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.
CHAPTER 2
Gender and Anti–Mountaintop Removal Activism: Expanding the Environmental Justice Framework
One of the things that’s really, really hard for the coal industry to accept is that a lot of us are still here . . . and we refuse to leave, and we tell. The things that we see here, we tell. . . . It would be a lot easier for them if we weren’t here, if we would just die or disappear or move away.
—Lorelei Scarbro
Introduction
Lorelei scarbro, former member of the coal river Mountain Watch, is one of many coalfield women who bear witness to the harmful impacts of coal operations on their communities and the natural environment. She is also among many women who work tirelessly for social, economic, and environmental sustainability and the future of the coalfield region of Appalachia. Women like Scarbro stand their ground and refuse to leave their mountain communities, despite the potential health hazards that have prompted many residents to relocate to safer areas in West Virginia. Scarbro, who joined the CRMW in 2007, is a proud West Virginian with Cherokee ancestry who was raised in rural Lincoln County. Her father was a coal miner and her mother a stay-at-home mom. Growing up in central Appalachia, Lorelei’s family raised animals and grew vegetable gardens, harvesting and preserving food from their mountainous environment. In the summer the family made annual recreation treks to nearby rivers where they spent their vacations. She is deeply connected to the Appalachian environment and coalfield communities.
Shortly after graduating from high school, Scarbro married a California man and moved to Arizona, where she lived for nine years. During her years in Arizona, Scarbro never adjusted to desert surroundings and was always homesick for the mountains of West Virginia. When her marriage ended in 1989, she boarded a plane “with thirteen suitcases, three children, and my fourth on the way,”1 to begin a new life in her familiar mountain environment. Over the years, this return to West Virginia life included raising her children, remarrying, and becoming vigorously active in public school initiatives.
Scarbro says, “When my kids went to school, I went to school.” She engaged in local education politics and was a particularly vocal advocate for small, rural schools in the coalfields. Lorelei served on the PTO board as well as various “parent-school governing boards,” and was a member of the Local School Improvement Council. In 2001, when the state threatened to close rural schools in her community, including Clear Fork and Marsh Fork High Schools, she joined the Citizens Preserving Marsh Fork and Clear Fork Committee, where she met anti-MTR activist Judy Bonds. Because public schools are central institutions in rural communities, some residents highlight the links between mountaintop removal coal mining, depopulation in the coalfields, public health, and the fate of local schools in their campaigns for environmental justice. When considering the population decline in some coalfield areas, Scarbro claims that in the early days of MTR, coal companies offered buyouts to residents, but today they just “poison the air and the water,” making it difficult for residents to remain in their homes and to stay healthy. She links the increase in MTR, the population decline, and the fate of local schools by asserting: “As we depopulate the communities, enrollment declines; and when the enrollment declines, they can justify closing the schools that are not right in town. There’s a social engineering thing that’s going on here.”
Once her children graduated from school, Scarbro became active in the anti-MTR movement, applying her experience in educational advocacy to this environmental
