BartonMemo+19

(from HASS proposal):

Interviews and participant-observation will focus on four organizations: United Mountain Defense, Coal River Mountain Watch, Mountain Justice, and Appalachian Voices. Of the dozen or so regionally-based organizations working on MTR, these four were chosen to represent diversity of place-focus and membership, and position in the movement's network of organizations. People often work with more than one organization, and the organizations frequently collaborate on events, legal actions, disaster response, and other coalitional activities. Thus, although my fieldwork will focus on four organizations, the research design will also provide opportunity for interaction with members and activities of additional organizations.

Place-focus and membership: All of the organizations contribute to the increasingly national effort to end MTR in Appalachia; however, some are more focused on particular places than others. **United Mountain Defense**, for example, works primarily with seven affected counties in eastern Tennessee. **Coal River Mountain Watch** focuses on the heavily-mined Coal River Valley in West Virginia. Both organizations, because of their place-specificity, draw most of their active membership from area residents, although they also work closely with more regionally-based organizations.

Rather than focusing on particular areas in Appalachia, both **Appalachian Voices** and **Mountain Justice** work with those places that are currently in most need or that offer legal or media opportunities to push the national dialogue towards ending MTR. Because of their broader regional focus, they tend to draw active membership from a wider regional and national base. Additionally, Mountain Justice emphasizes outreach to college students from around the country, resulting in a unique membership demographic.

Position in Movement Network: Both of the place-specific organizations, United Mountain Defense and Coal River Mountain Watch, are currently working on projects that the more regionally-based organizations are both assisting with and drawing on for national media outreach. As of this writing, **United Mountain Defense** is focused on helping the victims of the recent TVA coal waste disaster in Harriman, TN. With the assistance of other organizations, United Mountain Defense has been bringing bottled water to residents, helping them get tested for heavy metal poisoning, distributing information, and facilitating community organization. Although the waste spill was from a coal-fired electric plant, not an MTR site, it is still a focal point for the movement as a whole because it provides the opportunity to show how the practice of MTR is bound up in larger contexts of energy production, regulation, and consumption. Other groups are thus helping United Mountain Defense collect scientific data on water and air quality, and build a legal case against TVA. The groups are also visually documenting damages and cleanup efforts and mobilizing those representations in order to bolster the movement's education and outreach efforts.


 * Coal River Mountain Watch**'s current and unprecedented efforts to prevent an MTR mine by proposing a wind farm and underground coal mine as an alternative use has been of great interest to the entire movement, although controversial, as some movement actors would like to see the end of coal mining, while others see it as a necessary component of a healthy Appalachian economy. Producing the data needed to demonstrate the feasibility of the alternative plan marks a new step for the movement towards realizing socially and economically viable alternatives to MTR. Coal River Mountain Watch's place-specific fights have often served as rallying points for the entire movement in the past, as the company that mines the valley, Massey Energy, is universally viewed as the most egregious of all the coal companies operating in the region. Coal River Mountain Watch is also cited by many as the origin point of the anti-MTR movement as a movement. It was Coal River Mountain Watch's call for volunteers in 2005 that spawned Mountain Justice, which has since become a primary node in the movement network.


 * Mountain Justice** is the most fluid and flexible of the organizations, drawing significant new membership each year through its outreach to college students. The organization's activities are concentrated in the summer months, when students may have considerable time to contribute, and are dispersed across the region. The group works closely with both United Mountain Defense and Coal River Mountain Watch, and serves as a point of contact between other organizations, including Appalachian Voices and national environmental and global justice groups. Mountain Justice is best known in the movement network for their expertise and creativity in direct action and civil disobedience, and contribute both material and human resources to other organizations and communities in need.


 * Appalachian Voices** similarly serves as a point of contact between the organizations in the movement network, but their work tends to emphasize government lobbying and public education in an effort to end MTR through the legal system and to increase the movement's national and global support. Appalachian Voices also produces the website ilovemountains.org, sponsored in part by Coal River Mountain Watch, which serves as both an information repository and an interactive media outreach program for the movement as a whole.