Why roll coal?

by Wayne Adair, Hamilton and Gil Gale, Corvallis

In the past year on several occasions, hundreds of Bitterrooters have taken to the streets as part of the national No Kings movement. Unfortunately, many of us have learned a new term, rolling coal, where drivers of specially altered trucks accelerate past the crowds at First Street and Main Street, Hamilton, spewing choking clouds of exhaust.

Coal rolling began as good-natured entertainment at truck-pulling contests but has migrated to our public streets and highways as deliberate physical harassment and harm.

Why do some people choose to express themselves by willfully immersing their neighbors in a toxic cloud?

How can we regard rolling coal other than as intentionally violent behavior?

Do we accept this kind of assault as just another example of the current decline in legality and civility toward each other?

Do the people who roll coal go back home and yuk it up with their buddies about how they “showed them?”

Are the people who roll coal incapable of carrying on a rational discussion about the issues we all face?
We will talk with anyone anywhere anytime about anything. We believe that informed, fact-based reasoning can yield workable solutions where uninformed emotion-based opinion cannot.

We encourage all citizens, regardless of politics, to denounce the rolling coal offense directed at citizens expressing their First Amendment right.

Rolling coal is symptomatic of a deeper, serious problem in how we conduct ourselves.

In this country, in our American democratic republic, we don’t believe that a political opponent is the enemy. If we let that toxic idea fester unchallenged, we are all in trouble.