Daryl Hannah - one of the few gorgeous Hollywood starlets willing to be photographed with me - was arrested in West Virgina on Tuesday during a protest against a coal mining company.
Click here to read an account and see a video by The Charleston Gazette.
Massey Energy apparently wants to rip the top off of a mountain, which is understandable because that’s what coal mining companies do. And energy-craving American consumers will be happy to burn up the rocks they remove, global warming or not, so they can keep watching reruns of Hollywood movies on big-screen TVs.
Arresting protesters for sitting in the street, though, is a cowardly and ineffective tactic. It only plays into protesters’ hands. Kind of like what’s happening in Iran only in America you can’t seem to get the authorities to dump acid onto crowds from helicopters.
Besides, Hannah has been through this before. In 2006, she was arrested in Los Angeles while trying to save an urban community garden from the ravages of a developer who wanted to build another boring warehouse.
Some call it breaking the law. Others call it civil disobedience.
Hannah is complicated. On the screen, she is both the sweet little mermaid in “Splash,” and the one-eyed assassin Elle Driver in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” movies.
In real life, she’s an unflinching enviromental activist who is willing to risk petty charges from petty law enforcement officers, and the petty companies they protect, to stand up for what she believes.
OK. So yes. I work for Dow Jones and should be rooting for every corporation’s right to extract minerals from the Earth for the good of all mankind, even if it takes a little toll here and there on the environment. But I am standing up for Hannah because I am still starstruck.
Hannah spent 30 minutes with me during the Democratic National Convention in Denver last summer. We sat in a cozy, quiet booth in the basement of a tavern. Just me and her. And yes, I melted. And yes, I am still bragging about it.
Click here to read the column I wrote about Hannah last summer.
