Standing Our Ground. Joyce M. Barry
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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