Mike Papantonio interview

If you haven't read it yet, my interview with Mike Papantonio made the 50 State Blog Network Roundup.

An excerpt:

On October 22, 2007 a jury ordered Dupont to pay $196.2 million to residents of Spelter, W.Va. The company was found negligent in creating a 112-acre waste site laced with arsenic, cadmium and lead. The poisons left for 50 years, had become airborne and had contaminated the groundwater. Health problems were abundant in the town, causing the area to be known as the "cancer triangle."

Representing the citizens of Spelter were environmentalists Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Mike Papatonio. The pair are co-hosts of Air America's news magazine Ring of Fire and are founders of GoLeft.TV a web site devoted to progressive video.

Papantonio, known for stinging "Pap Attack" commentaries on the network was featured in the 2006 documentary "Jesus Camp," in which he takes the camp's founder Becky Fischer to task for indoctrinating children into rightwing fanaticism.

Papantonio spoke with me before the Spelter case went to court.

Q: Your program is one of the few media outlets that regularly reports on mountaintop removal. How do think activists can overcome the mainstream media blackout and bring the issue to national attention?

A: If you look at how disastrous West Virginia's been treated - mountaintop Mining - In the history of this country, since the Bushies took over, there's never been so much complete destruction of mountain land mass as we've seen under this administration. Not only do you have the power elite to overcome, but you've got the power elite that controls the message completely.

In other words, activism doesn't do what it used to do. If you look at activism marches anymore, the mainstream media chooses to ignore them. So it's an uphill battle. I think that's what the tragedy is in West Virginia.

I kind of wear two hats. You may know about the Spelter case I have going on. Dupont got away with killing, absolutely poisoning an entire community in Spelter, West Virginia. It's unbelievable, these documents.

Now, can I take these documents and give them to media up there that will do something with them? I can, but I have to get the case to trial first.

Activism alone doesn't work anymore. There has to be something dramatic that happens.

In West Virginia, my god, every time I turn around, it's another disastrous story about corporate America, either attacking labor, polluting streams, blowing off the tops of mountains. It's as if people yawn and say, "You know, well that's West Virginia." They don't pay attention to it until somebody punishes Dupont or one of these corporations.

I know it sounds pretty cynical, but I've done progressive radio for nearly four years and have done plaintiff's trial law for 25 years and see it's pretty clear what has to happen.