Documentary exposes America's big dirty secret

[pnwmom]

From the National Catholic Reporter, a warning about the subversion of democracy by Big Coal.

http://ncronline.org/news/justice/documentary-exposes-americas-big-dirty-secret

SNIP

“The Last Mountain” is the story of the small community of Coal River Valley, W.Va., that takes on Massey Energy, the company that controls all the coal mining in Coal River Valley. When Massey planned to blast Coal River Mountain, the last mountain “that has not been blasted to ashes,” the community took a stand. Local activists like Maria Gunnoe and Bo Webb, whose families have lived in West Virginia for generations and who have seen their homes and communities devastated, led the fight, joined by activists from outside the state, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The mountain still stands.

At a recent press day here in Los Angeles, Kennedy’s outrage over the coal industry’s hidden-in-plain-sight influence demonstrated his passion for people, the environment and democracy.

One journalist said that his reaction to the film was anger, and he asked Kennedy if Big Coal was winning.
“They have succeeded in doing catastrophic damage to the state ; they flattened an area the size of Delaware, 1.4 million acres over the last 10 years according to the EPA, buried 2,200 miles of rivers and streams, cut down 500 of the biggest mountains in West Virginia.


“The problem,” Kennedy continued, “is where you see large-scale destruction of the environment of this magnitude you also see the subversion of democracy, and that is the real victory Big Coal has accomplished in West Virginia -- the disappearance of the democratic public process at the local level so that local people can no longer participate in the determination and decision of how public trust assets, like air and water, are allocated.”

SNIP

[intheflow]

1. K&R. n/t

[DBoon]

2. and they will do that to the entire country unless they are stopped

nt