PASTOR DON PRANGE FIGHTS CORPORATE MISCONDUCT by John P. Flannery

Lovettsville’s St. James United Church Pastor, the Reverend R. Don Prange, was arrested in Charles Town, West Virginia on April Fool’s Day for protesting corporate misconduct by Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal producer, with almost $16 Billion in assets.

On October 31, 2007, Peabody spun off its mining operations east of the Mississippi River where its workers were represented by the United Mine Workers Association; Peabody created the Patriot Coal Company on that date, and assigned to Patriot all of Peabody’s long term health care obligations to its retired miners.

In 2007, Peabody’s CEO said, “We’re reducing our legacy liabilities roughly $1 Billion, and reducing our expenses and cash spending in the neighborhood of $100 million as well.”  Bloomberg News estimated that Peabody transferred $600 million in health-care and environmental liabilities for environmental reclamation and black lung benefits from its accounts to Patriot.

Pastor Don said, “these companies have interlocking directorships and the directors are switching back and forth… a revolving door, a conspiracy.”

The new company, Patriot, couldn’t produce enough income to meet its obligation – not from the start nor any time afterwards.  

Pastor Don said, “It’s not like Peabody didn’t have the resources to meet the obligation.  Peabody is the largest in the world.”

Patriot nevertheless filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and asked the court to terminate health care and pension benefits earned by the miners working for Peabody and Patriot; this would adversely affect 10,000 retired Appalachian miners and 13,000 dependents.

Pastor Don said, “Peabody made promises and has broken those promises and all I have to say to them is, ‘Shame on you.’”

 “I’ve had a long history of solidarity with the United Mine Workers,” Pastor Don said, “going back to 1978 when I worked on building a coalition of churches in Appalachia, trying to cultivate church support for the right to organize.”

Pastor Don recalled, how “I was doing a weekly devotion on a radio station, and using my 15 minutes to talk about how the church should support striking miners.   That was fine until my devotions were censored by the station manager.”

“You get angry,” Pastor Don said, “at the continued exploitation of people by these companies.”

“In 1983, Kathleen Counts was killed in a mining disaster,” said Pastor Don, “At the services, they preached to the miners how this death was a message from God to get right with God.  I said, if there’s a message from God, it is the question, ‘When is the coal industry going to get right with God?’”

“I wrote a hymnal,” said Pastor Don, “to the tune of Blessed Assurance, by Phoebe Knapp, and I called it, ‘Blessed Oppressors.’”

Pastor Don sung the hymn, “Blessed Oppressors, they own the mines, O what a sad taste for those on the lines! Heirs of our labor down in the mud, Drawn from our spirits, sometimes our blood.” 

Pastor Don went on, “All out production, safety can wait; Echoes of slav’ry, that is our fate.” 

In the first chorus, he sang, “This is our story, this is our song, making their profits all the day long.” 

But in the final chorus, Pastor Don sang, “This is our story, this is our song, working for justice all the day long.”

“So you understand why I stood with them in Charles Town with some 10,000 miners, and their families and other clergy?,” said Pastor Don. 

“Also my wife, Tena Willemsma, a Friesian, from the northern province of Holland, born of a father in the Dutch resistance,” Pastor Don said, “she’s been active and encouraged me to participate.”

“Some may wonder why I allowed myself to be arrested,” said Pastor Don, “It’s a symbolic gesture.  In contrast of what the miners are up against, the great risk in the mines, the disabilities they suffer, the exploitation of these people by the companies.  How can an arrest compare to what they suffer?”

Out of the thousands who participated, only 16 were arrested.  Pastor Don was one of those arrested in front of Laidley Tower, the headquarters of the Patriot Coal Company.

“I was arrested for disorderly conduct,” said Pastor Don, this for merely sitting down and refusing to leave.

“Another symbolic aspect of my arrest,” Pastor Don said, “was that my sitting down and refusal was ‘disorderly’ but this begs the question, what term would you use to describe what Peabody and Patriot were doing?  Disorderly?”

On the next day following this protest, and after Pastor Don had been released, on Tuesday, April 2, 2013, according to the Wall St. Journal and Bloomberg accounts, Patriot’s creditors moved in bankruptcy court to investigate whether the 2007 spinoff wasn’t a “fraudulent transfer” designed to purposefully rid Peabody of liabilities such as retiree health and pension benefits and problematic mines.

 
On Tuesday, April 10. 2013, in St. Agnes Catholic Church in Charleston, West Virginia, miners, retirees and dependents gave witness and testimony of what they had suffered and how they’ve been wronged.  Pastor Don and his wife, Tena, traveled there to hear what they had to say.  This is not over for the miners, so it’s not over for Pastor Don either.