MOVING MOUNTAINS
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Waterkeeper Alliance Chairman and environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent the past few years calling into question the environmental policies of the United States. It’s an issue that he has spent most of his personal and professional life fighting for and is one of the reasons he was asked to get involved with “The Last Mountain,” a documentary film about mountaintop coal removal in West Virginia’s Coal River Valley that was a selection for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
“This entire issue about mountaintop removal… is about making sure that we have an informed public. Documentary-making is one of the last surviving refuges of investigative journalists and it’s being terminated everywhere else, so this is the last place where you really can tell a story,” the New York Times best-selling author told Yeas & Nays during an interview at Bourbon Steak in Georgetown’s Four Seasons Hotel.
Kennedy, who gets a lot of screen time in the 95-minute documentary, says the film is not just about a fight over Coal River mountain mining and the corruption of public officials, but a battle that is critical for the community. “The issue down there in West Virginia is really about a failure of democracy. Wherever you see a large-scale destruction of the environment, you’ll see the subversion of democracy. This is a story about people who are trying to make their voices heard,” he says.
“The Last Mountain,” directed by Bill Haney, will be screened at E Street Cinema in Washington on June 3.