Standing Our Ground. Joyce M. Barry
as a “business owner, civic leader, loving husband, father and advocate for the state’s coal industry and its young people.”81
FOCLA chairwoman Regina Fairchild is the wife of another Beckley businessman, J. D. Fairchild, director of sales and marketing at Terex Corporation, which produces coal mining machinery. His company recently participated in a 2009 elementary school educational campaign initiated by the FOCLA called “Coal in the Classroom.”82 The students at St. Francis elementary, a private school in Beckley, received weekly lessons on the coal industry for six weeks as part of FOCLA’s educational outreach campaign. In addition to Fairchild, Billy Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, spoke to the students about the importance of coal to West Virginia’s economy and US energy policy. While this “Coal in the Classroom” began at a private school, it expanded into the public school system in late 2009.83 Such educational programming is just one way in which the women relatives of coal professionals work to keep Big Coal thriving in the state. Regina Fairchild says:
We know that the entire coal industry will benefit from an awareness we can provide in the local communities concerning coal and its role in our economic welfare. At this time, there are many special interest groups working actively to delete coal from future use. We feel it is more vital than ever to have an active, dedicated group who are willing to stand up and point out all the benefits of coal to both our nation and especially our state.84
This auxiliary, which is a fundamental component in the highly successful industry campaign to control the public message about coal and mountaintop removal in West Virginia, also expresses concerns over the momentum of environmental justice efforts to end MTR in the state.
While the West Virginia Coal Association relies on the work of middle-class women such as the members of the Friends of Coal Ladies Auxiliary to ensure coal’s future in West Virginia, Massey Energy Corporation utilizes working-class women to ensure the loyalty of their workforce and promote the economic interests of the company in small communities throughout the coalfields. Massey Energy (now owned by Alpha Natural Resources), formerly headed by the controversial CEO Don Blankenship, is the largest producer of coal in central Appalachia, and the fourth-largest coal producer in the United States.85 With 66 total coal mines (46 underground and 20 surface) in West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky, Massey reaped a $3 billion profit in 2009.86 The company boasts 5,600 “Massey members” in central Appalachia, making them the largest private-sector employer in the region.87 In the late 1980s Blankenship created a “Spousal Group,” made up primarily of the wives of Massey coal miners, to serve on community projects throughout the region and promote the image of Massey Energy and coal throughout central Appalachia.88
On the Spousal Group page of Massey’s website, the corporation claims “through the nature of their work, miners are a close community; cooperation, communication and trust are high priorities. Outside of the mines these same principles serve as the backbone of communities across Appalachia. At Massey, the spirit of community is also embodied by the Spousal Group.”89 The spouses of coal miners serve their local communities by engaging in “schoolbook fairs, local park improvements, senior citizen appreciation dinners and the annual Christmas Extravaganzas,” among other activities.90 Blankenship has reportedly given Spousal Groups millions of dollars over the years, viewing them as “the conduit through which these funds will be most effectively put to the best use in communities throughout our operating region.”91 By incorporating wives of coal miners and funding company-controlled and approved activities, worker solidarity and commitment is solidified, and the corporation retains a strong public profile across the coalfields. Some of these working-class Massey employee spouses view anti-MTR activists as environmental extremists, seditious “tree huggers” who are jeopardizing the economy and betraying the history of the state, and as a result these two forces have clashed in public places throughout the coalfields.
In June 2009, local environmental groups such as the Coal River Mountain Watch and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, with the help of the Rainforest Action Network, staged a direct action protest at Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West Virginia, also home to many Massey coal mining operations.92 This direct action was organized to protest mountaintop removal and coal’s negative influence on the environment, particularly on climate change. The protest received national media attention, as keynote speakers included NASA climatologist James Hansen and actress/environmentalist Daryl Hannah, both arrested during the gathering. In response to this organized action, Massey CEO Don Blankenship gave many Massey employees the afternoon off from work to attend the protest and stand up for jobs and the coal industry in the region. The clash between environmental and labor interests was dramatically apparent as Massey coal miners, along with their spouses and children, staged a counterprotest at the site. Wearing the Massey-issued blue-and-orange work shirts, they chanted “Massey! Massey! Massey!” while carrying pro-Massey Energy signs. One woman’s sign read “We Support Massey Energy and Massey Energy Supports Us,” and another woman’s read “We Love Our Coal Miners.” Concern for their families and children were also displayed in another sign, “Our Families Work for Massey; Our Kids Go to This School.”93 In addition to the clash at this direct action protest, anti-MTR activists and coal miners and their supporters also collided on Kayford Mountain in Boone County during the annual July 4, 2009, Mountain Keepers Music Festival, sponsored by the Keepers of the Mountain Foundation, headed by Larry Gibson. Twenty pro-Massey residents crashed the festival, antagonizing guests with threats of violence. One angry spouse of a Massey employee expressed job security fears in the face of those critical of the industry by yelling, “You may have another way of livin’, but we don’t.”94
For working-class women associated with Massey Energy miners, fighting for the coal industry is a way to protect the only opportunity to obtain livable wages for their families in the coalfields today. The middle-class FOC women seek to preserve their husbands’ professional positions within this industry. Both groups are motivated by their immediate social and economic interests, and express no interest in the preservation of West Virginia’s mountainous environment. As these women work to secure their class positions, secure their husbands’ coal-related jobs, and promote Big Coal in West Virginia, they also symbolically embrace and conform to separate spheres ideology established long ago. Their focus on job preservation and coal industry stability is viewed as the best way to serve the interests of their families and coalfield communities. Unlike the working-class women in anti-MTR organizations, they do not defy separate spheres social confines and their connections to the industrial production of coal. In addition, the FOC women do not express environmental concerns, believing the coal industry to be good stewards of the Appalachian environment.
Carolyn E. Sachs, a premier scholar in rural and women’s studies, explains the unstable situation between residents who seek to protect the natural environment and improve socioeconomic conditions for all citizens, and those who are dependent upon the offending industry and therefore fiercely protective:
Regions dependent on mining and logging experience boom and bust cycles, high levels of poverty, and extreme sex segregation of jobs. Ownership of land and resources by outside corporate interests minimizes local control and local benefits. . . . Both the mining and timber industries increasingly substitute capital for labor, often with severe environmental consequences. These industries, attempting to increase profits, implement practices such as strip-mining and clear-cutting that result in extreme damage to the environment, rely on large-scale machinery, and use less labor than other types of mining and logging operations. Because jobs are closely tied to the exploitation of natural resources, environmental issues may be hotly contested in such communities.95
Anti-MTR activists are sympathetic with local residents’ fears of unemployment, and most, like the FOC members and the Massey Energy supporters, have family ties to the coal industry. The targets of their activism have never been coal miners and their families, but rather the industry and the state politicians who support it. They are aware that to end the tenure of Big Coal, they have to appeal to local residents and promote alternative jobs for the coalfield economy, although this necessary coalition-building is extremely difficult when Big Coal CEOs such as Don Blankenship stoke the fires of this labor-environment conflict, playing on