A poem by Mara Robbins about the Circle of Protection event on August 13, 2022 in Elliston, VA. The Circle of Protection is a community event that supported the fight against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and now the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Circle of Protection, 2022

The river's alive with sun-warmed stone, footprints
circling the sand. Dogs and goats and children
drift from picnic towards where water went,
restless as guests with guitar and mandolin
joining banjo, bass, unbroken conversation.
Mountains mention us to each other, tuning
into intentions and instrument's foundation
with resonant gaze. Witness faces blooming
as they're loved. Chosen. Speak and sing and listen
with hearts and minds unfolding into growing
and supporting and uplifting. What's missing
is you. Your voice. Your ripe garden. Slowing
down enough to feel what is around you.
To hear what streams and rivers know is true.

This is a poem about an action 4 years ago that was meant to delay the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303 mile long natural gas pipeline cutting from the central piedmont region up to Northern West Virginia. Unfortunately, this pipeline was fully constructed in 2025, however, it is not yet fully operational. In the rush to complete the pipeline before all of the necessary research into its viability was complete, it was constructed without the capability to carry enough pressure to move gas through the entire system. There is no a push to set up pressure station along the length of the pipeline at regular intervals in order to make it viable. These pumping stations are not without issue:

• They will expose vulnerable communities to toxic natural gas
• They create points along the pipeline that potential explosion points
• The specific locations that have been selected for these pumping stations implicate a concerted effort to disrupt and disarm efforts to help indigenous and immigrant commmunities

This one comes with two content warnings.

1. This documentary contains some language that is today considered outdated
2. This documentary discusses troubling topics such as physical threats of gun violence

Understanding the outdated language in this documentary in 2026

It was produced in 1999 by people struggling to survive in the wake of the AIDS crisis and without any of the communal support that we can sometimes take for granted today. Some of the terminology used in this little documentary are to our today's ears outdated. In the introduction the narrator references "transexuals" when we today would almost certainly use the term "transgender people" in respect for that the transgender experience is any experience that a person has through the lens of identifying as a different gender than their presented sex at birth.

I want to make it abundantly clear that in this community (!spoonbreadtube@slrpnk.net ), we believe:

• Trans men are men
• Trans women are women
• Nonbinary people are real and valid
• Intersex people do not need to be medically corrected unless that is what they choose for themselves
• No one's identity is defined by surgery or lack thereof, but instead on their own experienced identity

We request that you respect others and their lived experiences regardless of what your preconception of who they should be are. Please look at them with both your observing eye and your assessing eye and meet them where they are.

I also please ask that people be cognizant of that our modern day understandings of the world we exist in does not always match our past experiences. 27 years have passed since this documentary was produced. In that time the primary setting for this documentary, Harlan County Kentucky, 16% of the county still awaits its first access to the internet.

That said, I would like to also point out that in 1999 the people making this documentary were using LGBTQ terminology, putting them considerably ahead of most of the rest of the country who came around on that about 10 years later. The point I'm trying to make is that information that really matters reaches people at different times. I do not want anyone looking at this and seeing the backwards Appalachian stereotype without also taking a moment to see the ways that this group was also progressive.

Understanding the threats of gun violence

I also do not want to say any of that and belittle any of the hardcore trauma that is discussed in this documentary. Lord knows I've known people who experienced some of that themselves. One of my classmates growing up moved to my hometown after his mom threatened to shoot him dead where he stood for being bisexual. The main thing I want to convey to people is how much strength it takes for anyone to be themselves. It can be easy to take this for granted, but across the world people who identify as queer live in defiance of hierarchies that threaten them. I am incredibly proud to count myself amongst that number even if I live in a part of Appalachia that is more accepting of me than has been the norm in Eastern Kentucky.

All of that said, me and some friends once went to Rowan County to get a marriage license because sometimes joy is an act of defiance and we needed the county clerk there to see that we're unbreakable.

This documentary is one of those things where you have to look past who's doing the communicating and who they're communicating to to see what the people in the documentary are really going on about.

I particularly noticed that the professional forester making activated charcoal is someone who frequently talks about how the fact that there aren't more local water filtration manufacture as a cottage industry is because banks don't provide loans for that. It's part of how poverty is enforced as policy, however only one part of his spiel was presented as part of this plea for help (possibly thinking maybe a bank would finally finance a loan).

But I also noticed that in this fight for our water systems in central Appalachia is centered in this video on the religious organizations working against the fossil fuel industry. The coalition is broad and the United Methodists shown here are acting alongside agnostics, atheists, buddhists, and Cherokee spiritual practitioners. However, they've gotten the most media attention. All of us support them in their efforts to help us, and they take the advantages they can get, but we also all can't help but notice that the media doesn't want to demonstrate how broad this coalition is.

Because that's the BIG thing here. Our local community members are doing everything they can to protect each other from the damaging of industrialization that does not benefit the working people of this world. The mining companies come here promising they'll make us rich and then 10 years later about 6 people are rich in money and everyone's poor in food and water (the only things you can truly ever be rich in).

This is a locally produced documentary about a group of families who fought Jim Crow and won.