
Here are some of the excerpts from Ashley Judd’s speech.
"I am very proud to be a Kentuckian. And, of the many things my Creator has seen fit to allow me to accomplish, being an Eastern Kentuckian is the simple fact that brings me the most honor, the greatest sense of self. I love and am proud of being a hillbilly."
"And it gets bigger with every Appalachian mountaintop that is blown up, every holler that is filled, every stream that is buried, every wild thing that is wantonly and recklessly killed, every ecosystem that is diminished, every job that is lost to mechanization, every family that is pitted one against the other by the state-sanctioned, federal government-supported coal industry-operated rape of Appalachia: mountaintop removal coal mining."
"Children in eastern Kentucky draw creeks black. They don’t know they're supposed to run clear."
Judd points out the Appalachian Mountains are the oldest in North America, possibly in the world. She questions whether mountain top removal would be allowed in any other historic mountain ranges.
"I am here to tell you, mountaintop removal coal mining simply would not happen in any other mountain range in the United States. It is utterly inconceivable that the Smokies would be blasted, the Rockies razed, the Sierra Nevadas flattened, that bombs the equivalent to Hiroshima would be detonated every single week for three decades. The fact that the Appalachians are the Appalachians makes this environmental genocide possible and permissible."
Judd calls mountain top removal “strip mining on steroids.” She says coal companies launch massive PR campaigns to spread their “incessant propaganda” to “celebrate the site as an example of how good for Appalachia mountain top removal coal mining is.”
“Why they even built a prison on one former site. Guess what? The foundation subsided and the locals call it sink sink.”
Judd also made an apparent reference to StoneCrest Golf Course in Prestonsburg.
“On another site they built a golf course. I’m not to keen on reinforcing stereotypes about my people, but I don’t know a lot of hillbillies who golf.”You can also visit: http://hazweb.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=other&action=display&thread=32273 to see the genius that is Eastern Kentucky.
Source:
www.wkyt.com/blogs/neilsnotebook/98002604.html