Western Mining Alliance :?:

[Bluebeard]

Digman, thanks for your support. Our process of setting up our organization is moving along rather slowly. The logistics of getting the paperwork for the bank for the LLC is taking a bit of time (it has to do with a corollary to Murphy's law), not to mention that all of us have full time "real jobs" which cut into our quality mining related time. We still have to iron out some aspects of the Wordpress site- I am not much of a computer guy, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to get the calendar plugins to work (I have tried several of them and none of them work- but I digress). But miner Hal and Scott C are working with us to get things up and running.

I think what is at issue here is the enviros knew that taking on the miners would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. They were probably high-fiving themselves right from the beginning of the battle. Miners are passionate, but we (as a money-making industry) are probably the least organized industry in the nation. I'm sure most of the lack of organization comes from the fact that to a person, miners tend to be rugged individualists and somewhat secretive (by the nature of dealing with the way working with gold makes a lot of people "tweaky"). And I also tend to think the enviros used to believe the miners were a bunch of neanderthals. I think we turned them around on that during the DFG hearings in CA. But the point still remains that we are totally unorganized.

You guys are right, the organization has to be on a national level as all the battles the environmental groups initiate in each state is the same battle, over and over again with new names, faces, and checkbooks. And utilizing the divide and conquer technique, they will bankrupt us person by person unless we unite to fight them on a larger scale. I think the obvious place to start is CA, as the laws are definitely messing up my "other" livelihood. WMA plans on contacting every single claim holder in the state of California to talk to them about what has happened with the law, do they realize that in the current mindset of the State- mining is on its way out?, are they willing to stand up for their rights?, and other assorted questions. We plan to create a large database of all the claimholders in the state where we can organize them into a political block, so when we need some mail to show up at a representative's office, the next thing they know 50,000 letters show up. Again, we need to be a political block. We don't care if you are Republican, Democrat, or dog catcher, we need to organize the political clout of all the small miners in the US so our representatives listen to us. Since no large donor has given us a windfall to use to do advertising campaigns, we will have to do it person by person, one person at a time.

The people who want to organize Jefferson Mining District have the right idea, I believe. We need to develop a "community of miners" who, even though they don't live next to each other as they did 150 years ago, they direct their energies for the benefit of the whole. Since most miners in a single watershed rarely know each other, the whole concept of uniting strangers is difficult to digest. We were thinking of how we could go about creating a community of people who could literally live 3000 miles apart. We came up with creating Watershed divisions with a watershed director. As we contacted all the miners, we would get all their contact info, find out if they wanted to engage in the battle and what skills they had to offer. Organizing the community is only one half of the concept- there has to be a benefit to belong to a community to make the effort worthwhile. So we are thinking about creating a public database of those who are supporting the small miner, WMA, PLP or other worthwhile ogranizations and having it online on our webpage.

In these lean times it is crucial that every penny of money you spend is spent with someone who supports your industry. How much sense does it make to be shopping at a store, where they donate monies to the same organizations which are responsible for kicking us off the rivers? If I knew my favorite store was supporting those same people who were destroying my business, I would walk into the owner/manager's office and tell them that "such and such organization" was responsible for destroying my $30k a year small business and since their store supports those same people who put me out of business, I (and my friends ) will be taking our business somewhere else where they appreciate the fact that I am a small businessman who used to contribute to the benefit of my whole community. End of story. If a few local stores start getting people like this coming in with the same gripe, I bet in the very near future, those Environmental organizations who ran us off the rivers would be feeling a bit of a pinch in their donations.

By having a list of pro-mining businesses and tradesmen or independent contractors on our site, we can encourage those who support the small business of mining to only shop at those who support the industry. If you need welding done and all the welders in your community support such and such green Club - and even though there was a pro-mining welder in the next city- I would drive the distance to support the same person who supports me. That is what community is all about. If I knew of a small miner who repaired honda motors out of his garage, I'd surely give him the money than I would give to Wally World $100/hr for the same repair. By supporting each other, what little money we all have, enrichens the group first and starves those who are fighting us.

It's all about economics- and if the miners- just by doing business with a pro-miner business - get on board, I am sure there will be a lot more local businesses who think twice about who they donate their ecodollars to.

So in short, if you chose to support your mining colleagues, I am thinking WMA would allow you to post free information in our directory about your business, skills or abilities and what you'd be willing to do. And that alone would begin to encourage community by making an effort to do business with each other.

We've got some other ideas too, but we need to move forward enough with the basics before delving into the more esoteric stuff.


BB

[russau]

BB,very well said! now comes the hard part. getting the mass of people involved. ive seen a lot of people say yes to supporting mining and then dont do anything after that.a lot of people still have that mentality that this problem is in another state and dont affect us in our state.somehow they just arent understanding what is being said or just dont care to get involved that much.most are followers if that much!

[russau]

Jim Foleys artical in the mining journal was excellent. id like to see more mining districts on federally owned land in all of the western states. i like his idea of several groups in a mining district to be a watchdog. i wish something could be setup for all of the other states. but there will still be those that say its not for them because, 'they cant do that in our state"mentality! but actually they can and much EZer because its state/private land VRS. federally owned land covered by the 1872 mining laws.

[DJR]

One thing that needs to happen, people that go to public hearings need to take a video of the hearing. To show the nutty accusations that are being made. In most, if not all state public hearing can be recorded, voice and picture. This would be a great way to begin a database to have on had when these craze accusations are made, then they can be shown to the media. But make sure that it is legal in your state.
Just an idea.

[Bluebeard]

DJR- Actually I like your idea... I will take that into consideration as just about everyone who has a phone has video capabilities- we just need to train people to take the movies and upload them to the WMA archive pages (when we get our website up). My idea is to create a media center on our website- where we will have archives of (talk-show type) interviews of the movers and shakers in our industry, mining historians, authors, politicians, and perhaps if they dare- those who oppose us- in order to get the facts straight. There has been so much negative rumor and innuendo splashed around the media, I truly believe that most of the representatives who voted against our industry were convinced via the slanted media, that they were doing the right thing to save the rivers from those environment despoiling gold dredgers (but apparently reclamation dredging is ok). The small scale miners as a whole industry had ZERO push back as far as media representation (other than the PR announcements the Rachel Dunn & Pat Keene paid for). I'm not sure your normal representative in Santa Barbara (who has no clue about mining) had the time to read Don Eno's 98 page dissertation he sent into the DFG- now if there were an interview of Don, or perhaps Claudia Wise, Joe Greene, or one of many pro miner environmentalists, at least they would have had to decide via analyzing the arguments- as it were- all they had was the constant barrage of media where the first thing said was "as everyone knows, gold dredging is bad for the environment". With that kind of fair and balanced reporting, its no wonder we got our heads handed to us.

And Russau, I talked at length with Digman last night- I must say, I am constant amazed by the talented miners there are out there. It truly is amazing that we are in the predicament we are in with all the latent talent we have in our midst's. All we need is a bit of organization and (as we all know- we are passionate enough) we can move mountains. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard on the forums, guys asking what they can do. Everyone wants to help, but obviously, everyone's free time and abilities are different. We just need to find out what everyone can do (what their skills are and how much time they have to donate) and point them in the right direction. Organization is the key. It is a daunting task, but as I realized after talking to digman, it is seriously possible. As Digman stated, his motivation is that California is the leader in all the crappy laws that come down the pike, and it's worth it to him, to nip it in the bud in California before the enviro wackos in other states see how easy it was to throw the miners off the rivers.

[russau]

i agree wholeheartedly!

[digman]

I for one am glad to see someone stepping up again. Sooner or later a solution will be found. Good luck with it.

[CalGoldDredger]

I say good luck with it, too. The need is definately there for representation far better than that of current, especially for Federal claim holders of this state.

[DJR]

Maybe we can get together with the NRA since they are going after hunters now, trying to close federal lands to hunting. We are all in the same boat, government departments are regulating us out of our rights. This has to stop.

[rivraton]

Maybe we can get together with the NRA since they are going after hunters now, trying to close federal lands to hunting. We are all in the same boat, government departments are regulating us out of our rights. This has to stop.

The ban isn't going to happen:
http://www.westernjournalism.com/shoote ... -practice/