Mountain Justice. Tricia Shapiro
mountains and culture,” Judy says. “From across Appalachia and the entire country, Americans are building a strong movement called Mountain Justice Summer. Who is Mountain Justice Summer?” The crowd shouts back: “We are!”
“We are the ones whose homes are being blasted,” Judy continues, “whose homes are being dusted, whose children are being poisoned every day. We are everyday citizens who have been abused and denied our rights for over 130 years. It’s a shame that we have to beg our government for our basic human rights, to live in our homes in peace and send our children to a clean school without fear of being poisoned or crushed to death by a dam. We welcome all of our brothers and sisters that will join us to fight for justice for mountain people this summer and beyond. Welcome, Mountain Justice Summer.”
Next, Bo reminds the crowd that two days from now representatives from the state DEP will hold a hearing at the school. “Massey has applied to build another silo identical to that monstrosity over there, right next to it,” he says. “Give our kids some more coal dust and chemicals, I guess. They haven’t killed them with that one, they want to speed it up.” Bo asks everyone here to come to the hearing. “We want them to do their jobs. We want that sludge dam shut down and dried out. Take their license away! They don’t have the right to have a license in this state!”
Debbie Jarrell addresses the crowd briefly, describing the siting of the silos as “pure arrogance” and reading a list of demands, including: 1) that the coal processing plant beside the school be shut down; 2) that the school be cleaned up or a new, safe school be built nearby, in “our community,” not a long drive away like the other schools that have replaced those closed in the valley; 3) that Massey withdraw its request to build a second silo; 4) that Massey stop blasting that affects local homes; and 5) that Massey shut down all of its surface (strip) mine sites.
It’s now shortly after 12:30. The protesters move to line both sides of the driveway but, cooperating with the police, still refrain from blocking it. Bo and Judy walk across the bridge and up the driveway to deliver the list of demands to Massey.
“You know, that was so strange,” Judy tells me later. “[At first,] no one stopped us, so we just kept going. And all of a sudden the police said: ‘Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! Where are you going?’ And then here came the two Massey employees [security guards], and they just completely ignored me. Here I was, a woman standing there—and I was invisible to them. All they wanted to see was the male. And I’m glad Bo was there and said what he said, but I just kept listening and watching because I thought: ‘OK, I’m being peaceful, I’m gonna listen.’ So I did.
“I could have just kept going. That really would have got their attention. But I never thought about that. There was a calmness and a peacefulness in me. I felt like I was doing the right thing.”
Bo and Judy ask that someone in authority come out to receive and discuss the list of demands. Massey security people say no one will meet with them, and ask them to leave. By now, Judy says, one of the guards “was becoming a smart-aleck, and he was beginning to make Bo very angry. Bo controlled his anger pretty well though, until the man took his hands and fluttered them out like we were insects and said: ‘Go on, go on, get off here. You’re trespassing. If you don’t leave, we’re gonna arrest you.’ And the policeman said: ‘It’s over.’ And Bo said: ‘No! Trespassing? You say I’m trespassing? If you think I’m trespassing, then I want you to keep your coal dust and your flyrock off my property, Marty,’” calling the security guard by name.
“And at that point I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing,” Judy recalls. The guard said: “ ‘Go away, go away, you!’ And so Bo said, ‘You know, I’m not going anywhere. What happens if I just stand here?’ And the policeman said: ‘Well, we’ll just have to arrest you.’ Bo said, ‘I reckon you’re gonna have to arrest me.’ And then the policeman looked at me and said, ‘What are you gonna do?’ And I said: ‘Well, I’m with him.’ So they took Bo, got him by his arm and walked him away. No one even come near me,” Judy continues. “No one put their hands on me. They acted like I wasn’t even there.” (Bo sees this a little differently: “I really believe it’s because they did not want to arrest Judy Bonds,” he later tells me. “They know she’s a powerful force.”) “So I looked at the policeman and I said: ‘What do you want me to do?’ He said: ‘Oh! Just follow this way.’”
It feels sad to see them led away. When I tell Bo this later he says: “That’s good. That’s good that that was the effect.”
On the way to the car, Judy continues, “I said a prayer thanking God for the safety of the people [at the demonstration] and asking Him to watch over everyone while we were gone, that they would do what they should be doing, stay calm, and not get in trouble.” When Bo and Judy reached the police car, “they had no idea where they were gonna put me, so they finally cleared out the front seat. They were stunned,” Judy thinks, about having to arrest them, “and they were really very respectful.”
Meanwhile, the crowd is chanting: “Massey close the plant.” The driveway re-opens for business, and a cement truck comes on through.
The police car holding Bo and Judy drives away, heading for the state police substation downriver near Whitesville. “I have to say the ride to Whitesville was scary,” Judy says. “That was the scariest part of the day”—though not because she’s just been arrested, but because of the driver’s speed. “That guy flew!”
At the police station Bo and Judy are charged with trespassing and are released after the demonstration disperses. The police apologize for having had to arrest them.
Later that day, at 8:30 PM, not much more than an hour’s drive away, sixty-eight people gather in the dining hall at the Appalachian Folklife Center near Pipestem, West Virginia, for the opening circle of Mountain Justice Summer’s training camp. (Two more MJSers are stationed at a table near where the driveway enters the camp. They’re being cautious about security. Already either law enforcement or coal company operatives are keeping an eye on the camp. As I drove into camp for the first time myself, I passed a black sedan with tinted windows with a man in the driver’s seat talking on a cellphone, parked in a good position to note the license plates of cars heading to camp.) The group here tonight includes most of the faces I’ve been seeing at MJS meetings, plus quite a few new ones. It’s a young crowd. While many of those who’ve been organizing MJS these past months are in their thirties, the majority of people here at camp are in their twenties; only a very few older people, in their forties and fifties, are here. There are more men than women, but not overwhelmingly so. Dress trends toward hippie or crusty punk or camouflage, with an overlay of hiking/camping gear.
One by one, going around the circle, the MJSers identify themselves and state what they hope the campaign will accomplish this summer. Larry Gibson says: “My people are an oppressed people,” and it’s hard to reach oppressed people who don’t know they’re oppressed. It’s MJS’s work to reach them. Nineteen years ago, when he first started fighting MTR, he says he “couldn’t get two people together” to work with him. He’s deeply touched, teary, to see so many people here today. Later he tells me: “Before, for so many years, I would look behind me and I wouldn’t see anyone. When I first started talking about this, I couldn’t even get my own family to listen to me.”
Most of the other people in the circle simply state their names and give brief, one-sentence summaries of what they’d like to see this summer. Abigail Singer, an Earth First! activist who’s lived in Knoxville off and on for several years and has been involved with MJS since its beginnings, wants to “inspire the rest of the country to transition to a sustainable lifestyle.” One of the Asheville organizers says: “What I’d like to see is National Coal Company’s stock prices drop like a rock.” Hyena, from Kentucky, wants to work on developing “a real clear picture” of the way of life we want to have, not just what’s wrong with what we do have.
john johnson’s supposed to deliver a rabble-rousing rant after the go-around. Instead, he starts crying. Like Larry, he’s touched to see so many people here—and he says more people are coming. He says he hopes that MJS will be the spark that begins the end of the “death