Читать книгу Standing Our Ground - Joyce M. Barry - Страница 10

CHAPTER 1

Living in a Sacrifice Zone: Gender, the Political Economy of Coal, and Anti–Mountaintop Removal Activism

We’re trying to preserve something, and save this creation. . . . We’re trying to push the state forward, you know, and to stop the destruction and diversify the economy.

—Judy Bonds

Introduction

On a january evening in 2003, coal river mountain watch codirector Judy “Julia” Bonds was home with her grandson when the telephone rang, and the caller ID revealed that the incoming call was from California. Bonds answered, and the man on the other end of the line identified himself as Richard Goldman, phoning to inform her that she was the 2003 North American recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work against mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia.¹ Bonds, who knew nothing about the Goldman Foundation or this prestigious prize that annually gives monetary awards to one environmental justice activist from each continent, casually responded, “Oh, okay. Well, thanks. I appreciate that.”²

During their brief conversation, Goldman gave Bonds a web address and encouraged her to read more about this prize. She explained, “I looked it up on the computer and then I was in total shock. . . . It took my breath away.”³ Bonds learned that she was one of seven environmental justice activists in the world that year to win $125,000 for her work with the Coal River Mountain Watch.⁴ She said winning this prize was personally monumental but also significant for her organization and the anti-MTR movement, as “people began to realize who CRMW was. They began to realize what MTR is, and it started a snowball effect” of more people becoming educated about MTR and its impact on Appalachian communities and, as a result, wanting to join the fight to end it.⁵

Five years earlier, in 1998, Judy Bonds went to the CRMW offices looking for help after being forced off her land in Marfork Hollow, near Whitesville, West Virginia, by coal operations that rendered the area unfit for habitation. Bonds, whose family has lived in this area for ten generations, noticed dramatic changes in her environment when Massey coal operations began there in the 1990s. She witnessed color and consistency changes to the water sources in her backyard, and was particularly alarmed when her grandson, playing in a creek behind her home, asked, “What’s wrong with these fish?”⁶ His innocent question alerted Bonds to fish kills in the water, and she then knew something was horribly wrong. After this, Bonds said, “I started to notice as my neighbors moved out, there was coal trucks running constantly, and it just . . . devalued our property, our quality of life. We were in danger . . . and it was basically the quality of the air and water that made me find out more about what’s happening in my own holler, and the coal industry.”⁷ Feeling under siege from MTR blasting, the persistent presence of coal trucks, and the inability to drink water in her home or visit the family cemetery, she moved nine miles away to Rock Creek, West Virginia. She was the last resident to leave the community of Marfork.

Prior to joining the CRMW, Bonds had no experience in grassroots activist politics, but at an early age she began to develop a deep sensitivity to economic and social injustice. All the men in her family, including her father, grandfather, ex-husband, cousins, and others worked in nearby coal mines. She spent her childhood in Birch Creek, the upper reaches of Marfork Hollow, where her family grew large gardens, foraged for edible plants in the surrounding mountains, kept livestock, and hunted animals for their own subsistence. Bonds lived in Birch Creek until she was seven, when a coal company forced her family off their land. They settled nearby in Marfork Hollow, and her father worked for Bethlehem Coal Company.⁸

She recalled seeing one of her father’s paychecks, and the anger she felt upon learning his weekly compensation was a meager $15. She said, “Fifteen dollars for a man risking his life and his health. Fifteen dollars is what he gets for that?”⁹ Even though Bonds had no political activist experience before joining the CRMW, she credited her mother with imparting a strong sense of justice in her: “She was a very strong willed, opinionated woman. I remember listening to my mother rant and rave about Buffalo Creek. . . . And I remember hearing my mother talk a little bit about Mother Jones, and John L. Lewis and about Matewan. . . . So, a little bit of that outrage against injustices was instilled in me at an early age.”¹⁰ In the anti-MTR movement, Bonds had a reputation for speaking bluntly, motivated by an angry passion that was not palatable to all people, particular coal industry supporters. However, she was unapologetic, saying, “That’s who I am. I can’t apologize for that. I lost my diplomacy a long time ago.”¹¹ She, like other grassroots activists in the movement, was the victim of threats and intimidation for speaking out against coalfield injustices, but she remained unwavering in her position.

Arguably, Judy Bonds, Larry Gibson, and Maria Gunnoe are the faces of the MTR movement. West Virginia natives with deep historical ties to the region, they, along with other people profiled in this book, have felt the negative impacts of Big Coal firsthand. All have refused to remain silent while this industry obliterates their communities. Bonds, in particular, took a firm stand on the issue and believed other people should as well. She argued, “If you do not raise your finger to stop an injustice, you’re the same as that person doing the injustice.”¹² She has been called a “folk celebrity” for her work with the CRMW,¹³ a coalfield Erin Brockovich. However, Bonds was quick to say that she was just one of many, “a reflection” of Big Coal’s impact on southern West Virginia and of the numerous people taking stands against the coal industry in this era of mountaintop removal coal mining.¹⁴ She said, “I’m just the first one out there, because there’s a lot more women that have deeper and bigger and more compelling stories to tell. . . . That’s what makes it so good is that the rest of these women are now telling their stories because one woman had the courage to step out.”¹⁵

Bonds and Gunnoe are representative of many Appalachian women who have become politically active to save their homes, communities, and the lush Appalachian Mountains literally from obliteration. They occupy an area of the country known as an energy “sacrifice zone,” where the lives and environment of the few are sacrificed for the greater good of the many; in this case through the production of coal, which provides most of the electricity in the United States.¹⁶ While they work to protect the land and quality of life, women environmental justice activists in West Virginia are cognizant that MTR is not solely an environmental issue. Rather, these women position the problems associated with MTR within a holistic framework, highlighting the political, economic, and environmental linkages to this destructive form of coal extraction.

MTR is a controversial form of coal extraction, polarizing state citizens, many of whom defend the practice and the industry, because of Big Coal’s long history in West Virginia; because of the cultural belief that this area “is coal country”; and because of economic reasons, as the industry provides most of the good-paying jobs in the coalfields today. Those critical of the coal industry, particularly mountaintop removal mining, are fewer in number given the overall population in West Virginia’s nine southern coal counties (Boone, Fayette, Kanawha, Nicholas, Raleigh, Logan, McDowell, Mingo, and Wyoming), which in 2007 had a combined population of 476,996, while the total number of people residing in the state was 1,812,035.¹⁷ While working in environmental justice groups, these grassroots women activists maintain a transformative vision focused on ending the coal hegemony in West Virginia and preserving local communities and the natural environment by promoting the use of alternative energy forms. In doing so they find themselves deeply lodged within the long-standing jobs-versus-environment tensions between those who protect coal in this area and others who seek a new direction for the state. This chapter examines the material conditions of working-class West Virginia women in the age of MTR, gender ideologies shaped and utilized by the coal industry, and how women’s anti-MTR activism challenges and defies established gendered prescriptions.

In the Shadow of a “Resource Curse”: Material Conditions of West Virginia Women and the Hegemony of Coal

The coal industry rules supreme in the rural coalfields of southern West Virginia. In this nine-county area, the heavy manufacturing of this fossil fuel provides one of the best means of employment, with adequate wages and health benefits for many coal miners and their families. West Virginia is typically characterized as a mono-economy, reflecting the prominence of coal in the state’s economy and also its long history as the most influential industry in West Virginia. While the number of mining jobs has decreased over the years with the increased mechanization of the industry, coal still employees a large number of working-class people in southern West Virginia, either directly through mining jobs or through other businesses that support mining.¹⁸ The rest of this wage-earning population is largely employed in service-oriented occupations, many lacking health-care benefits and living wages.¹⁹

While the state is rich in natural resources such as coal and timber, its citizens are some of the most impoverished in the country. Currently, West Virginia ranks as the fifth-most-impoverished state in the US, behind Kentucky, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Mississippi.²⁰ The highest rates of poverty are in the rural southern areas of the state, including two counties located in the southern coalfields, McDowell and Mingo, with poverty rates at 33 percent and 25.4 percent, respectively.²¹ Many scholars and most anti-MTR activists connect the consistently high levels of poverty in West Virginia to the extraction of natural resources, the very basis of the state’s mono-economy. Journalist Jeff Goodell claims:

Nearly 150 years and some 13 billion tons of coal later, it’s strikingly obvious that the great wealth of natural resources in West Virginia has been anything but a blessing. Rather than bringing riches, it has brought poverty, sickness, environmental devastation, and despair. By virtually every indicator of a state’s economic and social well-being—educational achievement, employment rate, income level—West Virginia remains at or near the bottom of the list. Nowhere is the decline clearer than in the southern part of the state, where the promise of riches was once brightest.²²

The adverse socioeconomic conditions Goodell notes impact many West Virginia citizens but are, perhaps, most keenly felt by working-class women in the state. Over the past decade, many studies have assessed the socioeconomic conditions of West Virginia. Some analyses focus explicitly on conditions of women, while others isolate the category of gender among other discrete variables. Surprisingly, the most influential assessment of the region, the Appalachian Regional Commission report, insufficiently addresses gender in its assessment of living conditions in Appalachia.

In 2003, the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal program established in 1965 to assess and ameliorate persistent poverty in the region, released its annual report, Appalachia at the Millennium: An Overview of Results from Census 2000, based on 1990s socioeconomic data.²³ Curiously, the report has a section that segments race and ethnicity in changing socioeconomic patterns but provides no gender differential category, and provides data on gender disparities only in workforce participation rates. This oversight is consistent with the frequent omission of data on women in a good portion of social science policy research. The end result presupposes that women and men experience similar socioeconomic realities, an all-too-frequent and wholly false assumption argued against by many feminist researchers. Feminist economists Drucilla K. Barker and Susan F. Feiner draw our attention to gender biases in socioeconomic analyses, as well as the importance of making distinctions based on race, gender, class, and so forth:

Isn’t a price just a price? A market just a market? Don’t men and women feel the ups and downs of economic activity equally, whether they are black or white, straight or gay? Won’t a change in interest rates affect everyone the same way, regardless of gender? To all these questions feminist economists answer, “no.” Gender, like race, ethnicity, class, nation, and other markers of social location, is central to our understanding of economics and economic systems. The categories of economic analysis do not express timeless truths. Economic categories and concepts, like the categories and concepts of every knowledge project, are embedded in social contexts and connected to processes of social differentiation.²⁴

Indeed, concentrating on who is excluded in policy assessments can reveal just as much about hegemonic interests in certain locations and historical contexts as concentrating on who is included in these analyses. When socioeconomic studies fail to account for fundamental differences in a population, it is crucial that feminist researchers highlight gender bias, exposing the blind spots in the original study. This first step in underscoring omissions can lead to social analysis that is more thorough, informative, and inclusive.

While the ARC report fails to isolate the category of gender adequately, it does provide some useful general information on Appalachian lives. Defining Appalachia and delineating its boundaries have been the subjects of a complex, long-standing debate among those who study the region, but most current scholarship follows the ARC demarcations. In this latest ARC report, Appalachia covers 410 counties in 13 states, including all of West Virginia and portions of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.²⁵ The commission also divides Appalachia into three subregions: northern Appalachia, which includes parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, and 46 of West Virginia’s 55 counties; central Appalachia, which includes 9 counties in southern West Virginia’s coalfields, and portions of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee; and southern Appalachia, which includes sections of Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.²⁶ This study makes important distinctions between areas within the 410-county Appalachian region, which in the popular point of view is a monolithic region with uniform social and economic conditions. The commission results, detailed by Kelvin M. Pollard, also distinguish between “transitional,” “competitive,” “attainment,” and “distressed” counties in the region.²⁷ Pollard discloses that most of the “transitional” counties, those on par with national averages in some categories but lagging behind in others, are found in northern and southern Appalachia. The “competitive” counties, those closely resembling the rest of the country in social and economic indexes, are primarily in southern Appalachia. The “attainment” counties, predominantly urban areas in the region, are also on par with national averages. The “distressed” counties, located in central Appalachia, are below national averages, but also fall behind Appalachian norms in all categories.²⁸

The “distressed” area of the region includes all of West Virginia’s coalfield counties, which are characterized as “experiencing the greatest economic hardships.”²⁹ Counties in the “distressed” category have per capita incomes no greater than 67 percent of the national average, and rates of poverty and unemployment that are at least 150 percent of the respective rates for the country as a whole.³⁰ Most households in this region experience socioeconomic hardships, and workforce participation rates are lower than national averages. Pollard reveals that in 2000, West Virginia workforce participation rates were 45 percent for women and 58 percent for men, behind the 2000 national averages of 58 percent for women and 71 percent for men.³¹ These gender disparities can be attributed to the manufacturing-based economy of the state, which relies primarily on male labor. Areas reliant on heavy manufacturing typically contain stark occupational segregation based on gender. Some feminist scholars suggest that disparities based on occupational segregation and earnings speak to the value placed on women’s labor in the US economy. Deborah M. Figart claims:

Six out of ten women still work in female-dominated occupations, particularly in a growing service sector. Most women are clerical and professional specialty workers, especially African-American women who left domestic service to replace white women in offices. About eight of ten men are employed in male-dominated occupations, especially craft and managerial or administrative work. Relatively few occupations are truly integrated, as evidenced by visits to individual workplaces. The wage gap is narrower in female-dominated occupations where overall average pay is lower, although men still earn more than women in jobs such as secretary, cashier, social worker and nurse. This not only suggests that men’s earnings exceed women’s, but that traditionally women’s work is devalued in the economy.³²

In short, the devaluation of female labor consigns many women, particularly in areas with a large manufacturing base, to low-paying work that typically lacks health benefits and opportunities for advancement. In West Virginia, some scholars have argued this pattern was established long ago and still informs labor practices in the region today. For example, Frances S. Hensley argues that historically, industrial development in West Virginia provided jobs in “coal mines, coke plants, steel mills, machine shops, construction, and lumber mills, industries which did not, as a rule, employ women.”³³ The concentration of employment in these industries “became a dominant feature of West Virginia’s industrial structure and imposed long-term restrictions on employment opportunities for women.”³⁴ These socioeconomic conditions are still influential today, rendering women more dependent upon male wages and lacking opportunities for adequate means of employment.

The ARC report reveals as well how central Appalachia, where the West Virginia coalfields are situated, also lags behind other areas in annual income. This census information indicates that in 2000 the national per capita income was $21,600, while in southern Appalachia it was $19,200 and in central Appalachia it was $14,300, just 66 percent of the national average.³⁵ Keeping in mind that the ARC was initiated to alleviate poverty in the region, the 2000 assessment found that poverty in Appalachia improved slightly from 1990 figures but still posed formidable obstacles, particularly for central Appalachia, where 1 in 5 people (22.1 percent) were considered poor, whereas in the southern and northern regions, 1 in 8 residents (12.8 percent) were impoverished.³⁶ When considering educational achievement rates between the subregions of Appalachia, Pollard reveals that in 2000, 81 percent of northern Appalachian residents, 75 percent of southern Appalachian residents, and only 64 percent of central Appalachian residents had high school degrees, while the national average was 81 percent.³⁷ The figures for college education were even starker. In 2000, the national average for persons holding a college degree was 25 percent, while 18 percent of northern Appalachian residents, 19 percent of southern Appalachians, and only 11 percent of those living in central Appalachia held college degrees.³⁸ As the ARC report reveals, central Appalachia faces formidable challenges in raising the standard of living and providing educational opportunities for the population. Although challenges impact all residents, women in central Appalachia, particularly in the coalfields, face the greatest obstacles.

Women in West Virginia, like others in the country, lack social, political, and economic equality with men. However, the socioeconomic conditions for women in this state are more troubling than for women in other parts of the country. Gender, like race, ethnicity, class, and so forth, is a fundamental category of social difference. It is important that these dissimilarities, which are embedded in our social institutions, be isolated in policy studies. Some feminist economists, such as Deborah Figart, Ellen Mutari, and Marilyn Power, promote the concept of “practice theory” when assessing the outcomes of social differences.³⁹ They suggest that “in practice theory, gender is treated as an ‘organizing principle’ of social structures rather than simply a characteristic of individuals. . . . All social structures and institutions, including the labor market and the state, are structured by gender.”⁴⁰ The authors also point out that gender is just one structure of social practice, with race, ethnicity, class, and nationality being considered additional social structures.⁴¹ However, they emphasize that the ways in which gender (or other distinguishing social markers) is structured in a particular time or place “reflects the relative dominance of different social interests.”⁴² Many women live in precarious socioeconomic conditions, and much work is needed to create institutional change that can provide women with greater opportunities. In the end, the Appalachian Regional Commission report does not suggest possible solutions to persistent problems in central Appalachia. The study ends by concisely reiterating the troubling information and lists several forthcoming reports aimed at analyzing demographic changes noted in the 2000 census. While the ARC report fails to sufficiently analyze gender difference, other studies focus explicitly on current conditions of women in West Virginia.

In 2002, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research released The Status of Women in West Virginia report, which relies on data from 1997 through 2002 in assessing the social, political, and economic conditions of women in the state.⁴³ Barbara J. Howe, cochair for the West Virginia Advisory Committee, asserts, “The report sets forth a blueprint of where we are and where we might go to improve the status of women in the state. And if we do not address the obstacles that are keeping women from achieving their fullest potential, we will not progress as a state, for women are the majority (51.4 percent) of the population of the state.”⁴⁴ Following the policy guidelines of the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the aims of these state-by-state studies is to thoroughly assess the status of women and provide solutions for improving their lives. The Status of Women in West Virginia report provides grades in these distinct areas: political participation, employment and earnings, social and economic autonomy, reproductive rights, and health and well-being. Feminist researchers contend that overall, West Virginia ranked forty-eighth in the nation in women’s social and economic autonomy.⁴⁵ In fact, out of the five areas of assessment, West Virginia received only one passing grade, a B–, in reproductive rights. The state received D and F grades in all other categories.⁴⁶ The report states that “almost 19 percent of West Virginia women lack health insurance, and almost 17 percent live below the poverty line. . . . Women in the state have the lowest levels of educational attainment in the country.”⁴⁷ Furthermore, this study revealed a challenging economic situation for most women in this part of the country:

Women in West Virginia participate in the workforce much less often, earn significantly lower wages, and work as managers or professionals much less frequently than women in the nation as a whole. Their earnings in relation to men’s are also lower than in most of the country. These factors combine to place West Virginia last in the nation on the employment and earnings composite index. The state receives a grade of F in this area, reflecting the inequality women experience compared with men.⁴⁸

Not only do West Virginia women fall below the national average in these categories, overall they received the worst grades of all the Appalachian states.⁴⁹ After revealing the scores for West Virginia women in each area, Howe baldly claims, “If statistics do not lie, the status of women in West Virginia is terrible. . . . Except for the reproductive rights score, which is a good score only if one is pro-choice, West Virginia would undoubtedly rank as one of the worst states in the country for women.”⁵⁰

While the Appalachian Regional Studies Commission and Status of Women in West Virginia reports are based on socioeconomic data from the late 1990s and early 2000s, recent reports reveal findings consistent with these earlier figures.⁵¹ Most of the studies assessing material conditions in West Virginia suggest basic political and economic reforms to improve the status of those suffering in the state. For example, the Women’s Policy Research Center, in its state-by-state analysis, claims West Virginia women would benefit from “stronger enforcement of equal opportunity laws, better political representation, adequate and affordable child care, stronger poverty reduction programs, and other policies that would help improve their status.”⁵² These studies, particularly those highlighting differences based on gender, race, nation, and so forth, provide a fuller picture of life in this troubled region. However, most policy studies fail to examine the root causes of the adverse socioeconomic conditions facing most West Virginians. While socioeconomic assessments are useful tools in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of West Virginia, a more transformative vision exposes the underlying causes of such immiseration.

The material and structural problems of rural central Appalachia are attributed to what Jeff Goodell calls the “resource curse,”⁵³ a designation that denotes a pattern of social, political, and economic problems in areas rich in natural resources. Goodell claims that “by conventional economic logic,” places such as the West Virginia coalfields, the Niger Delta, Venezuela, Colombia, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo should have higher standards of living because of resource riches inherent in the natural environment of these areas.⁵⁴ In reality, these resources “curse” the land and the people in the following ways:

Control over natural resources allows a few people to obtain tremendous wealth, giving them huge sway over the economic fortunes of the state and offering enormous opportunity for self-indulgence and corruption. At best, economies that are dependent on natural resources are unstable. When coal or gas prices are up, they’re awash in cash; when prices fall, they struggle to keep the lights on in hospitals and gunfire from breaking out in the streets. This kind of economic yo-yoing leads to budgetary and financial fiascoes, in addition to leaving the government open to economic blackmail by the extraction industries: If you don’t let me mine that mountain, I’ll pull out and leave you all in poverty.⁵⁵

Many anti-MTR activists I have spoken to over the years are well aware of these political-economic arrangements and their effects on the human and nonhuman environments of West Virginia. As such, they make links between environmental problems caused by coal operations in the state and the iniquitous social and economic conditions of West Virginia, realizing that the fundamental problems of central Appalachia must be identified as they work for transformative change in the region. This knowledge is evident in Coal River Mountain Watch’s late codirector Judy Bonds’s claim that “we’re trying to help the state. We’re trying to push the state forward, you know, to stop the destruction and to diversify the economy. We should have diversified our economy many, many, many years ago, and that’s the problem. The coal industry controls everything.”⁵⁶

Omission of the iniquitous political and economic arrangements of West Virginia in most public policy assessments, particularly of the way the coal industry wields power over the state at the expense of its citizens and the natural environment, is unfortunate. The connections between the hegemony of Big Coal and the social, economic, and environmental conditions in West Virginia are more explanatory when assessing the area’s problems. The deleterious influence of this elephant is a reality neatly summarized in the popular anti-MTR activist sign “Coal Keeps West Virginia Poor.” This slogan is posted on an outdoor picnic shelter on Kayford Mountain, home of Larry Gibson and the site of the annual gathering of the Keepers of the Mountain, a network of people committed to ending mountaintop removal coal mining. This sign is also displayed at various direct action protests in West Virginia. Many activists cite the political system, which protects coal interests, as the biggest obstacle to creating real change in the region. This client-state relationship established so long ago still informs the political-economic arrangements of West Virginia today, to the detriment of state citizens and the Appalachian Mountains.

The coal industry has owned and controlled the state since the rise of industrialization in the nineteenth century, when coal owners moved in and seized control. Shirley Stewart Burns says, “The legacy of these acquisitions resounds today when more than two-thirds of the state’s non-public land has been gobbled up by absentee landowners.”⁵⁷ Focusing her study on the nine coalfield counties of West Virginia, the most distressed areas in all of Appalachia, Burns concludes that “since outside interests hold such a large amount of land in the nine-county sub-region, economic diversification is nearly non-existent there.”⁵⁸ This thoroughly established pattern of ownership has resulted in increased poverty for residents, while billions of dollars in coal wealth has been transported out of the state. Chris Weiss, using the model of colonialism to assess this region’s social and economic problems, asserts, “The experience in the Appalachians with land and mineral ownership patterns is that of colonial people everywhere. Outside ownership and control of natural resources prevent communities from having strong local economies.”⁵⁹ It should be noted that other researchers replaced the colonialism model with the core-periphery model, developed by Immanuel Wallerstein and employed by Appalachian studies scholars such as Wilma A. Dunaway.⁶⁰ Nevertheless, this corporate hegemony thrives in West Virginia solely with the help of a state political system that ensures Big Coal’s needs are met, regardless of the costs to the state’s small communities. According to James O’Connor, this political-economic arrangement is endemic in capitalist economies where the state regulates the conditions of both production and distribution, and a pliable state apparatus is imperative to business interests. O’Connor says, “In terms of domestic policy, the state does little more than regulate capital’s access to nature, space, land, and laborpower.”⁶¹ Indeed, state regulators in West Virginia, many of them former coal company employees, give various coal corporations carte blanche to conduct business in the state. Activists such as Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition member Maria Gunnoe have experienced the effects of this political-economic structure firsthand, particularly in encounters with the Department of Environmental Protection. Gunnoe says:

The DEP is not there for the citizens, they’re there for the coal companies, and they enable the coal companies. In some cases they even lie to the citizens in order to continue the work on the mountaintop removal site. I’ve been lied to many times. I’ve had five DEP agents stand and look at me and tell me an eroded mountain wasn’t eroded. I have pictures and a lot of proof showing that it’s eroded. It’s like they were programmed to say—no matter what I said—that it was not eroded.⁶²

In this climate, making coal companies more responsible to the communities in which they operate, and uplifting the social and economic conditions of West Virginians, has been quite difficult. However, activists continue to identify and resist the negative influence of the coal industry, while educating the public on the root causes of the destruction of the mountains and the culture of central Appalachia. Vivian Stockman, a member of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, says, “It’s so terribly important that we spread the word of mountaintop removal beyond Appalachia, because West Virginia’s regulators and politicians seem so scared to stand up to the coal industry.”⁶³

The policies of the ruling elites in West Virginia are akin to those Michael Parenti defines in his discussion of the “comprador class,” small groups of individuals residing in the “client state,” who cooperate with outside economic interests at the expense of the majority of those occupying these regions:

A client state is one that is open to investments on terms that are decidedly favorable to the foreign investors. In a client state, corporate investors enjoy direct subsidies and land grants, access to raw materials and cheap labor, light or nonexistent taxes, few effective labor unions, no minimum wage or child labor or occupational safety laws, and no consumer or environmental protections to speak of. The protective laws that do exist go largely unenforced.⁶⁴

Although Parenti’s discussion refers to the relationship between developing and developed countries, this model is a useful one when examining how the coal industry operates in the client state of West Virginia. The reality of this arrangement is not lost on many women fighting to end MTR and the negative influence of coal in West Virginia. Anti-MTR activist Pauline Canterbury claims the biggest obstacle to fighting MTR and the coal industry is “the state and federal government. Because all the way down the line they change the laws to protect them (coal operators) and not us. The laws are out there to protect us, but they won’t abide by them, and the government doesn’t make them abide by them. . . . If somebody gets ahold of something and they take it to court, then they change it. It’s our government in Washington and in Charleston.”⁶⁵ Despite this exploitative political-economic arrangement, some local residents, including many working-class women, continue to fight for social and environmental justice in the coalfields of southern West Virginia. Arguably, adverse material conditions precipitate the environmental justice activism of some working-class women in the state. This social phenomena is particularly noteworthy when considering how the structural component of gender has fruitfully served the coal industry over the years, and continues to be a tool used by Big Coal to maintain a committed and loyal male workforce.

Coalfield Gender Ideologies and Anti-MTR Activism in West Virginia

The coal-influenced political economy of West Virginia has uniquely influenced and utilized gender and family arrangements in the southern coalfields. Gender ideologies are particularly interesting in their connections to the material realities of women living in the area, and also in how they shape women’s activism against mountaintop removal coal mining in the state. In the coalfields of West Virginia, working-class women’s current anti-MTR activism is informed by the sexual division of labor that associates women with the private sphere of home and family, and men with the public arena of industrial work. Currently, some coalfield women seeking to save their homes, communities, cultural heritage, and the lush Appalachian environment from the ravages of the coal industry are influenced by entrenched gender ideologies shaped and solidified by coal in the region. However, these working-class women activists also challenge and defy separate spheres conventions through their work to end MTR. By participating in grassroots groups such as the Coal River Mountain Watch and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, they publicly exert collective agency that can also be personally empowering. In coal-rich sections of Appalachia, separate spheres ideology and its manifestation in the lives of real people existed prior to the industry’s formation in the region, and some Appalachian scholars correctly note that these white, middle-class gender conventions were unavailable to the Native American, African American, and poor white women in Appalachia.⁶⁶ Regardless of their existence prior to the entrance of coal in West Virginia, the inherent class and race partialities in these social constructs, gender ideologies, and cultural notions of the best and most natural spaces for men and women became uniquely solidified with the rise of industrialization in the Western world, including in the coalfields of West Virginia.

When examining the historical roots of separate spheres ideology, Ann Crittenden argues that the social, political, and economic manifestation of these beliefs discouraged women from public participation and expanded their responsibilities within the home, while simultaneously sanctioning men’s withdrawal from the domestic sphere.⁶⁷ Additionally, Crittenden reveals the intrinsic class bias connected to this gendered social construction by arguing that the cultural weight applied to domestic duties, particularly child-rearing, was more than just a “strategy to distract women from participating in public life. It was also necessary to the development of a vibrant capitalist economy. . . . The rising bourgeoisie understood that their children would have to become educated, motivated little achievers if they were going to improve or even maintain their station in life.”⁶⁸ In short, the emphasis on this new family, and the roles men and women were to assume within this arrangement, was a way in which the burgeoning middle class could distinguish itself from working-class white families and families of color. This new family structure was viewed as a modern construct, signifying the progress and enlightenment of all those who conformed to its dictates. Judith Stacey argues this newly touted industrial family form became a powerful symbol for modernity, signifying a break from the largely agrarian, traditional past. She contends that in the United States,

the modern family system arose in the nineteenth century when industrialization turned men into breadwinners and women into homemakers by separating paid work from households. Beginning first among white, middle-class people, this family pattern came to represent modernity and success. Indeed, the American way of life came to be so identified with this family form that the trade-union movement struggled for nearly a century to secure for male workers the material condition upon which it was based—the male breadwinner wage.⁶⁹

As these modern gender ideologies and family arrangements gained traction in Western culture, many coalfield women retreated to the home, caring for husbands and children while becoming increasingly dependent upon male wages for material sustenance. Arguably, in rural areas such as the Appalachian coalfields, white middle-class social norms in gender and family were particularly influential, as many strived to conform to this model out of fear of being further seen as “backward” or “uncivilized” by those outside the region, particularly in urban areas of the country. Furthermore, these emerging ideas were utilized and emphasized by the coal industry to better control its workforce and ensure business success.

In particular, the formation of the “company town” in coalfield communities regulated and influenced the social and economic lives of residents, primarily through its use of nascent separate spheres ideologies. Over the years scholars have examined the coal camp system and its influence in Appalachian towns. John Alexander Williams, for example, has argued that these sparsely populated, remote rural areas dictated the formation of company towns where coal operators enjoyed “captive communities” to use in ways that best served their needs.⁷⁰ Williams notes how each town was segregated in terms of the race and nationality of families living in the coalfields, but does not note the dissimilar roles of women and men in these communities and how these differences were exploited by the industry.⁷¹ Because gender is a fundamental but often overlooked social category, feminist redress of the absence of examinations of women’s lives in the company town system is a crucial addition to the historical record. Mary Beth Pudup notes the importance of gender in family settlements in the coalfields, and the intrinsic economic necessity for these coal camp arrangements:

Operators quickly learned that in a rural state like West Virginia providing housing for workers was a necessary complement to opening a mine. Operators eschewed options like housing miners in boardinghouses and paying another work force to provide services like cooking and laundry. Instead, operators both large and small chose to build company towns encouraging family settlement where wives would provide personal services to the work force. This strategy implicitly recognized the economic value of women’s domestic labor.⁷²

During this transformation, many West Virginia men entered the productive, public, albeit dirty and dangerous work of coal mining, gaining their cultural identity as hardworking patriarchs who risked their lives for the socioeconomic survival of their families. While men worked in exploited, unsafe working conditions, and received very little pay, they enjoyed autonomy, cultural privilege, and power at home, a sanctuary away from their public life as industrial workers. As some West Virginia women further retreated into the private sphere of home, the acceptable cultural identities as wives and mothers became more entrenched in coalfield culture. The value of women’s domestic work to coal industry security and profitability are also noted by Janet W. Greene, who characterizes coal camps as women’s workshops:

Their primary work was critical to coal production: they fed the miner, washed his clothes, took care of him when sick or injured, and raised the children who would become the next generation of mineworkers. They added to the family income by performing domestic work for other families, produced goods for use in the home, and scavenged and bartered.⁷³

Women’s highly productive but unpaid labor for the coal industry is a fundamental component of its success in Appalachia. While some West Virginia women also worked for wages, particularly white working-class women and women of color, many public means of adequate employment were unavailable to coalfield women, and both their class and gender positions became increasingly compromised. Moreover, they received no sanctuary away from their work as wives and mothers of working-class coal miners. This arrangement served not only miners and coal operators but also early investors in this profitable resource extraction industry. Sally Ward Maggard suggests coalfield gender ideologies helped establish family patterns and systematize the coal industry in West Virginia, where coal towns had numerous “disciplined miners” and women who “provided the unpaid domestic work to support the miner labor force and increase profits for coal owners and stockholders,” who, invariably, were located outside the state.⁷⁴

While gender and family arrangements in the United States have changed since the early nineteenth century, with many more women working outside the home for wages and some men providing domestic care for their families, separate spheres ideology still has tremendous cultural and economic currency inside and outside of Appalachia. Drucilla K. Barker and Susan F. Feiner note that “despite its relatively short history, and the rather narrow cross section of the population to which the definition applies, its impact on society in the spheres of culture, politics, economics, and even psychology has been strong.”⁷⁵ In sharper language, Judith Stacey highlights the idealistic nature of this family arrangement and the gendered ideology that supports it, revealing that current family systems are, in fact, much more diverse and complicated:

The family indeed is dead, if what we mean by it is the modern family system in which units comprising male breadwinner and female homemaker, married couples, and their offspring dominate the land. But its ghost, the ideology of the family, survives to haunt the consciousness of all those who refuse to confront it. It is time to perform a social autopsy on the corpse of the modern family system so that we may try to lay its troublesome spirit to rest.⁷⁶

In short, gendered social patterns have changed over the years, but these well-established, separate spheres notions about men, women, family, and work continue to inform the culture of West Virginia’s coalfields. Coal operators capitalized on separate spheres ideology to influence coalfield cultural relations and increase profits when the coal industry first began operating in the state, and these ideas are still used to influence its workforce today. Mountaintop removal coal mining is a hotly contested practice in West Virginia, and some citizens work just as hard to protect Big Coal as anti-MTR activists do to stop it. Indeed, the controversy over mountaintop removal has taken the familiar path of job protection versus environmental protection, and many coalfield women choose sides in this divide while the coal industry continues to use gender to serve its own interests. Gender is particularly relevant when we consider how some middle-class and working-class women work to protect the coal industry in this era of mountaintop removal coal mining.

In 2007, the conservative West Virginia grassroots organization Friends of Coal incorporated a new weapon into its arsenal to promote the coal industry and educate the public about the industry’s importance to West Virginia: the Friends of Coal Ladies Auxiliary. Friends of Coal (FOC) is a powerful front group for the West Virginia Coal Association (WVCA), even though they claim independence from the industry. For example, they use the same logo as the West Virginia Coal Association, and if one calls the number given on the FOC website to request “information or supplies,” a secretary for the WVCA answers the phone. FOC is also financially supported by the WVCA and its corporate sponsors. Over the last decade, the presence and influence of Friends of Coal have strengthened, with frequent advertisements to promote the coal industry appearing on television and in local newspapers; on signs posted on residents’ lawns and in the windows of local businesses; and on billboards, bumper stickers, T-shirts, and any number of places. They have inundated the region with pro-coal messages that are impossible to ignore. The FOC organization justifies its existence by asserting that West Virginia “finds itself in danger from environmental zealots,” and the organization seeks to offer a “voice of reason” to the policy debates surrounding mountaintop removal coal mining, which they label “mountaintop mining,” omitting “removal” to soften the public image of the practice.⁷⁷ Arguably, part of the success of this corporate front group is attributable to the ways in which it uses women to promote and protect the interest of the coal industry.

The FOC Ladies Auxiliary was initiated in 2007 by a “group of concerned women” in the private home of a Raleigh County woman.⁷⁸ According to the FOC website, the ladies auxiliary does not have “direct economic ties to coal companies,” but works to “enhance the image of coal and combat some of the adverse publicity coal receives on a daily basis in the press and from many organized environmental groups.”⁷⁹ The Ladies Auxiliary is self-described as an “unbiased group” whose mission is to “educate the public and raise the awareness of citizens to the benefits of coal” and its importance “as part of our national energy plan.”⁸⁰ Perusing the scant amount of literature available on FOC and the Ladies Auxiliary (FOCLA) reveals that members are primarily middle-class white women whose husbands have ties to the coal industry. For example, Warren Hylton, husband of FOCLA member Patty Hylton, is a local businessman from a prominent Beckley, West Virginia, family. Warren Hylton, who recently received the Spirit of Beckley award, is described as a “business owner, civic leader, loving husband, father and advocate for the state’s coal industry and its young people.”⁸¹

FOCLA chairwoman Regina Fairchild is the wife of another Beckley businessman, J. D. Fairchild, director of sales and marketing at Terex Corporation, which produces coal mining machinery. His company recently participated in a 2009 elementary school educational campaign initiated by the FOCLA called “Coal in the Classroom.”⁸² The students at St. Francis elementary, a private school in Beckley, received weekly lessons on the coal industry for six weeks as part of FOCLA’s educational outreach campaign. In addition to Fairchild, Billy Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, spoke to the students about the importance of coal to West Virginia’s economy and US energy policy. While this “Coal in the Classroom” began at a private school, it expanded into the public school system in late 2009.⁸³ Such educational programming is just one way in which the women relatives of coal professionals work to keep Big Coal thriving in the state. Regina Fairchild says:

We know that the entire coal industry will benefit from an awareness we can provide in the local communities concerning coal and its role in our economic welfare. At this time, there are many special interest groups working actively to delete coal from future use. We feel it is more vital than ever to have an active, dedicated group who are willing to stand up and point out all the benefits of coal to both our nation and especially our state.⁸⁴

This auxiliary, which is a fundamental component in the highly successful industry campaign to control the public message about coal and mountaintop removal in West Virginia, also expresses concerns over the momentum of environmental justice efforts to end MTR in the state.

While the West Virginia Coal Association relies on the work of middle-class women such as the members of the Friends of Coal Ladies Auxiliary to ensure coal’s future in West Virginia, Massey Energy Corporation utilizes working-class women to ensure the loyalty of their workforce and promote the economic interests of the company in small communities throughout the coalfields. Massey Energy (now owned by Alpha Natural Resources), formerly headed by the controversial CEO Don Blankenship, is the largest producer of coal in central Appalachia, and the fourth-largest coal producer in the United States.⁸⁵ With 66 total coal mines (46 underground and 20 surface) in West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky, Massey reaped a $3 billion profit in 2009.⁸⁶ The company boasts 5,600 “Massey members” in central Appalachia, making them the largest private-sector employer in the region.⁸⁷ In the late 1980s Blankenship created a “Spousal Group,” made up primarily of the wives of Massey coal miners, to serve on community projects throughout the region and promote the image of Massey Energy and coal throughout central Appalachia.⁸⁸

On the Spousal Group page of Massey’s website, the corporation claims “through the nature of their work, miners are a close community; cooperation, communication and trust are high priorities. Outside of the mines these same principles serve as the backbone of communities across Appalachia. At Massey, the spirit of community is also embodied by the Spousal Group.”⁸⁹ The spouses of coal miners serve their local communities by engaging in “schoolbook fairs, local park improvements, senior citizen appreciation dinners and the annual Christmas Extravaganzas,” among other activities.⁹⁰ Blankenship has reportedly given Spousal Groups millions of dollars over the years, viewing them as “the conduit through which these funds will be most effectively put to the best use in communities throughout our operating region.”⁹¹ By incorporating wives of coal miners and funding company-controlled and approved activities, worker solidarity and commitment is solidified, and the corporation retains a strong public profile across the coalfields. Some of these working-class Massey employee spouses view anti-MTR activists as environmental extremists, seditious “tree huggers” who are jeopardizing the economy and betraying the history of the state, and as a result these two forces have clashed in public places throughout the coalfields.

In June 2009, local environmental groups such as the Coal River Mountain Watch and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, with the help of the Rainforest Action Network, staged a direct action protest at Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West Virginia, also home to many Massey coal mining operations.⁹² This direct action was organized to protest mountaintop removal and coal’s negative influence on the environment, particularly on climate change. The protest received national media attention, as keynote speakers included NASA climatologist James Hansen and actress/environmentalist Daryl Hannah, both arrested during the gathering. In response to this organized action, Massey CEO Don Blankenship gave many Massey employees the afternoon off from work to attend the protest and stand up for jobs and the coal industry in the region. The clash between environmental and labor interests was dramatically apparent as Massey coal miners, along with their spouses and children, staged a counterprotest at the site. Wearing the Massey-issued blue-and-orange work shirts, they chanted “Massey! Massey! Massey!” while carrying pro-Massey Energy signs. One woman’s sign read “We Support Massey Energy and Massey Energy Supports Us,” and another woman’s read “We Love Our Coal Miners.” Concern for their families and children were also displayed in another sign, “Our Families Work for Massey; Our Kids Go to This School.”⁹³ In addition to the clash at this direct action protest, anti-MTR activists and coal miners and their supporters also collided on Kayford Mountain in Boone County during the annual July 4, 2009, Mountain Keepers Music Festival, sponsored by the Keepers of the Mountain Foundation, headed by Larry Gibson. Twenty pro-Massey residents crashed the festival, antagonizing guests with threats of violence. One angry spouse of a Massey employee expressed job security fears in the face of those critical of the industry by yelling, “You may have another way of livin’, but we don’t.”⁹⁴

For working-class women associated with Massey Energy miners, fighting for the coal industry is a way to protect the only opportunity to obtain livable wages for their families in the coalfields today. The middle-class FOC women seek to preserve their husbands’ professional positions within this industry. Both groups are motivated by their immediate social and economic interests, and express no interest in the preservation of West Virginia’s mountainous environment. As these women work to secure their class positions, secure their husbands’ coal-related jobs, and promote Big Coal in West Virginia, they also symbolically embrace and conform to separate spheres ideology established long ago. Their focus on job preservation and coal industry stability is viewed as the best way to serve the interests of their families and coalfield communities. Unlike the working-class women in anti-MTR organizations, they do not defy separate spheres social confines and their connections to the industrial production of coal. In addition, the FOC women do not express environmental concerns, believing the coal industry to be good stewards of the Appalachian environment.

Carolyn E. Sachs, a premier scholar in rural and women’s studies, explains the unstable situation between residents who seek to protect the natural environment and improve socioeconomic conditions for all citizens, and those who are dependent upon the offending industry and therefore fiercely protective:

Regions dependent on mining and logging experience boom and bust cycles, high levels of poverty, and extreme sex segregation of jobs. Ownership of land and resources by outside corporate interests minimizes local control and local benefits. . . . Both the mining and timber industries increasingly substitute capital for labor, often with severe environmental consequences. These industries, attempting to increase profits, implement practices such as strip-mining and clear-cutting that result in extreme damage to the environment, rely on large-scale machinery, and use less labor than other types of mining and logging operations. Because jobs are closely tied to the exploitation of natural resources, environmental issues may be hotly contested in such communities.⁹⁵

Anti-MTR activists are sympathetic with local residents’ fears of unemployment, and most, like the FOC members and the Massey Energy supporters, have family ties to the coal industry. The targets of their activism have never been coal miners and their families, but rather the industry and the state politicians who support it. They are aware that to end the tenure of Big Coal, they have to appeal to local residents and promote alternative jobs for the coalfield economy, although this necessary coalition-building is extremely difficult when Big Coal CEOs such as Don Blankenship stoke the fires of this labor-environment conflict, playing on workers’ job-loss fears.

The working-class women active in anti-MTR campaigns are influenced by traditional notions of distinct social spheres for men and women, particularly in their desire to protect their families, homes, and communities from damages wrought by MTR, yet they also challenge and transgress established coalfield gender ideologies by their very public environmental justice activism. These women are critical of the industry presence in the state, and seek to drive Big Coal from West Virginia by promoting the use of alternative energy sources. Their activism is socially, politically, and economically transgressive in that they use culturally sanctioned gender identities, such as their roles as mothers, wives, and daughters of Appalachia, in subversive, counterhegemonic ways. Rather than working for the benefit of coal-related jobs and the security of the coal industry in an era with rising environmental consciousness, they use gendered notions about women as a justification to change the political-economic hold Big Coal has on the region, to prevent the extinction of their communities, and to save the Appalachian Mountains from further devastation. They are like many women throughout the country, and indeed the world, who are active in community-based, environmental justice groups. When considering working-class women’s activism against environmental problems in their communities, Celene Krauss has argued that ideologies of motherhood, in particular, have led to politicization of some environmental justice activists:

Ideologies of motherhood, traditionally relegated to the private sphere, became political resources that these women used to initiate and justify their resistance and increasing politicization. Rejecting the separation of public and private arenas that renders invisible and insignificant the world of women’s work, they developed a public, more politicized ideology of motherhood that became a resource to fight gender and class oppression.⁹⁶

Krauss suggests that women working in environmental justice campaigns do not necessarily reject traditional ideologies of women and motherhood but, rather, reinterpret and redirect them into a source of social and political power.⁹⁷ While many of the anti-MTR activists are mothers who can be viewed as reinterpreting the traditional coalfield gender ideologies and redirecting them into political action, there are some anti-MTR activists who are not mothers or wives. Nevertheless, women, traditional gender ideologies, and political activism are frequently linked, and cited by many women activists when explaining the large presence of women in the movement. For example, former Coal River Mountain Watch codirector Judy Bonds said:

It’s a protection issue. . . . A woman just feels that she has to protect her children, and her grandchildren and her homeplace. And that’s why there is so many women involved in this because we have that instinct inside of us and that stubborn streak and the convictions to protect. . . . Through the traditional people I’ve studied, the women has been the ones that managed things, that protected things, that basically did what they needed to do to protect their children. The mother hen syndrome.⁹⁸

While Bonds’s comments may strike some feminists as reducing women to their supposed maternal capacities, her activism ultimately challenges traditional notions of women and their place in the public, political arena. Bonds depicts anti-MTR activists as determined, driven women whose resistance is virtually an automatic reaction to the assaults on their homes and communities. Her use of the mother hen metaphor is particularly interesting, as she likens her female counterparts to fierce protectors of home and environment.

Coal River Mountain Watch member Patty Sebok uses similar metaphors when describing her commitment to protecting the community and standing up to the negative forces of coal: “I tell people . . . if you’re in the woods and you see a bear and you see cubs, you know you better stay away from that mama bear. Well, I tell them I’m the proverbial mama bear.”⁹⁹ Janice Nease, one of the charter members of the CRMW, also believes that many women are active in the anti-MTR movement because, unlike the women protecting the immediate interests of the coal industry in organizations such as the Friends of Coal, and through Massey Energy’s Spousal Groups, women environmental justice activists “see the broad picture and the long picture. They have this long view of what’s going to happen to their children, and . . . they can see ahead.”¹⁰⁰ Nease’s comments arise from concerns for the lasting social, economic, and environmental costs of coal in West Virginia.

Most members of OVEC, CRMW, and other grassroots anti-MTR groups are not only working-class white and Cherokee women—many of them wives, mothers, and grandmothers—but women whose homes and communities have been directly impacted by MTR operations. Some have no prior political experience; however, others have participated in regional reform efforts such as labor activities associated with the United Mine Workers of America Union. Some anti-MTR activists did not participate in past labor activist activities but joined these organizations because of environmental concerns. Anti-MTR activism also has a vigorous youth base, with many college students from the larger Appalachian region, both women and men, active in the fight to end MTR. Regardless of the various backgrounds of the grassroots women activists, all are involved to protect their communities, to promote alternative energy sources, to diversify the economy, and to preserve West Virginia’s rich cultural heritage, which is inextricably tied to the mountainous geography. Some scholars suggest that rural women’s material conditions and lack of economic opportunity have increased their political activism at the grassroots level and also reflect their strong ties to rural communities. Ann R. Tickamyer and Debra A. Henderson suggest that “the primary opportunities for and targets of women’s activism often are in grassroots responses to the realities of their communities and livelihoods,” particularly in the areas of “sustainable agriculture, conservation, and environmental movements.”¹⁰¹

Women activists in West Virginia are engaged in formidable confrontations with the political economic power structure in the state. Despite the redoubtable power of this opposition, they keep their collective focus on community preservation foremost in group activities. When considering how her environmental justice activism helps the local community, Patty Sebok says she seeks to “turn it around so that we can have sustainable communities, save our water supply, clean up the air, and . . . we’d like to see some changes in the economics around here. . . . We want to save our communities; we want sustainable communities. . . . We want jobs.”¹⁰² Judy Bonds suggested that if “the community and the state would listen to what we say, we would already be reaping the rewards of a diverse economy. . . . What we’re trying to do is force the state to quit being corrupt, quit being raped by the coal industry, stop helping the coal industry rape the state of West Virginia and the people and our children.”¹⁰³ Another Coal River Mountain Watch member, Sarah Haltom, considers educating the community, particularly those who are apathetic, to be the most important aspect of her environmental justice activism, because “as hardheaded as people are, they’re still seeing it; they’re still hearing about it. If they see and hear about it long enough, they’ll start to form their own opinions and jump off the fence, take a side.”¹⁰⁴ The women involved in the fight to end MTR are committed activists, living in a region rich in natural resources but with limited social and economic opportunities for its citizens—particularly women. They possess a critical point of view that envisions life without coal in West Virginia. Considering the history and power of this industry in West Virginia, these women’s collective activism to end the coal industry’s negative influence, rather than to preserve it, is transformative and progressive.

Conclusion

Residents in the coalfields of southern West Virginia have long existed in a coal sacrifice zone as this fossil fuel has been extracted from the region. However, one could argue that the total sacrifice of the human and nonhuman communities, air, water, and land of central Appalachia that has occurred with the advent of the mountaintop removal coal mining technique has been more pronounced than in previous decades, with the region now compromised beyond repair. Noted West Virginia novelist Denise Giardina says bluntly, “Mountaintop removal is evil, and those who support it are supporting evil. . . . I puzzle over the modern-day difference between a terrorist and someone who supports mountaintop removal. One destroys with a bomb, the other with a fountain pen, dynamite, and a dragline. God help us.”¹⁰⁵

While some West Virginia women support the coal industry because of the jobs it provides in an area with few options for meaningful employment, others, particularly those whose homes have been sacrificed for cheap energy, join environmental justice organizations to stop MTR and end coal’s tenure in West Virginia. Anti-MTR activists connect these social and political concerns to the preservation of Appalachia’s mountains. In short, they link socioeconomic inequities to the destruction of their communities and natural environment. These activists are cognizant of both the exploitative features of the political economy of coal in Appalachia and its connection to the global environment. They are representative of many women who form or join environmental justice groups throughout the country and the world. Even though many scholars have noted that women constitute the majority of members in environmental justice groups in the United States, additional attention to their contributions by environmental justice scholars is needed. Also, environmental justice theory and activism have focused primarily on toxic pollution in urban communities of color. By highlighting the importance of gender, and focusing my analysis on impoverished rural communities in the coalfields of central Appalachia, this study widens the focus of existing environmental justice scholarship.