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
