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People working together for social, economic and environmental justice in Tennessee
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Newsroom Archives
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For release October 11, 2002
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Contacts:
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SOCM office
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Charles Winfrey
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(865) 426-9455
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(865) 426-2542
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SOCM celebrates 30 years of organizing to give ordinary people a voice
Thirty years ago a handful of mountain people banded together to convince the Tennessee legislature to pass a severance tax on coal. They wanted to insure that as the "black diamond" being gouged from their hillsides left their communities, some money returned.
Since then, that handful of people has grown into a statewide grassroots organization of over 2,000 members from across the state, most living in rural communities and small towns. More recently, SOCM won a major victory in persuading the federal Office of Surface Mining to permanently declare off-limits to mining the 61,000-acre watershed of Tennessee's largest and most popular state park, Fall Creek Falls.
"SOCM is really about people organizing to make democracy work for them. We have learned that we can find our voice through working together and teaching ourselves the skills necessary to have a say in the future of our communities," said SOCM president Barbara Levi, a Hamilton County school teacher.
In recent times, the organization has expanded from its Appalachian roots to begin organizing among African-American communities in Middle Tennessee, while suspected health problems attached to aerial spraying affect African American and white communities alike.
This past weekend, SOCM members gathered together to celebrate their accomplishments. The festivities ranged from a panel of SOCM members who discussed the campaigns they have worked on over the years to the cutting of a 30 year old SOCM birthday cake.
On Saturday evening keynote speaker, Lois Gibbs, addressed the group. Gibbs is best known for leading a community group in Love Canal, upstate New York, to a victory that consisted of obtaining $120 million in government assistance plus damages from Occidental Petroleum to test, clean up and relocate from their neighborhood that had been poisoned with over 200 chemicals.
Gibbs recalled one of the reasons she got involved with her community group, "I read a report that was done in 1976, two years before I got involved. It was a cost-benefit analysis of Love Canal. Its hazards and risk to community were estimated at $20 million versus who would benefit. It put a dollar amount on my head and my children's heads - I was not thinking about my neighbors yet. And because my husband only made $10,000 and my children were only likely to make $10,000, we were not very important. I read that and said, 'How can you do a cost benefit analysis on people's lives and their health?'
You gotta be kidding. Somebody is deciding what our suffering and what we are worth. I was blown away by that."
Gibbs went on to talk about the need for grassroots groups like SOCM and what they can accomplish. She noted that SOCM gives ordinary people - people traditionally without power- a voice to shape their communities and take action on issues that affect them at the local, state, and national levels.
SOCM also kicked off its 30th Anniversary fundraising campaign at the event. The goal of the campaign is to raise $500,000 over the next three years from individual donors. The additional revenue will allow SOCM to continue what it's done best for 30 years - giving ordinary people a voice.
As part of its 30th anniversary celebration this year, SOCM is launching major campaigns in all three grand divisions of the state for 2003. SOCM next week in Murfreesboro will kick off a renewed effort to gain passage of laws to regulate clear-cutting. Excessive timber harvesting has become a major problem on the Cumberland Plateau of East Tennessee and the Highland Rim of Middle Tennessee.
Last year SOCM recruited as an ally the state's hardwood industries. Hardwood and saw timber operators are concerned that unrestricted harvesting for pulpwood will deplete their supply of high quality lumber, boosting prices and possibly forcing them out of business.
Pulpwood production has ties to the health risks of aerial spraying as well, with numerous residents who live near pine plantations complaining of respiratory and other problems that they suspect are connected to the spraying of herbicides and fertilizers on nearby tree farms.
Last week, SOCM members gathered at an abandoned Campbell County strip mine to call on Tennessee's congressional delegation for help in cleaning up the hundreds of abandoned coal mines in Tennessee.
In 1977, after years of lobbying by SOCM and other coal field groups from across the country, Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. The legislation also created the Abandoned Mine Land (AML&$41; Program to clean up areas that were impacted by coal mining before 1977.
Money is collected from coal operators on each ton of coal and becomes part of a trust fund that now contains $1.4 billion, resting unused in Washington.
"I'd like to see more of the money sitting in that fund released so that the AML sites in communities like ours can be cleaned up," said Partin. "It seems like if they would use this money to clean up these abandoned mines, everyone would benefit. The environment would get cleaned up, it would help our community, and it would create jobs."
Although Partin and other SOCM members see AML clean up as a win-win situation, they are worried that the AML program may soon disappear. Under current law the program will sunset in 2004. SOCM is calling on Tennessee's congressional delegation to support legislation that would extend the program at least until 2014 and to make changes in the law critical to Tennessee.
At a September news conference in West Tennessee, SOCM announced a campaign to address health problems caused by aerial spraying of chemical herbicides and pesticides.
"We will be approaching legislative sponsors with a bill that does not place unreasonable limits on farmers," said Murray Hudson, resident of Lauderdale County and chairman of SOCM's aerial spraying committee. "We are basically asking that residents be given notice when and where spraying is going to occur and that buffer zones be established to protect hospital patients, school children and other sensitive elements within the population."
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