Category Archives: Songs and Stories

Podcast: Fighting Eminent Domain for Pipelines

Listen to the June 28, 2020, podcast from Forward Radio’s Truth to Power program, Fighting Eminent Domain for Pipelines. Forward Radio’s description: “On this week’s Truth To Power, we gather folks into the virtual studio to continue the community conversation about LG&E’s proposed methane gas pipeline in Bullitt County [KY]. You may be familiar with this issue through the ‘Save Bernheim’ campaign, as the proposed pipeline would run through Bernheim Arboretum & Research Forest. Forward Radio’s Justin Mog (Sustainability Now!) and Hart Hagan (The Climate Report / Let’s Talk) discuss the issue with one of the neighbors owning property near the pipeline, Christy Collins, as well as Elaine Tanner, Program Director for the Friends For Environmental Justice.”

Wild VA Film Festival – Online


Join Wild Virginia for music, environmental films, door prizes, and speakers. ALL ONLINE!! Launching on World Environment Day, the festival will be available to you for 48 hours. The first 100 people to sign up will be entered into a drawing for some special prizes and if you find the code word during the festival you will be eligible for another prize!

Sign up here!

Once you sign up, Wild Virginia will send you a password to watch the show.

Join ARTivism on Thursdays through June

Join ARTivism from 7-8 on Thursday evenings through June as they bring us the SUN SiNG in Place Concert Series (May 21, June 4, June 18) and Street SiNG Workshop Series (May 14, May 28, June 11, June 25).

STREET SiNG Workshops are bi-weekly hour long zoom workshops to cultivate skills, art and agreements for future environmental events in Virginia. Each workshop will have time for a teach in and time for participation. Pre-registration required. Additional information here.

“SUN SiNG iN PLACE” is an online concert series from ARTivism Virginia featuring music from individual SUN SiNG Collective members and those they’re quarantined with, as well as guest ARTivists and leaders in the fight against the Mountain Valley, Atlantic Coast, and MVP Southgate pipelines, and other threatening fracked gas infrastructure in our region.

Environmental resistance music, poetry, guest speaker updates, video and action alerts. Uplift promised.  Live on Facebook: www.facebook.com/artivismvirginia/ on Vimeo: www.vimeo.com/artivismvirginia/ and and on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/artivismvirginia/ Event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/211320550098945/20550098945/

See the May 7 concert here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTL9prwtaoo

Story Map on ACP Route in Nelson and Buckingham


Friends of Nelson is very pleased to share the Esri Story Map created by Karen Kasmauski of the International League of Conservation Photographers.

This International League of Conservation Photographers is a non-profit organization whose mission is to support environmental and cultural conservation through ethical photography and filmmaking. They had a small grant from BamaWorks to document the impacts that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline would have have on people and places, specifically in Nelson and Buckingham County.

Karen Kasmauski was the ILCP conservation fellow who came to Nelson and Buckingham for an initial reconnaissance/background tour in early September and then returned for more extensive photographing of multiple sites in early October. Friends of Nelson arranged for her to meet with some impacted landowners and see their lands and how the route would affect them. We also took her to visit local breweries and agribusinesses, explore wetlands that would be impacted, tour some of the steepest slope locations on the proposed route as well as some non-route areas that were devastated in Camille, accompany Friends of Nelson’s Doug Wellman for stream testing, observe how we/CSI use drones to monitor the route, and to come aboard and take a flight in the CSI/Pipeline Airforce plane to view the proposed impacts from the air.

In her essay accompanying the photos, Karen speaks of the people she met, saying, “Their stories also made me think about the larger picture of energy and why we continue building infrastructure like the ACP. Natural gas was supposed to be a bridge — a transitional energy source between coal and the increasingly affordable and popular renewables like solar and wind. Renewable success stories abound. Entire towns in Texas, one of the main fossil fuel states, are switching to more cost-effective wind power. While cleaner than coal, production and consumption of natural gas releases large quantities of methane, one of the main contributors to the warming of our planet. Why prolong our dependence on this energy source at the cost of alternatives that will serve us better in the long term? Is it appropriate to link these global concerns to this focused look at one portion of a regional pipeline project? Absolutely. The vast global picture of energy and environment are really comprised of thousands of local issues like those presented by the ACP. The concerns playing out in Nelson and Buckingham counties show us what could be lost should the ACP be allowed to go forward. A close look at the stories here mirror what is repeated in many ways and in many places on similar energy and environmental concerns.”

Karen Kasmauski’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline Story Map is here.

Click here to view the full set of photos Karen took in Nelson and Buckingham Counties.

Joshua Vana Sings “To the River” at Yellow Finch Blockade

Message from Joshua Vana:

Y’all, there’s this thing I do sometimes where I go sing and play to folks who are living in trees and meanwhile directly preventing the advance of billion dollar corporations plundering Appalachia.

Yesterday I was at the Yellow Finch Blockade on day 331 of uninterrupted tree sits, saying ‘thank you’ and enjoying the company of the good folks there. I found some time in between the roar of backhoes, all perfectly perched to flip over at any moment on the side of the ridge directly across the road, to play this song I wrote this past spring called “To The River”.

It’s difficult for me to explain witnessing the song play out in real life as it’s sung – but I can say that I rarely feel more grounded and alive than when I’m with so many others who are risking something – anything – time, energy, money, safety, hope, to maintain a future we can thrive in (or simply survive in).

One of the things I can offer to the world, to a decent society, in times of struggle (though there seem to be quite a few these days, and multiplying) is music. It’s important for communities to tell their own story of resistance and I think this tune is in that greater songbook somewhere.

There are some fires burning in Appalachia that we’d like to keep lit. Some of ’em are being cared for by Appalachians Against Pipelines. I’d like to encourage you to look into this little corner of a greater movement for water protection and community defense and maybe consider supporting them at bit.ly/supportmvpresistance. They’d appreciate any help you might be able to offer, and so would the folks who’ve been fighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline for five long years.

Thanks for reading, listening – and for those ‘in between’, you know who you are.