Paula Jean Swearengin

“Joe Manchin has been our secretary of state, he's been our governor and he's been our senator. And through his long terms, we have not seen any type of economic development.”

“The Democratic Party has failed us, because we haven't run the progressive platform we've been promised... That's why people have moved their votes to the Republicans.”

“I plan to primary Joe Manchin in 2018, and I'm asking you to stand with me, and hopefully, hopefully we can build a better tomorrow.”

“Bernie Sanders won the primaries because he offered promise, offered hope, offered solutions.”

“The reason that I decided to get into politics is because I have begged, pleaded, and cried for years for our government to listen to us and they haven't.”

“The people I've met through my path in activism, we're trying to bring real people into a leadership role because we are real Americans and know the true pain of having to worry about our children. And there's no force like a mother trying to protect her child.”

“We tapped into the abandoned mine land fund to pay for pensions, and that money was to clean up the mines, not make up the difference of what the companies stole from workers.”

“But my family is connected to coal. There's hardly anybody in West Virginia that doesn't have a connection to the coal industry.”

“I was born here in West Virginia, though I spent a little time in North Carolina when my step-dad got laid off from the coal mines.”

“I was born in Mullens, West Virginia, and lived in a community called Iroquois in Appalachia. We faced heavy pollution. Our water came from the Sweeney Watershed, which meant we essentially drank acid mine drainage.”

“The question we face today is: What are we going to do when the coal is gone? And make no mistake it's going. No one has given us an answer that doesn't require the sacrifice of our health and our environment.”

“I'm really not a politician: I don't have a political background, though I've been an activist fighting for my community for years. So I had to learn a lot about my government.”

“I buried my baby brother this year because of the opioid crisis, I've seen my friends and family, strong miners born and bred in these hills out of work, and people crying out for help.”

“It doesn't bother me to be called a 'hillbilly' because I lived in the hills. I grew up in the hills and the mountains are my home.”

“I believe our future is in building a 21st-century, clean economy.”

“I've done everything imaginable as a mother and a coal miner's daughter to create a brighter future for our children, and it fell on deaf ears.”

“I have diverticulitis. Most of my family have stomach issues because of the water we drank when we were little. Lots of people have gastrointestinal issues in Appalachian coal communities.”