Mountain Justice : For Appalachia and for the Future of Us All

385 Pages·2010·6.178 MB·English

by  Shapiro, Tricia

$17.95 US | £14 UK s Tricia Shapiro
Current affairs / Environmental politics h
a
Mountaintop removal (MtR) does exactly what it says: a mountaintop is stripped
p
of trees, blown to bits with explosives, then pushed aside by giant equipment—
i
r
all to expose a layer of coal to be mined. in recent years, local people fighting
against MtR's destruction of their homes in West Virginia, tennessee, Kentucky, o “Shapiro is one of the few writers on this
and Virginia have invited volunteers from outside appalachia's coalfields to help subject who actually understands the strat-
them bring national attention to this shameful practice, and abolish it. since the egy, the tactics, and the internal politics of
Mountain Justice campaign began in 2005, dozens of local coalfield residents, a dynamic and growing movement. This is
students, earth Firsters, and others have been arrested in nonviolent protest ac- M environmental journalism at its best.”
tions against MtR. —Mike Roselle,
cofounder of Earth First!
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“This on-the-ground, insider report of a grassroots effort to end mountaintop
removal in Appalachia is a fascinating account of why building solidarity across u
geographic, age, class, and philosophical lines in such struggles is so important
but so hard. Shapiro allows the participants in this battle to speak for themselves n
about their motivations, hopes, and fears. And it is from these voices that we
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come to understand that their fight is our fight too.” Homegrown Resistance to Mountaintop
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—Steve Fisher, editor, Fighting Back in Appalachia:
Removal, for the Future of Us All
Traditions of Resistance and Change i
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“In Mountain Justice Tricia Shapiro has told with great clarity and understand- Mountain Justice
ing the story of the heroic efforts of the people of Appalachia to save their
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mountains, streams, and communities from the destruction and savageness of
mountaintop removal mining. Her account of the years of resistance to moun- u
taintop removal by the courageous women, men, and children who have risked
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their lives on a daily basis is a story that must be heard all across America. Tricia
Shapiro has told us the heart of the matter—the dignity, the strength, the loving t
kindness of the folk who have given all that they have to save a precious and i
enduring place on the Earth.” c
—Jack Spadaro, whistleblower and former director
e
of the Mine Safety and Health Academy
Tricia Shapiro has been closely following and writing about efforts to end large-
scale strip mining for coal in Appalachia since 2004. She lives on a remote moun-
tain homestead in western North Carolina, near the Tennessee border.
www.akpress.org
www.akuk.com
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Mountain
Justice
Homegrown Resistance
to Mountaintop Removal,
for the Future of Us All
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Mountain Justice:
Homegrown Resistance to Mountaintop Removal, for the Future of Us All
© 2010 Tricia Shapiro
This edition © 2010 AK Press (Oakland, Edinburgh, Baltimore)
ISBN: 9781849350235 | Library of Congress Control Number: 2010925765
AK PrESS AK PrESS
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Printed in Canada on recycled paper.
Cover design by Magpie Killjoy (birdsbeforethestorm.net).
Wendell Berry quote (page E) “Private Property and the Common Wealth,” in
Another Turn of the Crank, p. 56 (Washington: Counterpoint, 1995).
Interior and cover photos by Magpie Killjoy (licensed under a Creative Com-
mons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License).
First spread: View from Coal river Mountain in West Virginia.
Second spread: The flattened remains of a mountaintop near Pound, in Wise
County, Virginia.
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For Bill

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“You cannot save the land apart from the people or the people
apart from the land. To save either, you must save both.”
—Wendell Berry
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Contents
Flyover. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p ..1
Mountain.People. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p ..7
A.New.Movement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p ..69
West.Virginia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p ..159
Tennessee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p ..223
Beyond.Mountain.Justice.Summer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p ..281
Climate.Ground.Zero. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p ..303
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p ..359
Glossary.of.Acronyms .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..p ..361
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p ..363
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Flyover
If you look at Appalachia’s Cumberland Plateau from a satellite’s point of
view, high above the Earth’s surface, it looks like it has a skin disease, its
surface spotted with scabby places. Come in closer, as high as an airplane,
flying low from southwestern Virginia north into southern West Virginia.
At first you’ll see long ridgelines and wide valleys, then the typical ruffly
jumble of Cumberland Plateau mountains.
In far southern West Virginia these mountains look pristine, draped
in a lush, thickly textured, living, breathing blanket of forest, in early
summer colored with more shades of green than you can imagine, the
greens of hundreds of kinds of trees and shrubs. This is the mother forest
for all of eastern North America, from which life has flowed to places
stripped of it by glaciers and other catastrophes. Its gorgeous intricacy
has evolved continuously since long before any humans were here to see
it, on old, old mountains worn down to a multitude of soft, rounded hills
and steep little hollows. Together forest and mountain, sweet air, and
plentiful streams make this an intimate, homey landscape that’s easy to
love. People who live here believe that this is what heaven must look like.
The trees here today are not old growth. Here, as throughout cen-
tral and southern Appalachia, virtually all of the forest was cut early in
the twentieth century. But lumbering technology was primitive then, just
men with saws and horses. During and after that logging, little of the
1
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