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
ohioswallow.com
© 2012 by Ohio University Press
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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
Gender and Anti–Mountaintop Removal Activism: Expanding the Environmental Justice Framework
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.