Hello. All right, we'll go ahead and get
started. I'm Julie Speer, Associate Dean um here
at University Library and I wanna thank you all for
coming. Um And welcome to the visible scholarship initiative
on behalf of university libraries. Were thrilled to partner
with the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences to
showcase the exceptional research and scholarship created by faculty in
the college. We hope you enjoy the presentation,
the lively discussion that will follow and of course refreshments
and we look forward to seeing you again at the
next C in january. All right, I'll hand
it over to tom for introduction. Yes. It's
hard to hear. How about if I talk,
Is that better? Yeah, that's a second grade
teacher told me I had a loud voice. Not
working. It is working. How about now,
now? Okay, so I got to do three
things at these sessions, which all of which I
really enjoy. I can say thank you for people
who are here. I get to talk about the
upcoming authors and I get to use a skill I
developed in graduate school, which is to talk about
a book I haven't actually read, so we'll see
how that goes. So I really wanna thank the
librarians. Um as always for organizing this event,
putting up the display and hosting us. We really
appreciate that. Um, I don't think Turner which
and is here, she's the college ambassador who's been
assisting all semester with developing the displays, designing the
invitations and putting up the posters all over campus.
Um and I think it's only when you do that
job that you actually learn how big the campuses,
um as you carry posters around and and put them
up. So we really appreciate her assistant. She's
off to London uh for a study abroad semester in
the spring. And so we'll we'll have another student
who will be helping us with that. Um,
We have a good line up for spring. I'm
very excited about that. Um, partly because one
of them actually volunteered to do this, which is
a change. Um Matt Wisniewski is gonna be talking
about his new book on transformative engineers. That will
be in january uh, in february will skip the
month because of the libraries author celebration. Um,
and then later on in the spring, we have
Jeff man talking about his novels on, about sexuality
in the civil war, Elizabeth Mussolini on her new
book about trash and Karen, are we talking about
her work on french literature? So we have a
good line up for spring and, and we'll be
sending that out and working with you on those,
on those topics. Okay, now, the fun
part, the book I haven't read. Um,
I was really pleased to be able to feature this
book uh in this series for a couple of reasons
. Um every book we've done so far has been
single author or in the case of one single composed
. And so I really wanted a chance to highlight
collaborative work that's done in the social sciences because that
really is an important part of what we do is
scholars. And so to have a book that involved
not only to co editors, but also 30 authors
. This 40 thank you. Uh some of whom
are here. Um you know, I think it's
really important and I hope the editors will have a
chance to talk about what it means to do this
kind of collaborative work of how they work together and
how they worked with the authors. A component of
that of course is interdisciplinary work and particularly one that
reaches across social sciences and humanities, and it brings
in different perspectives on a share topic. And so
, again, you know, a number of the
books that we feature have been interdisciplinary, but this
is one that has really highlighted that in terms of
the different contributors. Um and of course, you
know, being able to feature scholarship that was produced
in Appalachia about Appalachia I think is really important.
Many of the works we featured have been about the
rest of the world, scholars going out and studying
using resources that are in the library or that have
come from other parts of the world, other time
periods, all of which is very important. But
I think it's also very uh enlightening for us to
think about the research that's being done in this area
about this area, by scholars who are really,
you know, deeply immersed in this community. And
I think that's the last point um that I really
liked about this this book, this this time is
that it's engaged scholarship. It's people who are studying
the world, but also working to change it.
And I think, again, that's an important feature
of scholarship in the liberal election, human sciences.
And so I'm delighted to have these editors here and
their authors to talk about this project. So I
will turn it over to the collective and I'll let
you sort out how you're gonna handle this. Yeah
, thank you. We are a collective, but
resistance is not futile. In fact, it's very
much going on and it's a source of hope that's
part of the message. So, um, I'm
Barbara Ellen smith and steve, and I would like
to certainly thank the college as well as the library
for all of the work that goes into this visible
scholarship initiative. It's really been a very exciting kind
of series that keeps uh, seeming to build.
It's a way of creating more intellectual vitality and community
and cross pollination here on campus. So thank you
so much for all the work that goes into organizing
this, um, and just sponsoring it. So
, um, as a tom mentioned, not only
are steve and I hear, but also several of
the people who contributed chapters to this book, and
so what we'd like to do is I'm going to
give a few introductory remarks about the overall book and
then I'm gonna invite um, some of our chapter
authors to say a few words about their contributions to
the book, and then steve is going to wrap
things up and then we'll have some question and answer
. So, um, it's been about four years
ago that steve and I decided to put together a
book on social justice activism in Appalachia. And we
did so for two reasons, primarily one was the
tremendous change that was going on in the political economy
of the region. And secondly, in the social
justice organizing that was seeking to grapple with changes on
the ground when steve published his earlier book uh fighting
back in Appalachia, which apparently is currently checked out
. So that's good. That was 20 years ago
, uh, that came out in 1993 and it
documented an outburst of grassroots organizing across the region.
But since that time, we've seen the collapse of
a number of very important regional organizations in Appalachia.
The Commission on Religion in Appalachia is no longer here
. The Southern Empowerment Project is no longer in existence
at the same time. However, those last two
decades or so have really seen New types of organizing
going on in the region, new organizations, new
groups, new issues. Um, and so,
um part of what we sought to do is to
capture these changes. Globalization, which was barely in
our vocabulary 20 years ago, now seems to name
the age. And it raises a lot of complicated
questions about the scale and the targets of effective political
organizing. Um, should the transnational, for example
, be the primary priority for people who are seeking
to effect social justice on the ground? Um,
on the domestic front, we're seeing a kind of
neo liberal fetish. For the free market, tremendous
emphasis on individualism, individual responsibility rather than collective social
responsibility. And in a region like Appalachia where poverty
is endemic and where organized labor has been one of
the most important bulwarks against exploitation, uh, low
wages and poverty. These kinds of trends have had
literally sickening consequences. So for these reasons and more
including the fact that, for example, the exuberant
solidarity of the Pittston coal strike, the center of
which was here in or in southwest Virginia camp solidarity
, Which drew people together during the period 1989 1991
, um, really was now in retrospect, one
of the sort of last stands of the United Mine
workers in the region. Uh, now we see
a tremendous bitter conflict between those who are organizing to
combat mountaintop removal in the coalfields and those who believe
that their own livelihoods are at stake and that there's
no alternative to this practice. These are people to
share social identity. White working class coal mining people
, some folks describe this as a kind of civil
war and I think indeed it's very better. So
, what we've tried to do in this book is
to really capture uh, this kind of complicated political
environment and some of the social justice organizing that seeks
to address it. A unifying theme of the book
obviously is the significance of place. I want to
mention just two chapters that start the book out because
they intentionally contest the common argument that all organizing in
Appalachia is merely local listing. Local listing, organizing
is inevitably in effect. And secondly, that Appalachian
Israeli synonymous with the coalfields. The book opens with
the chapter, it focuses on the work of the
Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, a group that started
many years ago in Oak Ridge to contest the harmful
militarism over bridge being original center of the federal government's
research and production of nuclear weapons. The second chapter
focuses actually here in Virginia and documents the work of
a group called Rail Solution, which you may be
familiar with at least from newspaper articles a few years
ago. This is the group that contested efforts to
privatize interstate 81 by the development of toll lanes for
trucks. This was a proposal that was initiated by
a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, which is a
lot of people are not necessarily aware of. Um
, and was seen as a kind of intentional wedge
effort to privatize public resources. I-81 is West Virginia's
single most valuable public resources. You think about the
kind of money that is at stake in terms of
interstate highways. These folks organized by creating a kind
of virtual community along I-81 using not only email technology
, but also the rhetoric of I-81, it's our
main street. Now, none of us really thinks
I 81 is like main street, right. But
they invoked this kind of symbol of small town egalitarian
Americana to link people in the small towns along the
I 81 corridor, organize and encourage successfully the town
councils and so on to vote against this initiative.
And they were indeed successful. Um, both of
these first chapters are real kind of David and Goliath
stories. Not all the chapters are by any means
, not all of the episodes of activism that are
documented end in success, but nonetheless, um,
this the second one in particular does the first chapter
though, in the long haul struggle around nuclear weapons
in Oak Ridge, uhh, includes a vignette by
one of the women who was active in that organizing
, who when confronted with the question of how on
earth you keep going. This is like an impossible
challenge to confront weaponry and militarism and so forth.
And it's a real kind of David and Goliath situation
. She said, well, yeah, you know
, but he's so big. How could we possibly
miss So, so one of the lessons of the
book is that place is an object of change.
It's also a resource for change, but places highly
contested. It can be mobilized in very contradictory directions
. Some of the work that I've done is on
immigration and anti immigrant groups are certainly mobilizing resources,
a place as a very important resource against immigration.
This is our place, this is only our place
keep out. So place can be mobilized an exclusionary
directions. It can also be mobilized in more inclusive
and egalitarian directions, um, which is of course
, what the authors of the chapters that we include
in the book were seeking to analyze. We're delighted
that several of those folks are here today. Um
, MEREDITH Dean, who wrote a wonderful chapter on
the Appalachian Women's Alliance, uh, is gonna speak
now for a few words, uh, speak briefly
with a few words about that chapter. And then
Anita Puckett and Betty Fine are going to talk about
their chapter um which is also authored by Betsy Taylor
right here. Betsy and Mary Hufford. Betsy's wonderful
book with her breed is also um profiled as one
of the uh significant intellectual contributions to transforming places.
It was a real inspiration. So I'd like to
invite MEREDITH to come up and speak a bit about
her chapter on the Appalachian Women's Alliance. Thank you
. So if you can just hold it for the
first thing. Okay hi I'm eric Athene. Um
I actually teach Appalachian studies here at tech um but
before that I was the director and founder of the
Appalachian Women's Alliance for about 20 years and it's from
that experience and in those voices that I'm gonna speak
now um this first voice is Aetna garlic. Mhm
. I used to feel like I shouldn't be around
middle class white people. I didn't trust them,
I knew they didn't care about the little people,
they were all about themselves. They gave out rules
but they couldn't take them from us because we weren't
supposed to know what we were doing or to think
for ourselves. Yeah, I came in thinking I
had nothing to offer this group and wondering why I
was there. I listened to them talk about this
and that, throwing those big words around while the
tapes playing in my head. What in the hell
am I doing here? I don't understand a thing
they are talking about. Well the next meeting,
I was still listening to them make decisions for me
and letting it happen. So I began to talk
only then I got talked over and looked over until
I got upset and talked real loud. The way
poor people always have to do before people listen to
us a pack. This next voice. This,
I wish I didn't have it, kenya, is
that impossible for me to do this without the mic
For the voices? Okay. All right. All
right. This next voices linda. Okay, this
next voice is linda. I never would have believed
it would be this hard to do organizing work on
our own issues in our own way. I think
I had some movie idea that everyone would be willing
and happy to give up their time and energy and
money to work and create projects together. But all
the people I knew were overwhelmed with their day to
day lives and demands asking them to me and talk
much less right and work on an issue was just
asking too much now. More than ever. I
am thankful to those women who didn't have cars or
computers or good health and still gave themselves to get
the vote, birth control and health care, right
. I think middle class people should be aware that
the more they've been given, the more important it
is for them to work, to improve the lives
of all people. Class is everything and class awareness
is a must. Otherwise it's just too easy to
blame the victim. Okay. And this is my
voice. I came into this region idealistic and strong
. I had marched with millions of Filipinos to protest
a violent dictatorship. Id linked arms in solidarity with
strangers, to face tear gas and water cannons.
I've witnessed and experienced the seeds of an alternative government
I'd seen organizing that had made a difference. I
chose to live here because my dad was from here
and because I thought it was one of the most
beautiful places in the country. I came to walk
my talk to live out what I had learned from
filipino organizers from swallow Frieri and the new testament when
I moved to Appalachia, I had an unconditional respect
for the people who were organizers in their communities,
women that I consider to be my peers at the
time. I didn't realize all the things that would
get in the way of us working together. I
didn't fully understand internalized oppression and I definitely did not
understand class. Yeah, it makes me sick to
think about that. Okay, so there's three different
women with three very different backgrounds and life experiences,
um, but who came together to work on issues
that were affecting all of us as women in Appalachian
communities. Um, the first speaker again was Edna
Gully, she's an amazing leader and organizer who was
born and raised in the Virginia coalfields and Dickinson County
, um specifically in the african american um section of
a little town called Clinch Code. The second voice
was linda mckinny who would like to be known as
a hard headed mountain woman and she is from a
holler back in uh, I think it's Mercer County
, west Virginia, Summers county west Virginia, right
next to that uh where her scotch irish ancestors have
lived for generations. And again, the third voice
was me, a middle class white woman from the
Atlanta suburbs who chose to come back to Appalachia to
live and organize here very intentionally chose to organize here
. Um, to be near my family's home place
in Carroll County. Our chapter in the book is
called organizing Appalachian women Hope lies in the struggle and
in it, I chronicle the 20 year history of
the Appalachian Women's Alliance. And I do that by
going back and forth between the hopes and struggles of
that regional organization and the strategies and the programs and
projects that we implemented in order to work on race
, class, gender and the environment in Appalachian communities
. And then that's interspersed with the more personal hopes
and struggles of the voices you just heard as well
as many, many other voices of women. Um
They came in and out of the work over those
years and we poured our hearts and souls into that
work. And we also poured our heart and soul
into honestly reflecting as well as we could. Um
what our experience of that was, especially around class
issues because so little dialogue in my opinion, so
little authentic dialogue actually happens around those issues of class
and privilege. And um that is what much of
our struggle uh and that internal way was about.
And I hope that you will take the chance to
read this and some of it may make you uncomfortable
, some of it um may seem harsh and just
I would I would stay with that and use that
as a place to grow and to have that conversation
with yourself about issues of privilege uh and then hopefully
to have that conversation with others. Okay, I
don't think we can lead up right, Anita and
Betty actually with the other. We've never been together
for one of these things, all four of us
. So it's kind of nice to have all of
us together. This book is an amazing book and
I strongly encourage you to get it to buy and
obtain a photo copy and steal it whatever you have
to do. And otherwise I want to I want
you to buy this book. It's really important.
Um, it's an amazing book as well. Now
are particular chapter I'm going to take the academic route
here MEREDITH. So um, are particular chapter is
who knows who tells creating a knowledge commons. And
it's based on the four of us with a discussion
and Kingsolver who's at the University of Kentucky right now
and giving various talks at various venues within anthropology and
other places. We looked at mountaintop removal. If
you don't know what mountaintop removal is, talk to
Beth she will fill you in or talk to one
of us afterwards. We have many people here who
are incredible activists in this important, extremely important environmental
issue. So our focus was to examine the complex
relationships between the expert knowledge that the academics bring to
the plate and um with the experiential knowledge of those
livings in the spaces of mountaintop removal activity, the
ones on the ground in the communities that are facing
the results of mountaintop removal, now made more complex
by the whole issues that we dealt with. It's
not just academic community because it's made far more complex
by the coal industry's experts who they hire and they
they tutor and they grill them to present their particular
point of view within the discourses of academics or policy
wonks who speaks to speak and walk the walk and
don't walk the walk, but speak to the speech
of action.