The Sierra Club helps you tell the Army Corps of Engineers to preserve Blair Mountain from corporations that want to use the nefarious, water-polluting method of mining known as mountaintop removal mining from destroying the area. Why? Because Blair Mountain is a tourist attraction in West Virginia, the site of one of the most famous labor marches in American history, where 7,000 coal miners battled coal overlords over low pay and hazardous working conditions back in 1921; they didn't win, but their struggle made future labor struggles a lot easier, and helped secure working folks a better position in American society. As a historical site, of course, Blair Mountain holds a lot of choice archaeological evidence -- entrenchments, buried objects, shell casings, even human remains. Anyway, why the Army Corps of Engineers? Because both the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 and the Clean Water Act give the Army Corps some statutory authority over Blair Mountain, including the authority to stop mining on historical sites. That power is our power, and we should use it wisely, to protect both our heritage and our drinking water.
Meanwhile, more than 60 grocery corporations -- including two of the biggest, Kroger and Safeway -- have committed to banning genetically-modified salmon from their stores, but Costco, which is no slouch as far as grocery sales, has not done so; hence Friends of the Earth helps you tell Costco to refuse to put GMO salmon on their shelves. Why do this, when the FDA hasn't even approved GMO salmon yet? Because the FDA might still approve GMO salmon, despite the attendant problems -- including the salmon being the first-ever genetically-modified animal approved for human consumption -- and getting all the big grocers to say no to the salmon will help ensure that people don't eat it, and demand doesn't rise for it, and we don't one day see GMO chickens and pigs in the supermarket. There really is no benefit from GMO animals other than making big agricultural corporate CEOs rich -- anyone who tells you it's for feeding hungry people isn't telling you that we grow food to be sold more than we grow it to be eaten, and growing food to be sold kinda makes it harder to feed the hungry, since their main obstacle toward eating better is poverty.
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