Paula Swearengin gets her head shorn by the late Larry Gibson, founder of the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation. On Memorial Day 2012, Swearengin and Gibson joined more than a dozen women (and a few men) on the steps of the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston to have their heads shaved to protest mountaintop-removal mining. "Watch out, King Coal," she said, "because here come the Queens of Appalachia." | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures Paula Swearengin blow-dries her hair one last time before having her head shaved to protest mountaintop-removal mining. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures On the steps of the West Virginia State Capitol, Paula Swearengin shears Tori Wong of Virginia. | Ami Vitale/Panos Pictures

Paula Swearengin
Glen White, West Virginia

When they started stripmining, I can remember my grandfather saying that he'd bag groceries before he'd blow up mountains. He said it was wrong, and he was a coal miner for 45 years. It's all he ever did.

In 2000 my grandpa died and my grandmother started getting sick, so I decided to take my boys back to West Virginia. I noticed things weren't right. A little girl next door had a rare form of bone cancer. There was a little boy, 14, dying of kidney failure. One day I was a working single mom, and the next day I was standing on mountains screaming at people.

I am a coal miner's daughter. I am a coal miner's granddaughter. But I am also a mother, and there's no way you can justify poisoning my children. My children have just as much right to a future, and just as much right to enjoy these mountains and the beauty of these mountains, as I did. And I will fight to my death for that. Watch out, King Coal, because here come the Queens of Appalachia. (Interviewed May 28, 2012)

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