Dear HCN,
I remember
Leadville during the moly days and it was not a pleasant place
— if one had longer hair, drove a Volkswagen and committed
the sin of being an ecologist.
I remember AMAX coming to
my town, Crested Butte, offering to remove a mountain there, and
having to fight them for five very hard years. AMAX tried every
trick in the book to destabilize our community. I remember the
happy miners, the company regulators, spies and Republicans
attempting to destroy a beautiful place. I still get joy out of
having helped drive a spike though the heart of that
monster.
We who did this were in turn sacrificed for the
cocaine culture of skiing and the dark side of the recreational
industry — real estate. Boomer culture could not compete with
the yuppification of the West.
Sorry, guys, but drunken
miners cannot fight the neo-cons any better than the earth muffins
can right now. America’s policies are made in Singapore,
London and Tokyo by flinty-eyed accountants. When rape-and-run
mining became unsalable inside the U.S.A., the money cut and ran
for other countries to ruin, leaving labor screwed yet again.
Don’t Whine: Organize!
Cordley Coit
Simla, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Amnesty for illegal immigrants.
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