If you don’t have a ticket don’t expect to get one. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship says the former mountaintop removal site in Holden West Virginia just can’t hold any more.
Blankenship personally invited people to attend the Labor Day festivities with a video message posted on the "Friends of America Rally" Web site.
"We’re going to have Hank Williams Jr. and a really good time," he said. "But we’re also going to learn how environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your job.”
Competing for attendance on the same day is the United Mine Workers of America Labor Rally in Racine. It’s a 71-year-old tradition that’s especially popular during election years.
The event has drawn presidential candidates and governors. According to a press release from the UMWA, Governor Joe Manchin and House member Nick Joe Rahall have both said they would attend the union event.
Roger Horton is the leader of Citizens for Coal and a pro-union industry worker. While his group is not an official sponsor of the Friends of America Rally, he says members from HIS group will be at both events.
"I’m not going to allow those to taint the event with union versus non-union," he said. "This is not what the event is about."
Horton says the “Friends of America Rally” is about keeping jobs in West Virginia.
"Primarily our biggest focus at this point and time is the cap and trade legislation," he said.
"Many like minded people are in opposition to cap and trade we’re joining forces to allow those people who are elected to understand that we do not want this cap and trade legislation to pass in it’s current form and we want no new taxes added that would prohibit us from continuing to provide for our families."
The Waxman-Markey or cap and trade bill is meant to control carbon emissions and, in turn, global warming, by putting a price tag on the amount produced by individual companies.
The bill passed the House. It is expected to be considered by the Senate this month. While 66 percent of West Virginians think that global warming is a serious problem, a recent survey shows that 53 percent of West Virginians are against cap and trade legislation.
Logan County Commission president Art Kirkendoll agrees that cap and trade would be bad for West Virginia.
The county commission is sponsoring the event but not with finances.
Kirkendoll is giving the welcome speech.
"I’m not ashamed of coal," he said.
"A huge part of our budget is from coal severance taxes."
Another sponsor, Verizon Wireless, is catching heat for their involvement in the rally. The Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group based in Arizona, is asking that the phone company cancel their sponsorship or face a boycott.
Tierra Curry, a conservation biologist with the national non-profit organization says the group has more than 200,000 members nationwide.
"We feel that it’s not ok for a company that claims to be going green to be promote an event that supports mountaintop removal coal mining and that denies that climate change is happening," she said.
Curry says members have already sent more than 21,000 letters of protest to Verizon.
Laura Merit with Verizon says the sponsorship was a “local decision to support the immediate community and is not a statement of their policy on any public issue.”
Ted Nugent is also scheduled to attend. Roger Horton says Nugent agreed to wear a Citizens for Coal T-shirt.
The rally starts Monday morning at 9:30am.