Yesterday, Jacqueline Quimby began serving a 60-day sentence for blocking a haul road to a mountaintop removal mine with seven other activists in Kanawha County last October. Jacqueline chained herself to several others across the width of the road, preventing coal and heavy equipment from being transported for a few hours that morning. She and the person to whom she was locked had to be cut out before they could be separated and arrested. The eight were taking a stand against mountaintop removal, a destructive form of coal mining that levels peaks, fills in valleys and poisons air and water.
After serving two days in South Central Regional Jail after the action and relocating from New Orleans, Jacqueline began volunteering with the Sludge Safety Project.
Jacqueline currently organizes full time in Bias’ Branch, a community in Boone County whose residents are working to address contaminated water and the resulting health effects. She also continues to fight mountaintop removal on several fronts, including work with organizations like Climate Ground Zero, Mountain Justice, and Coal River Mountain Watch.
Jacqueline was the only person in the road blockade action who refused the plea agreement, instead choosing to take her case to jury trial. On April 22nd, Jacqueline was sentenced to sixty days in jail for trespass, obstruction and conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor by Magistrate Tim Halloran. This is almost triple the length of any other sentence given in the Climate Ground Zero campaign thus far, and is incomparable to what the activists who took the plea agreement received–two years probation, a thirty day suspended sentence, court costs, and no fines. The discrepancy in sentencing between those who took the plea bargain and Jacqueline suggests that she was penalized for choosing to exercise her right to a trial by jury.
The decision to go to jury trial, however, is one that Quimby does not regret.
“I knew going into this action that I would take the case to trial. Choosing to challenge the power of the coal companies in this state would not simply end with an arrest and perhaps a few fines,” she says, “Taking a stand against mountain top removal meant challenging the systems that support it, and that includes the West Virginia judicial system.”
“The destruction of the mountains for the greed of the coal companies is the biggest crime in town and if it takes going to jail for sixty days to raise hell over this blatant act of violence against our collective and individual futures, so be it,” Quimby continues. She encourages friends and allies to keep fighting hard to end mountaintop removal mining and the poisoning of Appalachia’s air and water.
Jacqueline would love letters sent to South Central Regional, so write to her about how you’re doing, the work you do and what is happening in the movement.
