Mining activists demand WVU, Nike pull uniform ad

[mike r]

Source: Associated Press

Activists trying to stop mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia are furious over a Nike Inc. promotional ad for a new West Virginia football uniform designed in tribute to the 29 victims of the Upper Big Branch mine explosion. The problem is not the color of the gear — off-white that appears coated in coal dust — or the number 29 on the coal-black helmets. It's the depiction of a mountaintop removal mine behind the image of a player, complete with flat, treeless mountaintop, the sound of an explosion and the image of falling rock. The ad appears to be a tacit endorsement of the controversial form of strip mining, activists argued Thursday, and it should be yanked immediately.

WVU football is a uniting force for a small state that lacks a professional team, and Danny Chiotos of Charleston, youth organizer for the Student Environmental Action Coalition, said for the Mountaineers to seemingly take a side with this ad is upsetting people. "I'm largely amused by it and kind of bewildered by it," Chiotos said. "They should come up with a better ad that actually promotes WVU football and the memory of the miners and mine safety." By depicting a surface mine that also resembles the open pit mines of western states like Wyoming, the ad also misses a key point about Upper Big Branch: The Massey Energy Co. mine that exploded April 5 was an underground operation.

The West Virginia athletic department issued a brief statement Thursday, saying the intent was to honor coal miners and their heritage. The graphics were designed by Nike and reviewed by WVU officials. "The intent was for the player on the field to be surrounded by coal and not as an endorsement of any one form of mining technology," the statement said... The ad plunges both the school and the world's largest athletic shoe and clothing maker into one of West Virginia's most emotionally charged and political divisive issues. Mountaintop removal was the sole issue of a candidate who ran in last week's special primary to fill the seat of late U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, and both industry and environmentalists are lobbying the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the practice. The coal-themed Pro Combat gear will be worn for one game only this season, the Nov. 26 Backyard Brawl at Pittsburgh...

WVU senior Joe Gorman said Nike and the school should honor underground miners "without glorifying the mountaintop removal that's destroying West Virginia's heritage and the mountains that make us the Mountaineers." "The ad says, 'It's just the way things are done in West Virginia,'" Gorman said, "but miners and residents of the southern coalfields have been fighting strip mining and mountaintop removal since before I was born, and that's something to be proud of, too."

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iL7_SkdGhpAhnRh-_1HEf0S_-iwAD9HVU77G0

[Javaman]

1. Yet another corporaton making money off of death.

we live in a very strange era.

[John Kerry VonErich]

2. Please understand

The athletic director Oliver Luck is a republican. He ran for congress many years ago.