RR + RCP West Virginia Tour - October 2026

17-minute documentary produced by the award-nominated studio World Within highlights the regenerative community and environmental work of the Coalfield Development Corporation in Appalachia.

Discover the Act Now Solar Training project, empowering communities through solar education and skill development.

To limit the impacts of climate change, the United States set targets in 2021 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030 and to achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050. To meet these targets, the federal government has been investing in new energy and transportation infrastructure at a massive scale.

Grantmaking and The Role of Philanthropy in Rural Communities

Investing in Rural Development Systems Change for Meaningful Progress

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) established substantial tax credits for wind and solar power. Trump’s One

A POLITICO analysis finds that while the administration wiped out hundreds of billions in clean-energy tax breaks, spending has been harder to unwind.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) was built, sold, and attacked as the largest climate investment in U.S. history. […]

Philanthropic giving can make a big difference in small towns, if both sides can find each other

Rural communities are ready and taking action to better their communities

What’s changing with rural philanthropy? While the funding gap persists, Jerry Kenney gives us three encouraging developments.

Take time this Pride Month to uplift LGBTQ+ voices shaping conservation, ecology, and outdoor community.

What is “queer ecologies” theory, and what would this approach look like in Appalachia?

Coal miners in Kentucky went on strike in 1973 when the Eastover Mining Company refused to sign their contract. This documentary shares an in-depth look at their story.

An Illustrated History of the West Virginia Mine Wars Raymond Tyler • Illustrated by Summer McClinton • Edited by Paul Buhle • Introduction by Shaun Slifer • Foreword by Gordon Simmons Paperback, 136 pages October 2024 PM Press We offer a lesson plan for this book! Read this great revie

In 2016, headlines declared Appalachia ground zero for America’s “forgotten tribe” of white working-class voters. Journalists flocked to the region to extract sympathetic profiles of families devastated by poverty, abandoned by establishment politics, and eager to consume cheap campaign promises. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a frank assessment of America’s recent fascination with the people and problems of the region. The book analyzes trends in contemporary writing on Appalachia, presents a brief history of Appalachia with an eye toward unpacking stereotypes, and provides examples of writing, art, and policy created by Appalachians as opposed to for Appalachians—ultimately offering a much-needed insider’s perspective on the region.

Using Clear Fork Valley in central Appalachia as an empirical example, Gaventa attempts to discern the "hidden faces of power" - those forces which shape actions and consciousness in ways not readily apparent in formal American political processes. He seeks to clarify and expand upon past theories (by such writers as Bachrach and Lukes) on the nature and maintenance of power. The region studied here is characterized by stark incongruity - the co-existence of massive natural wealth (coal and land) with pervasive human poverty attended by high unemployment, limited education, malnutrition, and the prevalent hazards of mining coal: black lung, dismemberment, death, and ecological ruin. This has been the region's status quo under the decades of domination by a British company and its absentee owners. Despite these departure conditions and frequently violent union struggles, culminating in the 1969 murder of UMW reformist Jock Yablonski, acquiescence to this status quo has been maintained. Gaventa searches out the answers to how and why wealth and poverty continue to coexist and the powerless continue to accede to the powerful. His astute analysis poses broader questions about the politics of poverty, working-class consciousness, and corporate power in America.

What’s it like to drown on dry land? Ask any coal miner you know who has spent years working underneath a mountain, and they’ll tell you about black lung. This installment of In These Hills is centered around this modern day crisis.

Did you know that the red bandana has been used as a symbol of solidarity for over one hundred years? In this video produced by @jjnmultimedia, one of our beloved founding board members, Wilma Steele, walks us through the history and origin of this sacred cloth of patterned red paisley and what it means to tie it on

Unveiled on Labor Day 2022 as part of Monument Lab’s national Re:Generation cohort, Courage in the Hollers is a new, multi-faceted public memory project led by the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, co-created with communities in both Marmet and Clothier, WV. Through permanent sculptural monuments and new interpretive signage at both locations, Courage memorializes and honors the multi-ethnic and multi-racial unionist mine workers that challenged corporate power and aggression, leading to the armed Battle of Blair Mountain (1921) and a fight for human rights. We’re proud to share the people, stories, and places behind this project with you! At the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, it is our mission to document and disseminate these monumental stories of coal mine workers and their little known struggle for justice in these Appalachian hills and hollers. Courage in the Hollers is just the beginning of a broader project to create interpretive spaces of memory along the 50-mile route, where mine workers marched in search of civil liberties for the working class over one hundred years ago.

Did you know that this month, August 2025, marks the 104th Anniversary of the largest armed labor uprising in the United States? West Virginia is often remembered for the coal that fueled America’s Industrial Revolution. But what too many forget is that coal miners here fueled an American labor movement from the founding of the United Mine Workers of America to the solidarity that later shaped unions like the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers. The history we hold in our hills—and have preserved on the walls and in the archives in Matewan, West Virginia—is a sacred one. It reminds us that every labor law we have today was written in blood. For decades, miners and their families endured horrific conditions above and below ground: company stores that kept them in debt, company-owned housing that tied them to the mines, dangerous working conditions underground, and a private mine guard system that kept everyone and everything in check. These conditions sparked the largest armed labor uprising in American history: the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain. For nearly a century, the story of these struggles for basic human rights in the United States was hushed, hidden, and tucked away—but thanks to the work of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, it’s now proudly remembered. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. We’re proud to share our new mini-documentary about this history, its forceful forgetting, and its proud remembrance through the past ten years of our work. This project is funded in part by the West Virginia Humanities Council and produced by our friends at JJN Multimedia. As we celebrate 10 years of telling the untold, your support ensures we can continue for the next 10. Join us today: wvminewars.org/10th

Transforming Southern WV communities through resilience, revitalization, and readiness planning

Across West Virginia, small towns are writing a new future: one built not on extraction, but on local leadership, shared prosperity, and community-driven investment. The West Virginia Community Development Hub (The Hub) exists to accelerate that future. We partner with communities that are ready to chart a new path, connecting them to resources and helping turn their local ideas into catalytic projects that can strengthen economies and reverse decades of disinvestment.

Who is the West Virginia Community Development Hub?

War is the southern-most city in West Virginia. Located in McDowell County, the 760 residents of War create a close-knit community brimming with hometown pride.

Floyd County, Kentuckycommunity case study Located in the eastern part of Kentucky, Floyd County is nestled in the Appalachian footprint. Residents there are no…

West Side of CharlestonCOMMUNITY CASE STUDY Part of the West Virginia capital city, the West Side of Charleston has been a historically Black community for more…

Owning Our Future centers the voices of West Side residents who are leading efforts around food access, small businesses, youth engagement, faith communities, and neighborhood revitalization. Instead of focusing on challenges alone, the documentary highlights the strengths, relationships, and shared values that already exist and continue to grow. It reminds us that community power isn’t something brought in from the outside, but something built through collaboration and local leadership. Learn more about The Hub's work in West Virginia by visiting wvhub.org.

Increasingly, Big Coal is spelling big trouble for Appalachian communities whose members have worked the mines for generations. This documentary reveals why with its explanation of the effects of mountaintop-removal mining on the region.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline has been in service nearly a year, transporting natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia. A new graphic memoir tells the stories of some of the people who organized to try to block the pipeline, called “Holler, a graphic memoir of rural resistance.”