activism, Appalachia, Drug War, General, Health, Mountain Valley Pipeline, North Carolina, Pipeline, Protest, repression, Transcribed, United States, Virginia, West Virginia, zine

Harm Reduction and Eco-defense in Appalachia

Harm Reduction and Eco-defense in Appalachia

Project Mayday logo featuring a badger and crossed needles, a photo of an MVP site at Peters Mountain with a zoom in on Madeline Ffitch locked down + "TFSR 2-18-24 | Harm Reduction + Eco-Defense in Appalachia"
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First up, Ian chats with Tasha of Project Mayday, a harm reduction project operating in so-called West Virginia. They discuss harm reduction strategies and the political framework of their approach to mutual aid. The conversation also touches upon co-existing in the public health and non-profit space without compromising their radical values and some of the many ways that drug policy and pharmaceutical marketing affect people who use drugs. Listeners can contact Project Mayday at the links below and should watch those spaces for news about the benefit show coming up on April 28th.

Then, I spoke with Toby from Appalachians Against Pipelines and Madeline Ffitch, an activist recently arrested for locking down to a drill threatening to move the Mountain Valley Pipeline through Peters Mountain at Jefferson National Forest. We talked about the recent days of solidarity, direct actions against the MVP, repression of activists and related topics.

Project Mayday Links

Appalachians Against Pipelines links

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Featured Track:

  • We Roll (instrumental) by Pete Rock from We Roll

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Project May Day Transcription

Project May Day: My name is Tasha Withrow. I am the co-founder of Project Mayday in West Virginia. We are a peer-led grassroots mutual aid harm reduction group. We get in where we fit in. We help out where the help is needed. We do a little bit of everything, from safe supplies to clothes to hygiene. Anything. I’m really glad to be here.

TFSR: Thank you. Can you give a little bit of background on Project Mayday? How long have you all been around? Maybe say a little bit about the area in which you are organizing.

PMD: We are organizing around the Charleston area here in West Virginia. I live about 20 minutes outside of Charleston. I do a little bit of work here in my area, which is very rural. But we began a little bit over a year ago, in October of ’22 and came together when the other co-founder and I became friends while I was working on another project called Unstuck Chuck, which is a program that I developed where we paid participants to come to help clean up litter—whether it be trash litter, syringe litter—and they could get harm reduction supplies, any other supplies that we had at the moment. And they got paid for their work. We met and we came to the conclusion that there were needs not being met in the community. We had the ability and the willingness to try and meet those needs for folks, especially in harm reduction. So we started working together to get supplies out. One thing led to another and we became a little known on social media. Now here we are today.

TFSR: Okay, great. Social media is how I came to know about the project. One of the most important aspects of the work you’re doing, especially on social media, is destigmatizing drug use. It seems to me that some of the language you use to describe the people with whom you work might be different from the language used in a political, legal, or clinical setting. Can you go into some of those differences and the reasoning for your choice of descriptors?

PMD: It’s been a personal journey as well for me in changing my language and how we approach that destigmatization process. I have lived experience, but my lived experience is over 10 years old. I come from the abstinence-only world. So I came into harm reduction with the language of addict, addiction, disease, and that sort of thing. And I was very, very locked into that mindset for a very long time. As I said, it’s been a personal journey as well to break down that language barrier. I really push that. I really think it’s important because language is important. It is important because it’s how we begin to fix problems. That’s how we begin to look at what’s really going on. When we talk about drug use, we use definitions that are given by people in power, whether it’s through race, class, or gender. So it’s these definitions that are given to people who use drugs, and it’s used to control them. However that may find its way. One of the things that I wanted to do when we formed Project Mayday was to provide a lot of education and destigmatize that language. It’s worked out pretty well. I’ve really seen a difference in folks that I communicate with a lot. And folks in general around this area, there has been quite the change in how we talk about people who use drugs.

TFSR: When you say education, is that education aimed at, I guess client base, or are you referring to the public? Or is it both?

PMD: Yeah, we do a little bit of both. Our main goal is to amplify the voices and the needs of the people who are using drugs. So we want to make sure first and foremost that they’re getting the education that they need on how to use safely, how to have safe sex, how to stay warm in the winter, whatever it is to reduce any risks involved in what’s going on. Then, of course, educating the public is important because that’s how we get support for harm reduction. That’s how we get support for people who use drugs. People don’t know what they don’t know. I feel it’s important for us to educate them to the best of our ability. What they do with that is out of our control once they have that information, but at least we could say we did our due diligence, and I see it as a way to also support the people that we are helping.

TFSR: Is there a philosophical, political, or other basis for the type of harm reduction in which Mayday engages? Are you working from some playbook? Would you say that your approach is in keeping with current public health guidelines?

PMD: As far as within public health guidelines, one of our main goals is to keep folks who are using drugs safe and healthy and help reduce harms that are associated with illicit drug use, such as infectious disease and overdose. So our methods do fall within that framework. It’s difficult to claim something, but I guess if we had to fall into one, it’d be more of an anarchist-communist framework. We don’t have any hierarchy, membership is very fluid. Everyone has a say, and it’s very equitable within the group. It is run by people who use drugs, it’s formed by people who use drugs. When it comes to how we implement our methods, it’s very community-based. We share resources, and we try to take the power from the institutions to give it back to the people.

TFSR: Do you find that there are gaps and blind spots in the way the institutions communicate and/or work with the communities with whom you work?

PMD: Absolutely. Not only do government agencies, but service providers, non-profits, a lot of them work in silos. When it comes to communicating with people that they serve, there’s not much effort put forth, and there’s a lot of failure when it comes to connecting with the community. A lot of needs are not being met because of that. A lot of folks feel they have nowhere to go. And now that was one of the things that motivated us to not only form but to keep going. So there’s a lot of gaps.

TFSR: Do you share space in the region with people or organizations who will help your population differently than Mayday helps them? If that’s the case, I know that you mentioned earlier that you get in where you fit in, but where are you growing in the same direction, and what are the points of conflict?

PMD: Yeah, we piggyback a lot off of them. There’s another crew in Charleston, called SOAR. And they were one of the first more publicly known groups in Charleston. We collaborate a lot with them, and we share space with them a lot. They have a lot of networking that we don’t have. It’s been very helpful trying to navigate this world and to have their help with that. It’s been very beneficial. We’re still new when it comes to sharing space, honestly. We were going to do this health fair here in my county where it’s very rural, and the health department was involved so we thought it was very legitimate. And we initially signed up for it until I realized where it was, and it was at one of the local churches. It wasn’t the fact that it was at a church. It was the church that spearheaded one of our anti-trans ordinances here in my county. So we backed out of that. We didn’t want to be involved in that. It is difficult, especially in this area. It’s a very, very red state. It’s very conservative. So to find people who, if they don’t share our mission, at least share our values, and that we can at least collaborate and they’re not out there causing harm, especially to the people that we love and care about and many of the folks that we serve. It’s been a process, and we’re still new and navigating it. I’m glad that we have people to help us along the way.

TFSR: May I ask, is there a site out of what you work, or are you generally out in the streets where folks are?

PMD: It’s all peer-based. Mobile outreach.

TFSR: Okay. It seems you engage in a few different forms of mutual aid. Can you describe the various efforts and what you consider to be successful interactions or successful building of relationships? What does that look like to you?

PMD: When I envision mutual aid, I envision, to put it simply, it’s us helping each other with whatever we need. Because where we live, we’ve been exploited here in Appalachia since day one. So we’ve had to take care of each other since day one. So it’s a little bit in all of us to have that mutual aid spirit. It’s actually very easy to do here. It’s very easy to be able to put out a mutual aid request and be like “Hey, we need some clothes, jackets, tents, sleeping bags, etc. You can either donate them or donate some money and we’ll get it.” And within a few hours, we have people donating money. Or we had someone where we had to help them get their electricity fixed and turned back on, and it took $2,000. And we were able to raise all that money, to get people shelter, to get people food. It’s wherever the systems and the institutions are failing, that’s where we try and pick it up. I feel like here in Appalachia, even though we have that spirit of mutual aid, we also have that spirit of a lot of people who feel everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s like “Dude, we don’t have any boots.” So we help each other get those boots. It’s very interesting to do mutual aid here. Like I mentioned earlier with Soar and collaborating with them, they do a monthly mutual aid fair in Charleston. That’s where a lot of different folks come together. You have anyone from pet care to wound care. We’re there, and we have our variety of services. You have Sober Living folks there. They have dinner, anything and everything that you could think of. We serve about anywhere from 1 to 200 folks a month, and it’s very successful. They’re still working out the kinks of it because Charleston’s a big city and not everyone’s getting served. It’s on the opposite side of the city. But that’s been a very successful thing for us to do. We’ve been getting a lot of interactions with folks. It’s really good to see everybody come together.

TFSR: You tend to see people month after month, am I right?

PMD: Yes. And when we do our peer distro, those folks are seen more often.

TFSR: You mentioned the difficulty of wanting to pull back whenever your values are not shared by the people around you. How have you been received by the community, either the immediate community and maybe a little bit beyond that? Have you received pushback from anybody?

PMD: A little bit, yeah. Especially where I live because it’s so rural and conservative. Even though we have a quick response team here for overdose follow-ups, they still pretend that drug use doesn’t happen here and that there are no people here who use drugs. So it’s been difficult to establish ourselves here a little bit. I’ve done some random Naloxone pop-ups. I’ll just park my car in a random parking lot. That’s been well-received with a couple people who have stopped and talked to me. Whenever we’ve set up at random events where you usually don’t see people with Naloxone, we’ve been well-received. Granted, we also haven’t really been out that long. There’s still plenty of time for us to get recognized. And hopefully, it’s positive. We’re working on a photo essay project right now we got a grant for, and we’re hoping to use that to shed some positive light on harm reduction and also people who use drugs. It’s a really big tool to combat the stigma that’s going on surrounding harm reduction in West Virginia.

TFSR: I think that the average person’s window into this stuff is the media. Can you tell me what the media gets wrong when covering drug use and harm reduction?

PMD: They feed off the moral panics that the politicians perpetuate. It’s like a pinball machine, they bounce off each other and regurgitate the same shit, that drugs are bad, we need to continue the war on drugs. We get people testifying in Congress who don’t know anything about drug policy. I know that folks have good intentions sometimes, but it makes it look bad when harm reduction hasn’t had a full chance yet. Just because we get these little snippets of opportunities to actually practice the strategy, and we’re facing these barriers because of prohibition, when we hit those barriers, “Oh, harm reduction doesn’t work. Oh, it’s bad. Oh, we need to shut down the overdose prevention centers,” etc. The media perpetuates those moral panics a lot. It’s what got our syringe service program here in Charleston shut down. The media was a huge factor in that.

TFSR: Just coverage on the news and stuff?

PMD: Along with the mayor at the time. I wouldn’t say they worked together, but they played off each other. It created such a problem. It’s what led it to shut down.

TFSR: Do you have anything to say about that recent statement that Jelly Roll made? What do you make of something that?

PMD: I made it a couple minutes in, and I was like “Okay, I’m gonna give them a chance.” Like I said, not everyone’s caught up on the vernacular yet, and I try not to hold that against people. We have to educate first. But then it started going into the same war on drugs and prohibition rhetoric that we hear all the time. That’s not going to solve the problem, that’s going to make it worse. That’s what happens a lot when it comes to people with lived experience thinking that they’re the experts because they have lived experience. Granted, it may give me some privilege in the decision-making process. But hell, like I said, my lived experience is over a decade old. I need to sit aside and let someone with more recent experience step up and be able to speak and have a role in the decision-making process. I think he just set us back a lot. But that’s what happens when celebrities get called in and testify in Congress.

TFSR: Can we talk a little bit about the FREED of Opioids Act? What it gets wrong, what it gets, if anything, right?

PMD: That is the one with prescribing, with Manchin, correct?

TFSR: Yes.

PMD: Oh, Manchin. He is the worst. He came from us, from West Virginia. He is another one of those “the opioid crisis was caused by Big Pharma” people. So he’s going to keep pushing those bills through thinking that it’s going to fix what’s going on. But, as we know, it makes it worse because people are not going to be able to get what they need. They’re going to continue to have to use illicit substances, and it’s gonna cause more drug poisonings and overdoses.

TFSR: I’m not sure exactly how to phrase this question. How do you think the work of Mayday either coincides with or refutes the work of marketing and prescribing of drugs by the pharma industry? How does that fit together?

PMD: That’s weird, because we do advocate for safe supply, and safe supply would come from the pharmaceutical companies. In a perfect world, there would be better regulation on that. And we wouldn’t be stuck with the Big Pharma that we have here in North America. That’s a really complicated place to be in. When it comes to overprescribing, we were hit super hard. We were among the hardest hit here in West Virginia. I got caught up in it. It’s part of my story, my experience. But I also know that the prescribing of a safe supply from doctors kept me from using illicit heroin for years. Of course, it’s not going to happen under the capitalism that we are in now, but we need better regulation of the pharmaceutical industry.

TFSR: It seems like the nonprofit sector is often tasked with bridging the gap between institutions and the community. Can you talk about how the nonprofit figures into your region and what they’re doing right or wrong?

PMD: Most of the nonprofits that focus on substance use here in West Virginia are recovery-based. They’re going to be more treatment-oriented, sober-living, peer-support specialists, that sort of thing. There are one or two nonprofits that focus more on the prevention of harm caused by illicit drug use, such as HIV and hepatitis. Other than that, I believe there’s only one nonprofit that’s actually harm-reduction. That’s SOAR. We’re not a nonprofit. We choose that. We don’t want to be beholden to the IRS. It’s a weird landscape here. There are a lot of stipulations for nonprofits here. Especially if they get state grants, they’re only allowed to help certain populations, criteria, and that sort of thing. When I think about it, it does create quite a bunch of gaps, especially in the harm reduction aspect of things.

TFSR: Can you describe a little bit of what you mean by treatment-based and recovery-based? I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about something I saw on your social media feed: recovery gaslighting. What is that?

PMD: Okay, the nonprofits more focused on recovery and treatment, that’s going to be sober living houses, the peer support specialists, those agencies and nonprofits. They’re the folks who basically are assisting people who are already in some recovery. Most of it is abstinence-based. There is a current attack on medication-assisted treatment right now from the legislature. They’re trying to outlaw methadone right now. Also when it comes to other forms of medication-assisted treatment, such as buprenorphine, there’s a lot of stigma surrounding it as well. There’s this really weird dynamic when it comes to substance use here, especially in West Virginia.

That takes me to the recovery gaslighting. I don’t know if I’ve come up with it, but it’s something I thought of when I was in the process of leaving NA a couple years ago. I was very vocal about my experience. I was very vocal about the trauma that I experienced in that decade. I really wanted people to know about it because I was also becoming introduced to other people who had similar experiences I did. And I thought, “This is something that needs to be talked about more.” After sharing that experience there were a few folks that… It’s similar to when you’re in a relationship, like “Why are you mad? Why are you upset? Why are you depressed? Why are you anxious?” They’re asking all these things, why, why, why. You explain to them why, but they’re like “Well, that didn’t happen. It’s not like that.” Or “You just didn’t do this. You didn’t pray enough. You didn’t go to enough meetings, you didn’t work a strong enough program.” All these things. It always comes back to you. That’s something that I experienced my whole time in NA, but I didn’t really realize what it was until I left. It was very hurtful. Some of it came from people that I considered really good friends. That’s something that I’m still processing since I left a couple of years ago. It’s something that a lot of us experience when we leave, especially if we go into a more harm-reductionist practice.

TFSR: Can you talk about what you view as the limitations of programs such as NA and abstinence-based programs, either from your own experience or from what you’ve learned about this environment?

PMD: The program of NA was very helpful to me at the beginning of my recovery. It was what I needed at the time. It was what I needed for a few years. There are some things that I do believe are beneficial. There are some things that I still utilize. However, the limitations were very glaring to me when I was struggling with my mental health a lot. I was taking some antidepressants and was trying to get myself to a place where I wasn’t suicidal. It got to a point where I started talking to people about it. I would keep getting this whole like “Oh, we’ll go to meetings, pray about it, talk to your sponsor.” Blah, blah, blah, get the pat on the back. I kept seeing my friends die. I lost one of my best friends. I was actually her sponsor, and she relapsed and overdosed alone in her bedroom at her dad’s house. That was really when things started not making sense anymore to me. I started to see how folks were ashamed if they used and they did not feel safe enough to come back. They did not feel comfortable telling anybody what was going on. We had people acting like they were therapists, but they weren’t. People were actively suggesting people go off their medications. And when they’re suicidal, they’re like “Oh, well, it’s okay. You’ll be fine. It’s fine.” I don’t know if intellectually is the right word to use, but in some way, it wasn’t clicking anymore. The cognitive dissonance, it wasn’t making any sense. I realized how the philosophy and the ideology behind 12 Steps really perpetuate the war on drugs propaganda. It really hurts people. It really perpetuates that prohibition rhetoric.

TFSR: Do you think that the ubiquitousness, the lasting nature of these programs, insulates them from constructive criticism?

PMD: Absolutely. They are hell-bent on not changing. That is one of their key traditions, to stay the same not change and not be influenced by outside factors, people or institutions. Because there is a lot that, I think, if they would even update some language in their program, it would mean the world to a lot of people.

TFSR: What would be the most helpful policy-wise in destigmatizing drug use and aiding drug users?

PMD: Definitely decriminalization and legalization. We know that’s a long way away, but we can make small steps. We can stop regulating syringe programs, we can actually legalize and regulate overdose prevention centers, we can fund drug user health programs, and we can fund stigma campaigns to educate the public about people who use drugs. We can actually try to collaborate and work with the recovery industry or something. There has to be something to bridge that gap because they have a monopoly on things. It’s going to be very, very hard to make any headway without that collaboration, at least here in West Virginia. That’s just how it is. It’s how it’s built here.

TFSR: Can you talk about what you do to combat burnout from this stuff? If anything?

PMD: Oh, gosh. I guess I just kinda ride it out. [laughs] That’s really the only suggestion I have—just wait till it’s over. I try to take a couple personal mental health days.

TFSR: Okay. Are you the person in charge of designing the great T-shirts that you guys do?

PMD: Yes.

TFSR: That’s awesome. Can you point listeners to other efforts or literature that excite you around harm reduction, maybe other groups or some really insightful books, anything?

PMD: If you’re new to harm reduction and you’re wanting to learn more about people who use drugs and how it’s different than what you originally thought, anything from Maia Szalavitz is good—Undoing Drugs and Unbroken Brain are good books. I just started reading Saving Our Own Lives. It’s about liberatory harm reduction. One organization that I’d like to plug would be Remedy Alliance / For the People. It’s because we get our Naloxone from them. Underfunded programs get free Naloxone from them shipped to them. They help provide a lot of Naloxone to a lot of groups around the country. Other than that, it’s a bunch of tiny little groups trying to make it.

TFSR: Can you tell people where they can hear what Mayday is up to and how they can help out?

PMD: Yeah, we’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. That’s all @projectmaydayx. Then our website is maydayx.net. It has our links on there and everything. I usually keep it pretty up to date, posting things. If it’s not educational, then telling folks what we’re doing, what we’re up to, or asking for donations.

TFSR: We’ll put all that information in the show notes.

PMD: Awesome.

TFSR: That’s all I have. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it.

PMD: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

TFSR: Of course. You take care.

PMD: You too. Bye.

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Mountain Valley Pipeline Transcription

TFSR: We’re joined by folks involved in the struggle against the Mountain Valley Pipeline to give us some updates on the status of the deadly project and the resistance to it. Thank you both for joining. Would you mind sharing your names, pronouns, and location or other information that you’d like folks to know?

Toby: Hi, thanks for having us. My name is Toby. My pronouns are they/them. I am currently on Monacan and Tutelo land in so-called West Virginia.

Madeline: My name is Madeline. I use she/her pronouns, and I’m in Appalachian Ohio right on the West Virginia border.

TFSR: Madeline, thanks for joining us. Toby, welcome back.

Madeline, I understand that on January 29th you were arrested for locking down to an MVP drill around Peter’s Mountain. Can you talk a bit about what happened?

MF: Sure, anyone who has a relationship with Peter’s Mountain or the land in that area knows how devastating it is for them to be drilling through that mountain. It’s also pretty absurd. I had the great privilege of spending the day on that mountain in the snow and the rain, mostly under a tarp, locked to that drill. It was beautiful watching the sunrise, and two hawks were flying overhead. Then there were a lot of police and security and workers stuck in the mud. It was interesting even to overhear the people we’re in opposition complaining and grumbling under their breaths about the terrain. It’s something locals have been saying for a long time. Appalachian people know that it does not make sense to be trying to punch these pipelines through these areas. It does feel beautiful to be up there and feel the land knows better. We already know that, but to really have it come home to us. For me being there felt like a gift because of that. The last time I was on Peter’s Mountain was when my younger child who’s seven now was a babe in my arms. I hiked up the Appalachian Trail to support the tree sets that were happening at that time. He was in diapers, and I camped out and provided moral support, and shouted words of encouragement to the tree-sitters. It felt really special to be able to come back and try to stop that drill for as long as I could.

TFSR: That’s awesome. Roughly for how long was the drill stopped?

MF: I stopped that for an entire workday. It was about eight hours.

TFSR: Hell yeah. That was probably really frustrating for both the locals and the people in the corporate office as you mentioned, with complaining about the harsh terrain and everything. But in a public statement by you that showed up on the Appalachians Against Pipeline Facebook page, you talk about the inspiration gained from mothers in struggles to provide clean drinking water and safety for children. On your website, madelineffitch.com, I found articles you’d written about you and your family resisting other pipeline projects. You’ve already mentioned at least showing up to offer support to folks who are engaged in certain types of struggle. I wonder if you could talk about some of your experience of struggling against extraction on Turtle Island and a bit of what motivates you and what conversations you’ve had with other folks, motivating other mothers or other parents, for instance, to engage in what can be from uncomfortable to dangerous acts of eco-defense.

MF: Sure, it’s pretty clear to me in late-stage capitalism and impending climate chaos that that’s what’s really uncomfortable and dangerous to families and to our children. It was important to me to be in solidarity with other Appalachian families that have been fighting this pipeline for a really long time. I’m close with several mothers and parents and families in Appalachia who, like our family, drink from a spring. Our family lives 200 feet from a pipeline that was proposed to be repurposed for high-pressure fracked gas, and luckily, people from all over the region on all ends of the pipeline fought really hard against that, and we did too. People we didn’t even know. And that project was stopped. I know every day that I benefit from the fighting and stubbornness of a lot of other people who stand to lose a lot when these life-killing projects are pushed through to benefit a few rich people. I think it’s important for me to stand up and do whatever I can. What I tell my kids is none of us can do everything, but we all have to do what we can. When we’re together on this, we’re stronger.

Everyone gets a little self-conscious when they read the quotes that they said, but I wanted to make sure people didn’t think that I was saying that mothers are special in a way that in any way cooperates or bolsters this notion of motherhood as this specialized thing, especially white motherhood, this pure innocent moral authority. What I mean by motherhood as being a place from which I fight is that it’s very, very clear to me that in the US, white middle-class parenting is constantly under pressure to be defined as something private, individualized, and atomized. That way of corroborating this middle-class narrative. That really goes against common sense and actual practical ways of running family and community where we’re all really inter-reliant or interdependent. People all over the world know that. People in Gaza know that right now. It was really clear at Standing Rock. Indigenous and native communities on Turtle Island that are at the forefront of fighting these infrastructure projects have understood this as a concern that’s inter-generational and touches every part of the community.

It’s actually very rare and very specific and pretty purposeful when activism in the US is considered to be the territory of young people in their 20’s, people who are unattached, or people who are white. The actual global history and ongoing story of people fighting against these life-killing infrastructure projects that are pushing us deeper into climate chaos and disaster is that the people who are standing up against that are our families, communities, and civil society. We all must show that that’s who we are. We’re fighting against forces that don’t care about children, don’t care about families, don’t care if we have clean water to drink, don’t care if people are dying under rubble and families are having bombs dropped on them. They really don’t care about that. We need to be together and show who we are. It’s a fantasy to believe that children and families are not on the front lines already. We’re already on the front lines, especially where we live. I live in the lowest-income county in Ohio, in Southeast Ohio. And In Appalachia, people have been fighting back against the rich and powerful for basic livability. The industry calls our area a sacrifice zone, and the people at the forefront of that are inter-generational communities who’ve been fighting for such a long time just for the basics, for basic safety and survival.

How can we not see that commonality all over the world with people fighting struggles like that? It’s no coincidence that as soon as the genocide started happening in Gaza, what we saw coming out of the pipeline fight against the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Appalachia was immediate solidarity, unquestioning solidarity. It’s because there’s a common-sense solidarity with civil society against these powerful forces that really don’t seem to care about everyday people.

TFSR: Yeah, absolutely. That’s really well said, Toby, do you want to add anything? Any thoughts?

Toby: I don’t think I can really add anything to what Madeline was saying, that was incredible. Thank you so much for sharing that. Speaking of the interconnectedness of our movements, something that I’ve found that to be true well before this is how not just our shared values and our shared commitment to resisting all forms of oppression, all forms of violence against our communities, binds us all together, but so do the actual people behind all the death and destruction, and violence, and all of the things that are actually binding us together in more ways than one. It’s not that we have that shared sense of wanting to be in solidarity with each other, both on a local level and on a global level. It’s also that we’re fighting the same people when it comes down to it. Anytime that there is something evil going on in the world, anytime that there’s oppression, anytime that bombs are falling and rubble falling, there’s going to be someone profiting off of it. Every time there’s a pipeline, someone is going to profit off of it. Those people are the same people. They don’t care about people on the ground. They don’t care about frontline communities or any communities, to be honest. They just don’t care. We are nothing to them. That is very daunting to think about, but also is something that, at least for me, helps bolster our resistance in that we do care for each other. And we are going to be the ones to take care of ourselves, our communities, and also each other’s communities as well.

TFSR: Thank you. That’s well said by both of you. Madeline’s action fell within the date range of days of solidarity, a campaign that was being run against the MVP in multiple different places, anywhere people could show solidarity. I was wondering if you all have any insights into how folks near and far responded to that request for action and if there were any highlights that you want to talk about.

Toby: I can share a little bit about that call for action. There was a call for action across the world, probably more specifically on Turtle Island, based off of the banks investors, and companies behind the Mountain Valley Pipeline. There was a call for people to respond to both the wave of repression hitting folks on the ground in Appalachia who are using direct action to fight the Mountain Valley Pipeline, as well as this newest cycle of construction. There was a call put out to ask people to organize solidarity actions in their home communities.

A lot of that was based on this feeling on the ground here in Appalachia that things feel bleak, I have to be honest. You can’t go anywhere in this region without seeing evidence of pipeline construction. From almost every major road, you’ll see the pipeline, you’ll see the scars upon the earth, you’ll see active machinery digging up the hills and the mountains around you. You’ll drive over creeks and rivers where they’ve either drilled underneath or their failures at building this pipeline has poisoned and polluted the waters, which locals and scientists and everyone with any logic in their brains have been telling them for years would happen. And still, they push through this pipeline. Also, to give people a sense, before May of 2023 and Manchin’s involvement in the debt ceiling bill, people in this area thought that the fight against the Mountain Valley Pipeline was going to succeed. They didn’t have their permits to complete their water crossings. They didn’t have their permits to go through the National Forest, which is where Peters Mountain is, where Madeline’s lock-up was. They were doing poorly in the stock market. Then Joe Manchin, one of the West Virginia legislators, literally leveraged an entire global socio-economic crisis to get this pipeline built. Part of the debt ceiling bill was saying that Mountain Valley Pipeline would get all the remaining permits and that none of those permits and none of the other regulatory methods for limiting construction and limiting this instruction could work. Basically, you can’t sue the Mountain Valley Pipeline in court, you can’t challenge any of their permits, you can’t point to all of their numerous violations and say that they need to stop construction.

What that means is that leaves direct action to stop it, and it leaves people both on the ground to stop it, but also people all across the country to stop the forces that are contributing to the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The setting for this call to action is asking people everywhere to help take up the fight and to help make sure that the companies and the banks who don’t have to deal with this destruction on a day-to-day basis, who don’t have to look out for their windows and see the mountain getting blown apart. They don’t have to hear the excavators moving dirt at all hours of the day and night. They don’t have to hear the drills going underneath the water bodies and the mountains. They don’t have to deal with what they are actually doing. And bringing the fight to them, because they get to wash their hands of it because they’re not here. None of the companies that are behind this pipeline are actually based in Appalachia. They never have to bear the consequences of what they’re doing to communities and the land down here. Also, part of this call to action was really to have people show solidarity with folks who are facing a lot of repression. I can talk about this more. But folks on the ground who are taking direct action are receiving trumped-up charges. Lots of felonies are threats against people, they are fear tactics that are trying to scare people away from doing actions. There is an increased threat of jail time. In fact, someone who was locked down to a drill in West Virginia is currently serving two months in jail in northern West Virginia right now for his action. For being guilty of one misdemeanor, he ended up serving one month in jail.

MF: A granddad. A local granddad.

Toby: Yeah, he locked down to the drill on the Elk River, which is the same river that the West Virginia water crisis polluted. He locked down to the drill that was going underneath the Elk River, and now he’s serving two months in jail. There are also eight different SLAPP suits that people are on, and those SLAPP suits are in West Virginia, they’re in Virginia, they are in federal court, in state court. Sorry to give all of this exposition, but this is all to say that the fight here is feeling very dire. The situation feels very bleak. Part of that is setting the stage for this call to action. We saw a lot of people over that week throw down all across the country. Not only were there two lockdowns here in Appalachia, Madeline’s and then also Mama Jules’, who locked down to a helicopter two days later in a different site…

TFSR: That was badass.

Toby: Yeah, it was so cool. There were also noise demos and banner drops at the EQT headquarters and PNC headquarters in Pittsburgh. There were noise demos and demonstrations at the Wells Fargo headquarters in San Francisco, at the WGL headquarters in DC. Shout out to some of the groups like Third Act who literally put on so many noise demonstrations that people lost count in places like New Haven, Sacramento, Richmond, and Blacksburg. You saw a lot of banners and wheat pasting on lockouts that all linked together a lot of different fights, pointing out that the same banks are behind MVP as behind Cop City. They’re also the same banks that are funding the genocidal regime of Israel and the genocide that’s happening in Palestine. So there were a lot of actions across the country that highlighted that connection between our movements as well.

TFSR: That’s super inspirational. Madeline, do you have anything you want to throw into in addition?

MF: Well, I want to highlight what Toby was saying at the beginning about how this pipeline was pushed through. Some of us who really pay attention to these nitty-gritty details of how the projects keep happening, no matter how bad we’re fighting them, we can get really into the details, and the outside observers get a little bit… like your eyes can glaze over at so many details. What’s important about MVP, specifically, and one reason why people showed up in solidarity so much around Turtle Island and beyond, on the one hand, people might think “Why do we care so much about one pipeline in Appalachia? Why are people in California showing up about this?” It’s really important to underscore and emphasize what Toby was saying that this pipeline has been pushed through in a way that should be of major concern to anybody who is watching.

It’s weird to say this—I know that probably all of us have our own feelings about the word democracy—but anyone who says they’re concerned about the health of democracy and watching the way that this particular pipeline was pushed through… A national climate activist who is more looking at things on a policy level once said to me, “Yeah, it’s at the point where new fossil fuel infrastructure can only be pushed through if it’s directly undermining the democratic processes” that a lot of us have already lost faith in. It’s an interesting place to be, to hold both of these things to be true at the same time. I don’t think any pipeline should be happening. The policies and the laws are always set up to promote private interests over everyday people. I also think, even within the context of the way this thing usually happens, we’re seeing an escalation of the ways that these projects are just… Even by their own metrics, this pipeline was dead in the water. It was completely caught up in lawsuits, it didn’t have all its permits.

People thought we’d won, people in Appalachia were celebrating. So they can’t play it straight and get these projects through anymore. That’s not happening anymore. The only way they can do it is to turn the whole table over and say, “Oh, actually, all those things we said mattered, all those laws that we said mattered, all the regulatory challenges that we said would matter, actually, none of it matters, and now they just can do it.” A lot of us have had a major lack of faith in those promises for a long time anyway. No pun intended, but this is the final straw for a lot of people newer to that way of thinking. They’ll tell you again and again what to do to fight in a civil way, to fight these projects in what they would describe as a civil way that there are proper channels to go through. Those of us who’ve been trying to fight the Dakota Access Pipeline, or fight Line 3 in northern Minnesota, we know that they’re gonna put us through this dog and pony show, and we have to exhaust all the administrative remedies. But the fight to stop MVP and the way that this pipeline has come about is showing in this undeniable way what a joke all of that is, and how in the end, it’s really up to us. We have each other, and we have to do things the old-fashioned way. It’s inspiring to people too that in Appalachia and rural communities, in places where people are used to getting together and doing things on their own, people are rolling up their sleeves and saying, “If you’re going to try to push this through, we’re going to stop it in whatever way we can.” There’s something really beautiful and really inspiring about that to people.

And also this desperation of all of these powers that Toby is pointing to, a lot of them are the same investors, it’s the same money, and they’re afraid, they’re on their heels. They can’t even do things in the old way that they used to. They have to be more and more out about how dishonest and ethically bankrupt—I wish they were more bank—but a lot of times, they actually are bankrupt. That’s the other thing. It’s hard to even know where the money is that they say is going to be, where the jobs are that they say. It’s all just a lie. Then it falls to everyday people to really have to stand up for what’s important and what’s really practically important, which is what I was saying before, this livability and thriveability. All of these profits are for the very few. I want to say on a regional note, that it reminds me of one time as a writer, when I was on a panel of other Appalachian writers in Boston. I think about all this all the time. It was packed. It was packed to the gills. And all of these people from outside of Appalachia, wanted to know—I think it had to do with Trump—what’s making people tick? Why are Appalachians the way they are?

TFSR: “Why did you do this to us?” Yeah…

MF: I remember this one guy, this one sweater-vest-wearing person, an older white guy in the Q&A said, “I don’t understand why people vote against their own interests.” That was one thing. And also “How can we convince these basically poor country people to trust the government? Why don’t they trust the government?” He asked the wrong person. I don’t know what he thought I was going to say. It’s an incredible thing to ask people in a part of the world that has been used as a sacrifice and considered totally disposable why anybody with any common sense anywhere would trust the government. That’s really not anyone’s role. At the very least, people should be skeptical. But in this particular region, there’s a long tradition of being highly skeptical of authority, of outside experts, of people who say they know best, and of people who have no connection to the land. It’s really been beautiful to see the building solidarity between Appalachian people and indigenous people from other parts of Turtle Island coming together in this part of the world to move from more of a place of a land logic and also of a distrust of state and powerful interests. That is a major place that people fight from. It is uncharted by mainstream narratives about political orientations. In the US, I find it to be a very bracing and energizing, refreshing, and, frankly, noble, common-sense community to fight in.

TFSR: Hell yeah. As resistance ramps up, so is repression. Both of you talked a little bit about Jerome Wagner, who’s catching the two months in jail. Can you talk about folks catching cases and what sort of asks there are for support? Madeline, what sort of legal repercussions are you facing at this point for your direct action?

MF: I’m really in the middle of all of this. Any platform I have right now, I’m using more to call for support for people who are facing more specific repression right now across so many movements. But I thought about that question and how best to answer it. Toby hopefully can say more on it. But there’s a reason that you see so much solidarity, there are many reasons, but one of the things is in the face of all of the state repression if anybody thinks that the repression happening in Atlanta is not going to impact the repression that people in Appalachia are facing. Toby, I want you to say what we were discussing before the podcast, you had a lot of other examples, but anyone who’s really paying attention notices that this repression impacts all of us, and the powers that are behind that level of repression don’t see the edges of different campaigns or struggles. They are coming for everybody. We do have to really find solidarity and stand together on this.

Toby: I think, as Madeline was saying, there is a wave of repression going on right now that it’s not just targeting folks here in Appalachia. It’s targeting folks in Atlanta, subpoenas are coming out around the NoDAPL fight, bail funds around the country are being targeted—Virginia is trying to make it illegal to have a bail fund as is Georgia. There are new crackdowns on all of the pro-Palestine protests going on right now. We are seeing that the Empire is trying to go through desperate measures to protect itself and to keep itself afloat, and it’s failing because so many people on so many fronts are fighting back and are in solidarity with each other and are pushing back against the status quo, as well as there are all of these wild projects that people are resisting and all of this oppression that people are organizing to stop. As people fight back, as people organize, mobilize, and are vocal and disciplined about their resistance, we’re probably all going to see in the near future this continuing wave of repression. It’s targeting people down in Appalachia. We’re seeing people who for simple lockdowns, things that a year or two years ago would result in misdemeanors, people are catching felony charges, felony abduction and felony theft. We’re seeing things people who are arrested, charged, bailed out, and then re-arrested on new felonies and on new charges at their arraignments. There are multiple cases where prosecutors and judges in both Virginia and West Virginia are saying that they are trying to seek jail time, like serious jail time.

Not only that people are seeing wild bails. Like Mama Jules’ action, during this day solidarity, one person got a $25,000 bail for one misdemeanor in Virginia, and the other person also for one misdemeanor—$10,000 bail. That is obviously punitive. It is obviously the state coming after people for fighting this pipeline in a way that is credibly blatant and is very much a scare tactic. It’s also something that this movement against the MVP hasn’t seen as much. There have definitely been instances of the state coming after people, of the state denying bail as a punitive measure because the state is allowed to do that, especially in Virginia. There have definitely been instances where people have gotten felonies or been charged with felonies in the past, but we’ve never seen this widespread extreme targeting of every single person and ramping up of punitive measures for people who are doing nonviolent direct action. They are locking to equipment. It’s not anything that, in the past, has produced this response from the state. A lot of movements are familiar with SLAPp suits, and a lot of people are familiar with what that means. Campaigns and movements have seen one SLAPP suit, but we have eight SLAPP suits in this region going on.

TFSR: Could you define a SLAPP suit for folks that maybe haven’t heard the term before?

Toby: Yes, SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. It is a civil lawsuit that basically is a way of linking a bunch of people in one fight together, and it’s really meant to scare people away from participating in movements. The way the NDP is using it is that it is a threat against people who take direct action, that they might get added to this injunction, as well as people who support the MVP. There’s also this underlying threat that even if they never locked down, even if they don’t get arrested, they could still potentially get added to this injunction for their support, for their involvement, for them being vocal. It’s a scare tactic and a threat that basically companies really love to use as a way of cooling resistance.

In terms of these tactics that the state and the company are using right now, the way that they are coming after people, the way that they are having these looming lawsuits as threats against communities, against individuals, now’s the time that it’s really, really important to keep organizing and keep mobilizing and to continue to be vocal. It’s not the time to withdraw because it’s really scary. It’s a time to reach out. It’s the time to organize with your communities and with your crews to really push back against that kind of scare tactics and fear tactics. In other terms, direct on-the-ground response, support that folks here in this region are asking for, there is a legal defense fund that is supporting people who are going through bullshit legal situations. There are opportunities to support folks who are going to jail.

You can write to Jerome. He is not the only person who has been sentenced to jail time but is the only person who is currently incarcerated. So there are ways of supporting folks who are actively going through this repression and are being impacted by this repression, but in general, organizing crews and doing solidarity actions, or thinking about how you can fight back against that repression on an active level, as opposed to withdrawing, as opposed to being intimidated by those scare tactics, which is really hard to do. I say that as like “Oh, yeah. Just push fear away” as if it was totally easy to do. No, that’s not easy to do. It is terrifying. It is scary. Scare tactics work because they’re scary. Fear is a really common tactic to repress a lot of movements. But now the best way to support folks who are going through that repression is to think about how to build resiliency in your own communities and also to still show up for folks and still show up even when the stakes are way higher than they used to be.

TFSR: There’s a link to the fundraising for legal support I know on the aapsolidarity.org website, as well as information from that group about ways to get involved on the ground, too. Do y’all have any words of solidarity that you want to share further beyond the ones that you have with the folks involved in the struggle to defend the Weelaunee Forest and Stop Cop City in Atlanta or any of the other cop cities that are threatening to rise up and be built around different parts of Turtle Island?

MF: I actually want to say something a little more about the carceral state and the people who are in jails not for stopping a pipeline, and how that’s related to the way we’re seeing repression happening too. I also want to keep in mind that when we see these waves of repression against justice activists and land defenders, there are a lot of unseen and continued repression that sometimes are related or rise at the same time and in connected ways to communities that are around where that level of repression is happening. I know that sometimes in direct action communities, we talked about the real action starts when you’re in jail, and anybody who goes in jail for principled direct action and then spends their time in there thinking they’re special or somehow the one who doesn’t belong in there, compared to everybody else who’s in there, that is somebody who I do not have an affinity with.Anybody who spends any amount of time inside a jail or prison with a heart or mind should come out an abolitionist.

When I was in jail, I noticed that people were speaking really clearly in there about how… My cellmate was saying, “There are more cops around, and they’re coming after homeless people.” She’d been picked up for charging her phone late at night at a gas station, and she’d been living on the streets for four years. They’re not coming for the people who are with all of the money and the power who are making it impossible to live in these regions. They’re coming for poor people. When people like us are in there, we’re coming out and we’re using community bail funds to help people get out. Well, now they’re trying to criminalize community bail funds. In the places that I go to jail, most people are in there because they don’t have anyone to post bail for them. They don’t have phone numbers memorized. There’s no support for people getting out. They’re getting bail denied for total bullshit. They’re in there for crimes of desperation and poverty for the most part. Women who are in there grew up in foster care and their kids are in foster care. It’s a look directly at the way that the state has zero interest in doing anything except punishing people.

That’s what the state exists for. They’re going to be punishing us, and they’re going to be punishing people with a lot less resources and a lot less supportive community than movement community usually has. And it’s all connected. Even the way that the oil and gas industry routinely hires ex-felons in a situation where people who are convicted of felonies have a really hard time finding employment and so are pushed into really predatory fields where they’re likely to get injured and they are not going to talk about what they’re witnessing or what’s happening to them, where there are few other options. I know that Mama Jules, before her action, has talked a lot about the way that man camps have impacted her community. The rise in drugs and overdoses for people in Appalachian communities, it’s something a lot of Appalachian locals talk about when they’re opposing the pipeline. And the wave of punishment and carceral approaches to people who are experiencing addiction and overdose in the communities where I live, that’s what these police are doing. That’s what the increase in carcerality is doing in these communities where we’re seeing these projects be pushed through. And meanwhile, the big companies are getting glad-handed, getting whatever they want. That’s something we need to look at when we’re talking about repression and the way that the state is really trying to crush everybody.

TFSR: Those are all really good points. One thing that we saw out of the Atlanta folks is that people going in started making connections with and advocating, using the platform, on behalf of other folks that were in one of the deadliest jails on Turtle Island. Not promoting themselves, but doing that to build community and to expand movement empathy and knowledge. That is the other side of what Toby was saying about repression and how it can be frightening. If we do it right, these connections across generations and across geographical constraints can really blossom into a wider quilt of defense. If we build projects that can do bail support, or that can do post-release support, or that can attempt even cop watching, or whatever mutual aid, all these things, just like defending a few specific ecosystems from getting a pipeline is going to spread out that defense to not contributing towards global climate change.

MF: That is such a beautiful thing to say. I would be remiss to not bring into this conversation that it can feel like cold comfort to say, “We’re in good company.” But I know talking to people in Atlanta, and hearing from people in Appalachia, and then remembering our history, on a practical level, it makes us stronger to remember our movement history, to remember that we are in good company, that people have been here before, to remember the Green Scare, to remember J20, to remember radical history before that. It can be comforting and also can provide practical ideas and help us with our radical imaginations. I know that those are some discussions that people have been having when we’re facing repression. Not to say, “Oh, this has happened before, it’s no big deal”. But to say, “It is a big deal.” And there are people who we can talk to, that we can have fellowship with, take comfort in the camaraderie of, and talk about new ideas for taking our chance and outmaneuvering. Radical people have always been good at finding openings and prying those openings open a little further. I don’t see any sign of us stopping doing that. This is a stubborn community.

TFSR: Recalcitrant even. Go ahead, Toby.

Toby: A final point for me is that, similarly, our movements are stronger when we realize both our shared power and our shared connections. But they’re also made stronger going through these things because it forces us to look back at shared history and also imagine new features together, imagine new ways of building resilience and how in an ever-changing and ever more scary and scary world, as looming catastrophe is on our horizon on so many levels, how we can survive together, and how we can build and be there for each other.

TFSR: Madeline, Toby, thank you so much both for being here and taking the time and for the work that you do. I really appreciate it.

MF: Thanks for having us.

Toby: Thank you so much for having us.

TFSR: You can learn more including how to get involved and support the legal fund for folks struggling against the MVP at aapsolidarity.org or find the Appalachians Against Pipelines on social media. You can find some of Madeline’s writings at madelineffitch.com.