2.12.2011

Wendell Berry Personifies Leadership From the Bottom

Wendall Berry walks the talk and always has. He's not afraid to take on the most powerful agribusiness or mining interests nor is he afraid of getting his hands muddy. Berry has spent his entire adult life writing about and working as a small organic farmer. After nearly 30 years of hard work on my own small organic farm nobody has earned my respect more than Wendell Berry has.

Berry has joined other activist,s retired coal miners and residents in a sit-in of the Governor's office in the Kentucky capitol. The mining corporations control the governments through donations and bribery so they can continue to extract resources without paying the true costs of their destruction. That's capitalism everywhere not just in coal country, externalize every possible cost and declare huge short term profits then let somebody else pay for the clean up generations later.

“This is not something we’re doing for pleasure,” said Wendell Berry, who has been active in the movement to abolish mountaintop removal mining for years. “We’re doing it because it’s the next thing to do after all our attempts to attract serious attention to these problems have failed. We’re doing this as a last resort. Our intention is to appeal first to our elected representatives and the governor, and failing that, to appeal over their heads to our fellow citizens.”

Wendall Berry personifies leadership from the bottom. Wendell Berry is the author of more than forty books of essays, poetry and novels. He has worked a farm in Henry County, Kentucky since 1965. "Berry is the prophetic American voice of our day."- CSMonitor. Wendall Berry and his cohorts are fighting the good fight, fighting for real change now and hope for the future.