{Danville, West Virginia}...RAMPS protesters faced off with mine supporters at Kanawha State Forest Saturday morning. People from Citizens for Coal and Logan Coal Vendors gathered in a Danville parking lot off U.S. Route 119 South around 8:00 A.M. Saturday morning to discuss the significance of coal mining and their strategy for combating environmental protesters. The miners and vendors organized the meeting after they heard activists from the group RAMPS, Radical Action For Mountain Peoples' Survival, planned to shut down a strip mine Saturday. West Virginia State Police arrested about 20 RAMPS protestors at Patriot Coal's Hobet 21 Surface Coal Mine in Boone County after several protesters walked onto the Hobet Mine property, shutting it down for about three hours. Among the protesters were 10 people who locked themselves to a rock truck and dropped banners that read "Coal leaves, Cancer stays." Police also arrested a California filmmaker. Babette Hogan, 52, of San Francisco, says she was taking pictures from the passenger seat of a vehicle on Kanawha State Forest Drive before the protest when a West Virginia State Police trooper demanded her camera, and she was taken to the detachment in Marmet and charged with obstruction. Police estimated the number of protesters at 80 to 100.
