As a groundbreaking clean energy counterpart to this summer's extraordinary Food, Inc. documentary on the agribusiness, the long-awaited Coal Country film on the cradle-to-grave process of generating our coal-fired electricity will be hitting the theaters next week with the big bang of an ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosive.
And Big Coal ain't happy.
After a year-long campaign of threats and intimidation, the Big Coal lobby plans to have its Friends of Coal sycophants out in force to picket the premiere of the film on July 11, 7pm, at La Belle Theater in the South Charleston Museum in Charleston, West Virginia.
It looks like a good Liberty Brew & View movie.
Biggers writes about a public hearing in West Virginia where a young man comes to the same conclusion I remember hearing in Harlan County, USA.
“Both sides are scared. And we’re screaming insults back and forth at each other, and I think we’re losing sight of the source of our fears. West Virginia is the poorest state in the country, and southern West Virginia is the poorest part of it. And I think people are scared that they will lose their jobs and be flipping burgers. You look out and that’s all you see. Mining and flipping burgers. And I argue that the coal company, that they want it that way. That they want that to be the only options. That is the only way they can get support on the way they treat their workers and treat our community.”
The same thing could be said for Southern Illinois.
The soundtrack is by Kathy Mattea who's worth listening to even if you don't see the movie.