The Great Coal Faceoff Comes to Airports in the DC Area

“FACES of Coal” (Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security) is an astroturf coal front group created to try to humanize the coal lobby.

And on the heels of a major environmental victory with EPA vetoing what would have been Appalachia's largest mountaintop removal mine, FACES of Coal has rolled out a new advertising push in airports in the Washington, DC area.  But there is something strange about these FACES ads: There are no faces.

Why would FACES opt for ads of ominous chain link fences instead of showing members of the “alliance of people from all walks of life” that they claim to be?  Well, they seem to be having difficulty tracking those people down, or at least snapping their pictures. As it turns out, it is fitting that their logo features just silhouettes, not real people.

When FACES first appeared in the summer of 2009, they put up ads ostensibly showing people working in jobs created by coal mining. Yet some inspired detective work revealed that these people were not “faces of coal;” they were the faces of stock photography. All the photos in their ads were available on iStockPhoto.com (ridiculous side-by-side comparisons here).  The woman working at the flower shop wasn’t a coal supporter, she was literally just “Woman working in a flower shop.”  Ditto for “Group of happy business people standing together against white background” and “Group of adult students standing in campus corridor” etc.  As Rachel Maddow so eloquently put it in her expose, “The faces of coal are clip art.”  (Note: no other major media outlets covered the story and the PR firm responsible for the website immediately tried to cover its tracks.)

So this time around, FACES of Coal is just using ominous photos that evoke industrial hardship.  But for every coal lobbyist and PR consultant they hire, there are real people out there whose lives have been torn apart by mountaintop removal coal mining.  In response to these misleading ads, EarthJustice has launched an ad campaign to show the real faces of coal: its victims.

They’ve had no trouble tracking down these actual people and asking them to tell their stories.  People like Sid Moye, Donetta Blankenship, and James Tawney—local activists who want you to hear what mountaintop removal has done to them.

EarthJustice has put up ads with the faces of these "Mountain Heroes" in the same DC area airports where FACES of Coal is up to its old tricks again. They’re trying to raise awareness of the real costs and the toll that coal mining takes on our country. And they could use our help.

Join the 650+ people who have already gotten involved with EarthJustice’s “Our Stories” photo petition here.  Go to their web site to show your face and tell the coal industry and Washington policymakers that America should protect mountain communities from violent and senseless destruction.

FACES of Coal is just the façade of the coal industry; money can’t buy dedicated grassroots supporters who truly care about an issue.  Opponents of the causes readers help us champion everyday here at Change.org are jealous of this grassroots involvement. They know it’s important, and the best they can do is fake it.  Let’s show them the real thing.

Sign up for Earthjustice's Mountain Heroes project here.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Earthjustice, Credit to the Rainforest Action Network