its impact on

the environment.

We've been to Texas, we've been to Colorado, we've been to a lot of places,

somehow West Virginia really captured it.

That night spent over ten years.

documenting environmental issues and politics in West Virginia.

It was a place that had long been ignored by outside media, and the

that controlled the state liked it that way.

West Virginia has been shaped by her abundant resources and by the power

that extract them.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

Who are you with, honey?

generations of people came to this state and looked around and said, wow, look

what's here.

Coal, timber, natural gas.

They took all of that and left us with nothing.

The people in this, in southern West Virginia especially, has been robbed by

companies, yes.

I had to say that. Do you say it's still going on?

It's still going on. Yeah, sure, it's still going on. Sure.

What drew us there initially was Jesse Johnson's campaign.

Jesse was running for governor of West Virginia with the goal of eliminating

mountaintop removal mining.

Take 300 ,000 pounds of explosives every day and devastate and destroy a

mountain. And then as they blow the mountain apart to get to the coal seam.

They've put all the refuge into those valleys.

They've covered up in Appalachia more than 1 ,400 miles of freshwater streams.

Jesse was running a grassroots campaign against two established politicians,

including the incumbent governor, Joe Manchin. As Jesse said, better jobs.

This obscure person, Jesse Johnson, that we met and followed all around West

Virginia, is the person who's had the most electoral runs against Joe Manchin

anyone on the planet.

Greenish, brownish, yellowish, they're nitrogen oxides.

Okay, over here, this yellow slime. Oh, God, that is just really scary.

That is the death of poison.

Extractive industries that are like the Roman hordes. They privatize their

profits. They socialize their debt.

They poison the wells. Then they leave it for us to deal with.

Much of West Virginia's land is owned by out -of -state and even foreign

entities that prioritize profit over environmental protection and the health

communities.

Larry Gibson brought people from around the world to witness mountaintop removal

firsthand.

The land that you're standing on right now is worth $650 million to the coal

industry.

But I turned it into a land trust long ago.

For me, it's Appalachia, a whole way of life.

This here is what I call hell's gate.

The difference between life and death.

Over here, you can't live.

Over there, you can.

I actually stood one foot from his property line on the precipice

to a devastating hole.

So the hills that he was used to walking around, just like I'm used to walking

around, all of these hills around me, was suddenly cratered.

Now, if we got 30 to 50 years of mineable coal left in West Virginia,

imagine what it's going to look like 50 years from now.

You people got to help me stop this.

It's not my responsibility by myself.

Larry's words haunted us.

If we don't learn to live together as brothers and sisters, we will perish.

Through our journey, we met Paul Corbett Brown.

a filmmaker, photographer, an activist, and he ran an organization, Keepers of

the Mountains.

For us who grew up here, mountains are not just a pile of rocks that happen to

have trees coming out of them.

Mountains for us are living, breathing entities.

They are ecosystems.

The one thing that happened in my life that was the greatest gift was that I

traveled beyond the four walls of these mountains and I saw what was happening

in other places, not just around the country, but around the world.

It became very clear to me when I came home what was happening right here in my

own backyard, what had been happening under our noses the whole time.

From the air, it's all very clear.

Like, oh, wow, look, you can see this operation. You can even see it draining

into this community.

We're being poisoned to death.

And the message is not getting out to the rest of the nation.

It's not even getting out to us here in West Virginia.

They left and abandoned the mine.

It's just been flowing bright red, very high iron content coming out.

There's patches of white coming out, which is aluminum.

It goes into dense run, and dense run eventually flows into the Monongahela

River.

Eventually it heads north to Pittsburgh.

And this is happening all over West Virginia. It's not just us.

Fossil fuels do still dominate our energy mix, so we can't move completely

from them yet.

But the regulations that control the safety of the extractive industries and

rapid transition to renewable energies are often stalled by the influence of

money.

West Virginia politics is really more akin to third world politics. It's

completely dominated by the extractive industries that control the state.

There's total collusion between those industries and government and media, and

the emphasis is never on the people and their needs and their culture and their

heritage.

What is a governor's job?

It would be to try to foresee or anticipate, to the extent that you can,

future and help lead your state into it.

in some fashion that preserves whatever the best is and avoids whatever

calamities are down the road.

Joe Manchin, Earl Ray Tomlin, all of them have said over and over and over,

will mine coal until there's not a lump of coal left in the ground in West

Virginia.

And they mean it.

They will mine coal until there's nothing left here.

Sure, coal has...

provided jobs.

I mean, they always talk about the lavish feast that's been on our table as

result of the money from coal, but it's always a smoke screen to detract from

the fact that they've poisoned the vessel that we drink from.

There's one personality who's dominated our state politics for most of the last

decade, and that's Joe Manchin, whose phrase, open for business, literally

it all.

Everything was subordinated to business.

The state's beauty, the state's health, and the richness and welfare of its

people.

The whole world is watching, Governor Manchin, and the whole world will know

exactly what you are allowing to happen in the state of West Virginia or what

you are willing to stop.

What we're trying to do is find balance. You know that. I mean, it's tough to

find a balance in an extraction state.

Looking for those balances. We're the mountain state.

Pardon me? We're the mountain state. We're not the extraction state. We're

mountain state. But we're the extraction.

We have been. We've been producing energy for over 100 years.

Early in his career, Joe Manchin served as Alex's West Virginia State Director,

and he served on Alex's National Board of Directors.

Halleck is the conservative PAC that writes and tests bills that are

to all the different states.

As the ambitious state senator climbed the political ladder, he found himself

competing against a people's candidate and coal miner's daughter, Charlotte

Pritt.

Well, I actually started because children were hungry in the southern

field. And my dad said, if you really want to do something, you need to run

office. And I said, Dad, I'm not a politician. I'm a teacher. I teach how

write a letter, not get involved in politics. That'll ruin my reputation.

It's very interesting how that all played out years later.

But we won the first time out.

When Charlotte Pritt announced that she was running for governor of this state,

it was like a ray of light, hope.

That was the first time, I think, in my life that I'd ever seen a candidate run

for office that really wanted something for the people of West Virginia.

I wanted to know what was happening with the money that was affecting all these

issues that were important to me. So I was branded as a troublemaker.

Joe Manchin and Charlotte Pritt were both running to be the Democratic

for governor.

And Charlotte Pritt beat Joe Manchin.

In fact, she's the only person who's ever beat Joe Manchin in a race.

Hello, I'm Charlotte Pritt, the Democratic nominee for governor from the

beautiful state of West Virginia.

For 15 years, I taught high school in West Virginia, and I love teaching

it gave me a chance to help our young people dream and to help them turn their

dreams into reality.

President Clinton and Charlotte Pritt now waving to the cameras. There's the

picture for the gubernatorial election right there. That's right.

Instead of getting behind her and saying, OK, I'll now support the

nominee, my colleague Charlotte Pritt, Joe Manchin turned right around and set

up a PAC to elect the Republican candidate.

They knew they had a different breed of person there.

And that's very frightening to the political system.

Behind Charlotte Pritt's campaign smile is a liberal voting record she can't

hide from. In the state Senate, Charlotte Pritt proposed teaching first

about condoms.

Surprised? You shouldn't be.

You know, I'm saying to someone, this is so absurd. Certainly no one will

believe that. The Republicans just saturated every media market on

with these horrible, untrue ads.

Wrong on the issues, wrong for West Virginia.

Here in West Virginia, if you go for the king and you don't kill the king, it's

a really bad situation to be in.

I'm the only person who's ever defeated Joe Manchin in a race, and I was told

that he's not really happy about anybody hiring you.

I found myself not being able to get a job.

My first impression of Joe Manchin was he was going to use the Southern charm.

He wanted to shake the hand. He wanted to act like he was open and friendly.

The

press

in West Virginia has been very deferential to Joe Manchin and to a lot

politicians there as a whole, because if you're not, you get frozen out.

Would it be possible for us to ask a couple of questions?

Thank you so much for coming. We appreciate you being in West Virginia.

It's a pleasure to have you.

Thank you.

Jesse brought us to northern West Virginia, where the gold rush for

was on.

Companies were rushing in, buying the mineral rights, and radically

rural West Virginia into a toxic industrial zone.

When they realized that they could get away with it, and they could control the

legislature, and they could control the governor's office, and they could

control the media in the state of West Virginia, that's when this state became

sacrifice zone.

They came in. They played it very low -key. They threw a lot of money around.

And before anybody realized what had happened, all these property owners had

agreed to let them do this horizontal fracking under their property.

And it's straight out of the coal industry's playbook.

In the United States, there are some states that have what's called a split

estate. in which landowners can sell out the rights of the minerals on their

property.

Now, this is a kind of arcane law that didn't take into account the more

destructive pursuits of mountaintop removal or hydrocracking.

And now the extractive industries are taking full advantage of that weakness

the state's laws.

It's like a hostage takeover situation.

Basically, they planned this two, three years ago in advance.

And with the thought that when we hit, we've got to go fast and furious because

there's a chance that they might try to regulate us or get us under control.

I built my own house about 20 years ago, and for this whole time I've lived

completely off of solar.

I have a rain catcher, water, composting toilet.

All my electricity comes from the sun.

And use it to power the studio.

We live off the grid, so for us this was a choice to live here, to live back in

the middle of this beautiful wilderness.

And we've always said it's so untouched by time.

There's really not a lot of limiting laws, but now it's almost like it's come

back to bite us because of those. We've totally been devastated.

What one person does in their property should not harm another person or their

property, and yet that's exactly what happens when they drill these huge

Marcellus wells.

Our neighbor leased, and as a result, what he has done has created an

zone for us.

to have to endure.

They really don't have any courtesy at all. As you can see, they brought it

right up to our property line when they could have gone anywhere further in that

direction.

With the fracking industry pumping over 500 different chemicals into the ground

that ends up potentially leaching into our groundwater, and we don't even know

what those chemicals are because of the Halliburton loophole.

which prohibit exposure of those chemicals to the public.

When I bought the land and when most of the other people bought the land, Cheney

hadn't changed the Clean Water Act yet, right?

But now they have a right to destroy the air and water. It's perfectly fine.

So that changes the whole game.

It's a giant flame like a torch.

That's getting all the impurities out of the gas so that the gas runs nice and

clean so then they can go ahead and start hooking it up to the pipe.

When you see what is allowed by the EPA, it just scares you to death. You can't

imagine all those things going up into our air.

The real cost of energy is the communities that are devastated by the

extraction.

the water that's destroyed by the extraction.

That's the real cost of energy.

And if we can think about those things when we think about energy, then maybe

the very first thing we think about is conservation.

EPA's mission is to protect human health and the environment, but its ability to

respond rises or falls with different administrations.

Now it's my honor to introduce the next United States Senator from the great

state of West Virginia. It's Jesse Johnson!

Everyone kept saying, you know, Jesse, run for something that you can win and

come up from the grassroots.

So I was running for the House of Delegates in West Virginia.

Suddenly Robert C. Byrd died, so I jumped into the United States Senate

well.

We cannot survive without water, people.

And then we're allowing these corporations to poison it before it ever

your tap.

I'm running against two Goliaths. Both of them are millionaires.

Great to be here with the...

The current governor believes in global warming, and he believes man generates

global warming.

I don't believe in that.

I told Joe on the way in, I can't figure out why the Tea Party hadn't endorsed

him.

I mean, what do they want?

Listen to what they want. They want lots of jobs, small government, low taxes,

and balanced budgets. I give you Exhibit A.

We'll extract every lump of coal.

We will extract the gas and oil. And West Virginia will do her part. We've

always done our part. And we will continue to do our part.

I've had to get out in front of the camera several times.

I'd have to suit up and put on a lot more makeup than I'm used to, and I'd

a wig and get out there.

One of the reasons why, when you take a look at the judge's race, even though

she's picked up a little bit, that race is way too close to call you.

Actually, you must be getting pretty good at it with all this practice.

Exactly. Three elections in six months. We are pretty good at it. And, you know,

these were races, especially after the death of Senator Burr, that a lot of

folks were going to start looking at, and especially nationally. And that's

you all are here.

I'm here at the celebration for Joe Manchin, the new senator from West

Joe Manchin's campaign, obviously he ran directly against President Obama and

the liberal policies of Nancy Pelosi.

And, you know, interestingly, he will have gotten himself elected by running

far away from his party as he could, which would be oxymoronic were it not

Virginia.

I'm going to go spend a little time with my family right now. For the kids, all

the kids are waiting for me.

Now I'm going to spend some time with them, and then tomorrow we'll start.

When Joe Manchin was elected to the Senate, he came to Washington, where he

quickly joined the Energy Committee.

From there, he was able to start helping to craft U .S. energy policy.

Cold and liquid, natural gas.

As governor, there was no mistaking his view of environmentalism.

I sued EPA, and I'll take dead aim at the cap -and -trade bill.

He considered us radicals, extremists.

As soon as he goes to Washington, he puts on this hat called moderate

Nationally. The media approaches Joe Manchin as if he's a centrist. He's

talking about himself as a common sense politician and reaching across the

aisle.

That's all smoke and mirrors.

Both as a state legislator and governor, Joe Manchin cleared the regulatory path

for a coal -fired power plant in Grantown that burns the most toxic form

coal,

gob, coal garbage.

Not only is it the most costly electricity for West Virginians, it's

deadliest.

This senator owns a coal company, Ener Systems Inc., the only provider of gob

the Grant Town power plant.

So he's got literally a cash register.

which happens to have a permit to burn coal and generate electricity.

He makes money every ton of coal that goes through that plant.

For those who are saying that we are destroying the climate, the global

because of the coal that we're burning, we burn it better and cleaner than most

any nation on earth.

It's a dramatic conflict of interest for him to have anything to do with the

energy infrastructure in this country.

If you think it's junk, it will sell.

Right here's an old miner's coal bucket right here.

It looks nice for decoration.

It does. That's an old coal miner's dinner bucket, sure is.

It's got the bottle in it. It's got the bottle in it, yeah.

How much?

Fifteen bucks.

Fifteen bucks? Fifteen bucks, yep. I feel like I'm taping the Antiques

West Virginia.

Call it what you want to, but it's the backbone of this country. It keeps the

lights a -burnin'. In New York City.

I've made a darn good living there.

You pay for it in the end, but that's all you can do.

That's all they are here. No education.

You go in the coal mine.

And later on in life, you pay for it. You can't breathe.

Well, cigarettes don't help either, but why not? You can't breathe anyway.

You've got to enjoy something.

My family has a long history in these mountains, and every man in the history

that family has mined coal here until me.

My grandfather started working the coal mines when he was 10 years old, and he

had one of the most dangerous jobs you could have.

He had to throw a wooden pole into the wheels to slow down a coal car if it got

running downhill too rapidly, because if they didn't slow that coal car down, it

would kill the mule that was pulling it.

And many, many children lost their arm and a leg getting tangled up in that

they were trying to stop that runaway car.

At 10 years old, he went to work in a coal mine.

Generation after generation, these families have been coal miners.

It's a very hard job, and most of their families have died young from black lung

and other diseases from the toxins of coal.

And they fight for coal because it's been there for them.

Whether or not their health is going to be impacted, they know they're going to

put food on the table for the children.

We are a state and a people who are honed and hardened for

sacrifice for this nation.

And it's not something that's been necessarily good or productive for our

communities or even our families, but it has been for the nation, and the nation

likes that.

West Virginia's been a heavy lifting state. We've been an extraction state.

We mine the coal that makes the steel that built the guns and factories that

basically defended us and give us the great country we have.

It's always been about creating this narrative that makes it a badge of honor

that a person's willing to go to their death digging coal or willing to crawl

out of that black hole with a broken back.

They go down into the mines for the same reasons that our veterans took up arms

to protect this country.

It is not just a job, it's a calling, it's a way of life.

Even an act of patriotism in the defense of this great country.

You could say patriotism is pride in America, but it's also pride that our

country can be a good, healthy place for people to grow up.

A good place where people can have jobs.

A place where people aren't going to all get sick and die of cancer. And a place

where we're proud when we look out at this landscape, we say, whoa, this is

really beautiful.

I think it's time to rewrite the narrative of what patriotism is and what

should be.

Is it patriotic to demand that people leave their homes or have their wells

poisoned or their air poisoned or their land poisoned or taken from them so

that... A company can profit?

These are the kind of questions that I think we need to be asking about what is

patriotism and of whom is it demanded.

While equating digging coal with patriotism, the state and media have

over the little -known brutal history of the coal company's tyranny over workers

and their families.

The miners lived in such deplorable conditions and basic slave labor camps.

By 1921, the outraged miners couldn't take the abuse any longer.

There was a battle called the Battle of Blair Mountain.

Between 10 ,000 and 21 ,000 miners armed themselves.

The federal government was ultimately called in, and the United States bombed

its own civilian population.

It's the second largest civil uprising in the history of the United States of

America next to the Civil War.

We're going to be marching through coal country.

And coal country, during the times of the Blair Mountain March, was a very

bloody, violent place.

Bringing the unions to the coal mines, a lot of people sacrificed their lives.

And the counties that were marching through is where a lot of that happened.

Now, in those same counties, They are predominantly strip mines, and they are

predominantly non -union.

What we're going to be facing is the grandson or the great -grandson of

that probably died on that mountain to bring in the union.

The people who actually fought in this battle would roll over in their graves

they knew what y 'all was doing. I guarantee it. They fought because they

mine this coal safely.

They fought to be unionized. They fought, exactly.

Not to shut the coal companies down, they fought because they could work

in this mountain. They fought and died for your right to work a union job.

Yeah. To mine the coal that's in this mountain.

Is this the union mine in this mountain, sir?

No, it should be Union Mine.

It should be 100 % Union Mine. I think they all should be Union Mine.

Go home, tree hopper!

You're doing a good job.

Thank you. Keep it up. Keep it up.

I'm here today to protest the march.

They need to go back to the rocks they were under and stay there. Go to a

servile country where the people need helpless water.

I'm not against dripping coal. I just wish they'd leave the mountain alone and

leave it as a piece of West Virginia and Logan County history.

And it can't be replaced once it wants to be moved.

Union is the reason why we have a 40 -hour work week, a five -day week you

because of a union.

So look around.

See union members.

Any politician, I doubt you'll find any here.

It's about damn time you give something to us.

Everybody coming here together shows everybody, all the way to Washington, D

.C., our intent.

We have nothing but kindness in our hearts.

and determination in our soul.

The premier law enforcement of the state of West Virginia was created from the

very beginning to stop unionization efforts.

We often find ourselves facing the courts, and without good legal

representation, it's easy for the courts to just run right over us.

Bill DePaulo has been a check for that. He has stood in that place time after

time for every single one of us and protected us from the courts.

I felt that it was important to get competent legal advice to these people

they were going to put their butts on the line.

There's always a lot of intimidation, surveillance that goes on with activists

within the coal field.

I don't know what you're doing. I don't know if you have a right to a private

property to be doing this. Is it a private property?

It belongs to the Stanley Heirs, not the state police.

Where's Stanley at?

I don't know what your problem is, sir.

I don't have a problem with yours.

I'm wondering why you're invading people's privacy.

I don't think I'm invading your privacy. I think taking pictures of people's

vehicles without their permission on private property is an invasion.

I don't think it is.

How are you, bud? Good.

We can do this all day long, man. I can stand here like you can.

Well, I don't know why you... It don't bother me a bit.

There's no reason to be rude. Just tell us what you're doing here. How are you,

bud? Pretty good.

It works different in this state.

My experience has been that I've been the first one arrested.

standing there with a camera and a press pass at a protest and having the police

turn to me and arrest me first just to get rid of the footage.

One of the ways that they can get away with it is keeping everything under the

radar and within a bubble.

And so the thing that they want to see least is for the media from outside the

region to be figuring out what is going on.

I was traveling with a couple of journalists on a public road through the

Kanawha State Forest where pro -coal activists were gathering in support of

nearby coal mine.

How much farther down here are they?

I don't know.

About a mile.

At one point, the police directed us off the road.

I saw one pro -coal person who seemed to be in charge directing a younger

trooper to come over to me.

And I could tell because he looked directly in my eyes.

What the trooper didn't know is that one of the videographers in the back was

filming the whole thing.

I didn't know what was

going to happen, but I knew that everything was in jeopardy at that

You don't have a right to the camera. Get out of the vehicle.

You don't have a right to the camera.

Come here. Let's go.

Let's go. Come on.

Come on.

Come on.

Put your hands on the vehicle.

Put your hands on the vehicle. Do it now. Put your camera up on the vehicle.

Put your hands on the vehicle.

Excuse me. Why are you arresting me?

Put your other hand behind your back. Do it now. Excuse me. Why are you

arresting me?

Excuse me, why are you arresting me?

You have no grounds to arrest me, sir.

Yes, ma 'am. Sure do. I have no grounds to arrest you. Come on back.

And I said, hey, I'm press.

The officer said, you're not press.

If you were press, we would have called you.

The media are not the watchdog.

They cover the corporate candidate, the corporate voice, and the corporate

message.

If it weren't for the fact that I had a friend who was well -connected, then I

would have ended up staying in jail, like most activists or journalists who

arrested in West Virginia.

Growing up on the farm probably was one of the best things I could have ever

done to prepare myself for this kind of a life.

Being tormented by the older kids and field workers, I think, helped me grow a

little thicker skin to be able to deal with the political environment that I've

thrown myself into.

I've been trying to push towards wind and solar and hydro with tax credits for

alternative energy systems.

It is time that we hold industry accountable in West Virginia and across

country.

And I have a little plan. Since the Supreme Court has indicated that

corporations are people, I think it's time that we implement a death penalty

corporations to cause harm to the environment, citizens, and the health of

community.

After introducing 23 regulatory bills, I've had death threats. I've had people

chasing me down the road and pick up trucks, flashing their lights, honking

their horns, wanting me to pull over.

I was even offered a free pass from the coal association if I would withdraw all

of the legislation that would hold them accountable for polluting our streams

and rivers.

And they said, if you take this legislation off the table, we'll make

you'll never have to...

worry about getting reelected again.

I'm like, sorry, but, you know, I have principles and morals, and I give a

I carry a gun like most West Virginians, but I carry it for protection, partly

because of the threats that I've had from people in the oil and gas industry.

It's a really hardball arena to be in politics, and that's why to be an

there, an electoral activist, is so challenging.

Industry people will make it clear that if you don't vote this way or you don't

go this way, there will be consequences.

I'm not going to worry about big pharma. I'm not going to worry about big

energy. People tell me all the time, you've got to be careful, man. They're

going to try to hurt you. They've already tried to murder me once.

That just pissed me off.

I'm going to keep fighting for what I believe is right.

We've got thousands and thousands of miles of gas lines, and the Department

Environmental Protection has no idea where all these gas lines are.

They're unregulated.

Joe Manchin's successor, Earl Ray Tomlin, continued the policies of

corporate profits over public safety.

They passed the Marcellus Horizontal Well Act, but before they did, the

took out a lot of the protections that were there for surface owners, just took

them right out, because we're all write -offs. We're all collateral damage, and

that's what it's all about.

When he called a special session, he gutted everything in that bill that had

anything to do with surface owners and the environment and gave everything to

industry.

And I was the only one that got up and spoke against it on the floor.

I called him on the carpet.

He hasn't really spoken to me since.

In natural resources, coal, lumber, oil, and gas, why are we the 49th as far as

the quality of life and education level and poverty level and health?

The purpose of government is to protect the public, to sustain

the common good.

My parents are the human representation of what lies within those pages and

pages of health studies.

My mother, who's had cancer twice.

My father, who can barely walk, who has black lung.

It's difficult for us.

A little bit further. There you go.

Yep.

People say, why don't you just leave? If things are so bad, why don't you just

leave?

Because we can't.

I couldn't just leave and leave my parents to their own demise.

My parents gave everything as young adults to see to it that my brothers and

had a good life.

And they continue to support us and nurture us as they can.

But at this point in their life, there's no way that we could leave them.

There's no way we could neglect them in their... deepest time of need.

You just go right over these mountains that you see in the background, and it's

not that far until you're in Washington, D .C., the heartbeat of our democracy,

of our government.

No person, no corporation has the right to profit at the expense of our lives.

And so we as West Virginia citizens went to Washington to address it directly.

Are we just consumers or are we citizens?

Are we going to make more garbage or are we going to make amends? Are you part

of the solution or are you part of the cause?

Don't fight, are you on now? We die, are you gone now? Is there any more capital

in today?

Did it only take a minute?

Okay, very good. Have a seat.

We have 4 ,000 people a year dying from exposure to coal toxins.

And for our representatives to deny the existence of 24 peer -reviewed

scientific studies is unacceptable.

So this is for her. Okay.

She can no longer deny that she's had these studies because here they are

printed out, every single one of them.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you for calling Senator Joe Manchin's office. Could you please hold?

Hi, Mr. Manchin. Do you want to speak to his legislative assistant?

We're now at 24 peer -reviewed scientific studies.

They've been published in reputable journals, and it's time that our

representatives take this seriously.

These are people in our communities.

And they mean something to us. I understand.

So I do help, but this primarily falls under our energy portfolio.

So let me go see if I can find somebody that can better discuss this. But

doesn't it fall under your help? Sure, it does. It does. But the fact of the

matter is that, you know, it fans over two issues.

Energy, of course. So you should both be at the table. Sure. I understand. But

let me go grab somebody else.

Perfect.

Absolutely.

I have some here for Mr. McKinley. Okay.

This is as a result of a discussion I had with him at the West Virginia Coal

Symposium a few months ago.

And when I asked him about his response to the 24 peer -reviewed scientific

studies showing that an estimated 4 ,000 people die every year as a result of

exposure to coal toxins.

Mr. McKinley looked me straight in the eye and said he'd never seen these

reports, any of them, to which I promised I would bring them to him.

No one

has a right to profit at the expense of someone else's life.

rely upon that water to sustain life and quality of life, which includes their

health and well -being.

If you read the West Virginia Constitution, you'll find out that the

belongs to all West Virginians, not the coal companies. Okay.

Very good. Thanks for dropping this off. I would like for you to sign that you

received it and that you promised to give this to Mr. McKinley.

And just for the record, 100 % of my electricity comes from the sun.

So while I don't think we can stop coal overnight, It's definitely way past time

to start a transition.

And there are other ways that we can create jobs without poisoning our

Thank you. Happy West Virginia Day. Yes, you too. Thank you. Bye -bye. Great.

I don't care how it's produced, it's more important than water.

Well, and this is the problem. See, they've been allowed to frame this

discussion for far too long, and now it's our turn to frame it.

The next 150 years belong to us.

After the legislative session came on the news that, you know, the chemical

spill had happened like eight hours earlier.

I think a chemical spill in Kanawha County has people wondering what's in

air and what could be in your water.

I don't think my water is moving.

My daughter and I are having nightmares over there.

It leaked from a 48 ,000 -gallon tank at Freedom Industries' chemical storage

facility on the Elk River.

People are buying cases of liquid, anything they can get their hands on,

The leaked product is 4 -methylcyclohexane, methanol. It's used

preparing coal.

If you're sick from this, your symptoms will include nonstop vomiting.

You can smell the licorice scent in the air.

This is Chemical Valley, and you always have a smell from one of the chemical

plants downriver.

I think people will just become numb.

to the exposure of the chemicals within the Charlton area.

Do not drink it, do not cook with it, do not wash clothes in it, do not take a

bath in it.

I had just cooked in it, and then I got into a bathtub full of that water.

A toxic chemical soup.

And then, while I was in the tub, suddenly finding out... that the

just declared the water unsafe.

I am one of more than 300 ,000 guinea pigs.

I'm a human experiment.

Oh, yeah.

I think we could get in there and get a sample before they could do anything

about it.

We've been closed, what, five, six days now?

And it's killing us, you know? Yeah.

The Chemical Safety Board estimated over 10 ,000 gallons of MCHM, a chemical

used to wash coal, had leaked into the Elk River.

From there, it flowed into the Kanawha River, which runs through the heart of

the state capital.

Would it be an accurate statement to say that there was a systemic problem with

the maintenance and management of the chemical tanks in the Kanawha Valley,

maybe across West Virginia in general?

That is a fair statement, but I wouldn't assign it just to West Virginia or the

Kanawha Valley.

Mother Kwanake, we come here to honor you today.

We come from the four directions, Mother Kwanake.

We apologize for having let such a terrible thing poison you today,

We saw a bunch of water.

Water!

Out of the spigot, there's a bell, fresh and clean without a smell.

For 100 years, the chemical industry has had to use vast amounts of that water,

and they love to get rid of all regulations.

Well,

if your water starts smelling funny, don't be alarmed, that's just the smell

money.

The water that's born here in the mountains of Appalachia is the same

flows into the Mississippi and all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

That's a huge number of people whose lives are affected.

Freedom Industries declared bankruptcy within a week of the incident.

It's a common tactic polluting industries use to avoid liability for

negligence. And the executives responsible faced minimal charges.

Gary Southern was found guilty. He got in a slap on the wrist for poisoning the

water of 300 ,000 people.

If that had been done by terrorists, we'd have a drone out there looking for

and blasting him off the face of the planet.

Under mounting public pressure, West Virginia's delegates readily passed a

that would enforce more regulation.

That legislation was overturned when a new slate of industry -funded candidates

unseated the left of the delegates who had pushed for more protections,

including Mike Manypenny.

Until we get rid of big money in politics, we're not going to change

because they'll fund a campaign against somebody.

I mean, the Coal Association put a lot of money in the left election to unseat

me. Each of those mailers cost about $10 ,000 apiece.

Mike Manypenny, bad for West Virginia.

Mike Manypenny is hurting West Virginia's job growth.

I'm sure that Mike Manypenny was targeted because of his outspoken nature

regarding the health and the well -being of all people in this state.

In 1886, the Supreme Court gave personhood rights to corporations, and

decision opened a floodgate of decisions by the Supreme Court, ultimately

leading to something called Citizens United.

Special interests, including polluting industries, could dump tons of money

political campaigns anonymously, giving them outsized influence.

In a world of absurdly expensive elections, campaign finance limits and

are essential to help maintain a true democracy.

You've got 150 years worth.

of entrenched power and money and newspapers and television stations and

lobbyists on one side all arm in arm. And it makes the work we're doing

incredibly hard. When you're running a grassroots campaign, it's nearly

impossible to get that outreach to everybody you need.

to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels but I don't want to move

away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we

relied on West Virginia Coal Association

just endorsed me

Donald Trump showed up and put on a miner's hat and acted like he was

coal. And so it triggers that whole response that we as West Virginians

Oh, he's here to help us. He's here to give us a job again.

Thank you, everybody.

That is great.

My hair look okay?

When Earl Ray Tomlin turned out in 2016, the race was on to fill the governor's

seat.

Colbert and Jim Justice couldn't snag the Republican Party nomination, so he

his cap on running for governor as a Democrat.

Despite evading millions in fines and taxes, he was endorsed by West

Democratic Party leadership.

And it is 7 o 'clock on the East Coast, which means polls have just closed in

half a dozen states.

We won!

In the 14th and 12th District, it is going to be, in all likelihood,

a pickup for the Republicans.

They were completely sure they were coming to this event to celebrate

Clinton becoming the first female president.

Victory sent shockwaves throughout the country and the world, pushing the

into new levels of division.

I am continuing to keep my promise to the American people to get rid of

regulations that do nothing, absolutely nothing.

President Trump, yes, representing West Virginia as the senator and Senator

Manchin and I, and we have our congressional delegation here.

Congressman Jenkins, Congressman McKinley, and Congressman Mooney, this

lifeline to us.

Now they could dump their mining waste. That's not how they put it, but that's

what the law said.

And so we could see that kind of politics being exported.

I can't help you anymore being a Democrat governor.

So tomorrow...

I will be changing my registration to Republican.

Governor Justice, he ends up switching back to the Republican Party and kissing

up to his fellow billionaire.

44 of West Virginia's 55 counties under a state of emergency.

At a time when the world was calling for leaders to address climate change, the

Trump administration leaned hard in the other direction. Global warming and a

lot of it's a hoax. It's a hoax.

President Trump killed environmental regulations and appointed anti

industry -friendly judges to the federal bench and the Supreme Court.

Constitution of the United States.

against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

States like West Virginia continue to sue the EPA to strip its ability to set

pollution levels.

Meanwhile, millions of students around the world held school strikes calling

expedited climate action.

School kids led the charge, walking out of class, demanding world leaders take

action to prevent further global warming and climate change.

After the 2020 election and a chaotic aftermath, Joe Biden took office with

ambitious plans to rebuild the economy and to restore the United States as a

leader in fighting climate change.

We're standing at an inflection point in world history.

We have the ability to invest in ourselves and build an equitable, clean

future, and in the process, create millions of good -paying jobs and

opportunities around the world.

My Build Back Better framework will make historic investments in clean energy.

So let this be the moment that we answer history's call.

God bless you all, and may God save the planet. Thank you.

But not everyone was rushing towards a new energy future with open arms.

After the November election in 2020, Joe Manchin could now tip the balance.

And he did, willfully.

Recognizing Manchin's pivotal position, President Biden incentivized the senator

in several ways, including appointing Manchin's wife to be co -chair of the

Appalachian Regional Commission.

This appointment allows Manchin's family to have significant ongoing influence

over the direction of billions of federal dollars.

And still it wasn't enough.

On Fox News Sunday, Senator Joe Manchin suddenly threw President Biden's Build

Back Better agenda into new turmoil.

So when Manchin sabotages climate change, this is for future generations

going on right now.

Just when everyone thought that Build Back Better was dead, Senators Manchin

Schumer emerged with a revised plan with a new name, the Inflation Reduction

Act.

The IRA enabled Senator Manchin to draft his own version of a climate bill.

And while it gave the Biden administration its centerpiece

included huge giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.

And it ensured that President Biden and future administrations must approve as

many lease sales for oil and gas as for wind and solar.

And the deal had another string attached.

It required expediting one of his major donors' projects, the Mountain Valley

Pipeline.

The day I retired was the day I found out about the Mountain Valley Pipeline

crossing my property.

It's really hard to believe that someone who's in it for profit can

destroy a man's dream, something I worked for my whole life.

I mean, property rights are one of the foundations of this country. I just

believe that they're just going to come in here and use their definition of

eminent domain.

The MVP, a natural gas pipeline built to transport fracked gas from northern

West Virginia to southern Virginia.

had been repeatedly blocked in court for hundreds of environmental and safety

violations.

Did that explode?

We have plenty of examples of pipelines that have blown up and malfunctioned.

And they intend to run this across the high parts and then under rivers. And

then as you get further south into Monroe County, that's all karst. All of

springs, the sinkholes.

the caves that are down there, and they're going to put a pipe there and

that this is not going to at some point shift.

Indigenous and environmental communities rush to D .C. to lobby lawmakers and

call out Senators Manchin and Schumer's backdoor agreement.

No dirty deal!

No dirty deal!

No dirty deal!

Our communities, our movement, and our planet is in the fight for its life.

And our communities and our people are not for sale.

So we will stand against any attempt to fast -track projects that make this

crisis worse, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

We are standing up, and we are going to fight.

And we are with you, and we are not going to end until we have renewable

and we have a safe future for our kids.

Thank you.

With massive national pushback, the scheme to revive the Mountain Valley

Pipeline project was rejected again.

But Senator Manchin was determined to push it through.

If they don't change, then I would vote to repeal my own bill. You will never

guess which pet project made its way to the debt ceiling bill. It's been in

court over and over again and lost because it's not safe. And yet, Joe

was able to attach that to the debt ceiling.

As a result of our nation refusing to default on our national debt, we had to

let them push the MVP through.

Eliminating all administrative and judicial review and make it to be on the

of the debt ceiling deal? I mean, give me a break.

With its path cleared at the federal level, Governor Jim Justice quickly

approved state permits.

Construction immediately resumed.

further entrenching West Virginia as a sacrifice zone.

We saw West Virginia really as a cautionary tale for when dark money

politics. When you don't have protection or regulation or a government that's

really trying to protect the environment, things can go south very

Today, the Supreme Court's conservative majority upended the way our federal

government functions by overturning the 40 -year -old landmark decision Chevron

v. NRDC.

I will not be running for reelection to the United States Senate.

We don't have the luxury of allowing these people to destroy the planet.

You just got to make sure they're not an office where they can do damage.

We are all in this together and we all have one person, one vote. We're all

equal in that sense.

What is your name? Jesse Johnson.

We just tell him who we voted for and lost our vote.

And here we're meeting in person.

And when you bring money in to spoil that system, it's a formula for

And that's what we see at work today. And it may literally become the end of

this great experiment.

And I intend to do everything that I can to make sure that it's not.

Passing campaign finance reform and disclosure laws nationally are critical.

to combat the outsized power of dark money affecting our elections and energy

policies. What would it look like if the people of West Virginia held governing

power, and what would it take to get there?

Our job is to build the political machine that can be there for the next

decades.

If West Virginia was strong enough to fuel the Industrial Revolution,

West Virginia is strong enough to lead the Green Revolution.

We need to find that balance where we can have jobs and a clean and healthy

environment to live in.

Protecting our water is the most important thing we can do. It trumps

else. The trials that Jesse, Mike Minipin, and Charlotte, and so many

have gone through who are building blocks.

They didn't expect that their story could get told from within.

They knew they needed to get it out.

And they looked at Julie and me as a potential place to tell their story.

It's not enough on a spiritual level just to be silent.

I think those of us who know what there is to lose, and we know that it's our

very soul, our very spirit, because you can't do things to the earth and other

people. You can't...

Just dismiss them without dismissing part of your very soul.

Any one of these threads can be

singled out and very easily broken, can't they?

But what happens when they're all one?

What happens when every thread offers its strength?

Anybody want to have a go at this? You think you can break it?

Not going to happen.

This is...

where we are, a part of something beautiful and magical and sacred. And

one of our energies matters.

West Virginia, my home.

Blue Ridge Motel, so long.

How has it been to be part of a documentary film with people coming out

filming you throughout these runs?

Well, you're a lot like me because I can become a pain in the ass without even

having to try. It just comes naturally.

But your runoff is not fit for me to drain.

Oh, this green mountain won't lay your body down.