The little sycophants of Big Coal outsiders are yapping at the heels of eastern Kentucky-raised actress Ashley Judd again.
This time the barking dogs of Big Coal are howling in Floyd County, Kentucky--where 82 % of the coal mining jobs have been lost thanks to mechanization and massive mountaintop removal operations, where more than one third of the area remains in entrenched poverty due to outside corporate control and a county devastated by mountaintop removal operations and virtually no post-mining economic development or reclamation, where a fly-rock boulder the "size of a pickup truck" came blasting into a nearby home from a mountaintop removal operation.
Over 250 mountains--and historic communities--have been eliminated in eastern Kentucky alone in the last decades. Want to understand the despair? Just check out the new film documentary on mountaintop removal, Deep Down, based in eastern Kentucky.
The Friends of Absentee Big Coal Corporations That Rape Local Economies and Land (FARCE) on the greens at the Stone Crest golf course in Floyd County even opted for some coal porn--and a poster featuring a topless Judd--to bring Big Coal Gone Wild to a new low.
But, hell, Ashley Judd needs no defense. Appalachians know Judd, her celebrated mother and sister, her heritage, her dedication and work for the region--they know which side is she on.
Last year, when Diane Sawyer waded into the complexities of Appalachian poverty with her misguided TV program, Ashley Judd was defending Appalachian mountaineers and their culture, their heritage, their land, and their economies from outside Big Coal abuse.
Unlike the Big Coal lackies, Judd has been defending her progressive Appalachian history and people for decades.
The real question is: When will other major public figures, artists, actors, writers and even politicians--all of whom are benefitting in their urban green cities from coal-fired plants using coal stripmined from Appalachia and 23 other sacrificed states--going to stand up with Judd, and demand a roadmap to a just transition to a clean energy future?
Here's Judd addressing the National Press Club last month: