Standing Our Ground. Joyce M. Barry

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      Standing Our Ground

       Ohio University Press

       Series in Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Appalachia Series Editor: Marie Tedesco

      Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman, edited by Ancella R. Bickley and Lynda Ann Ewen

      The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature, by Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt

      Red, White, Black, and Blue: A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia, by William R. Drennen Jr. and Kojo (William T.) Jones Jr., edited by Dolores M. Johnson

      Beyond Hill and Hollow: Original Readings in Appalachian Women’s Studies, edited by Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt

      Loving Mountains, Loving Men, by Jeff Mann

      Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative, by Linda Tate

      Out of the Mountains: Appalachian Stories, by Meredith Sue Willis

      Negotiating a Perilous Empowerment: Appalachian Women’s Literacies, by Erica Abrams Locklear

      Standing Our Ground: Women, Environmental Justice, and the Fight to End Mountaintop Removal, by Joyce M. Barry

      Standing

      Our

      Ground

      Women, Environmental Justice, and the Fight to End Mountaintop Removal

      Joyce M. Barry

      OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS • ATHENS

      Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

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      © 2012 by Ohio University Press

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      21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Barry, Joyce M.

       Standing our ground : women, environmental justice, and the fight to

       end mountaintop removal / Joyce M. Barry.

       p. cm. — (Ohio University Press series in race, ethnicity, and gender in Appalachia)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-8214-1997-7 (hc : alk. paper) —

      ISBN 978-0-8214-4410-8 (electronic)

       1. Environmental justice—Appalachian Region. 2. Women—Political

       activity—Appalachian Region. 3. Mountaintop removal mining—

      Social aspects—Appalachian Region. 4. Landscape protection—

      Appalachian Region—Citizen participation. 5. Coal mines and

      mining—Environmental aspects—Appalachian Region. 6. Community

      activists—Appalachian Region. I. Title.

      GE235.A13B37 2012

      622’.334—dc23

      2012027267

       For Julia “Judy” Bonds

      You have stolen our land, and used despicable stereotypes of mountain people to justify yourselves to national media. You consigned hundreds of thousands of men and boys to horrible working conditions with great loss of life and limb. You took away freedom and dignity and trampled on civil liberties. You brought violence to bear against people who stood up for their rights. You evicted the widow and orphans from their homes. You polluted our rivers first, then our groundwater. You polluted and corrupted and cheapened the political process in this state, and made a mockery of government by the people. You abandoned our communities without sewage and water systems and left our school systems in poverty. You shifted your tax burden onto the people of this state. You condemned miners to the living death of black lung while denying them just compensation. You destroyed our roads with overloaded coal trucks and bragged publicly about breaking the law. You condemned those counties most dependent on coal to the greatest and most intractable poverty in this state. You filled our rivers with silt and increased the dangers of flooding. You tore families apart. You destroyed the habitat of our native animals. You deny workers the right to organize. You discourage the development of alternative energy sources. You lay off WV deep miners to employ out-of-state strip miners. 27 years ago today, you killed 125 men, women and children on Buffalo Creek and dared to blame it on God. You are flattening our mountains and filling in our hollows, and this is the last evil you will do.

      —Denise Giardina, Coalfield Justice Rally, February 1999

      CONTENTS

       Acknowledgments

       Introduction

       ONE

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

       TWO

       Gender and Anti–Mountaintop Removal Activism: Expanding the Environmental Justice Framework

       THREE

       Remembering the Past, Working for the Future: West Virginia Women Fight for Sustainable Communities and Environmental Heritage

       FOUR

       Saving the Endangered Hillbilly: Appalachian Stereotypes and Cultural Identity in the Anti–Mountaintop Removal Movement

       FIVE

       Situating the Particular and the Universal: Gender, Environmental Justice, and Mountaintop Removal in a Global Context

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I wish to acknowledge many people for their interest and assistance in the production of this book. Thanks for the support of everyone at Ohio University Press, particularly Gillian Berchowitz. I also want to thank Lynda Ann Ewen, whom I met at the annual Appalachian Studies Conference in 2009, and who expressed interest in this topic. Of course, I am deeply appreciative of those working to end mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) in Appalachia, and especially grateful to all of the activists who shared their time and experiences with me when requested.