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Mountaintop mining moves civic participation

I think one reason why many don’t participate in civic life comes from the conclusion that it won’t make any difference.

They don’t buy into the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings on one continent can contribute to devastating weather on another. So why flap your wings about the way someone governs us or the way the behavior of others affects us?

That flapping won’t help.

I disagree. Collections of small actions do lead to big changes.

Several news items recently caught my attention and serve as examples of what I believe.

In Kentucky, mountaintop mining continues to vex residents. Kentucky and coal come hand in hand. But this mining technique polarizes many. A story in the Feb. 2 edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal focused on the “I Love the Mountains” benefit concert to raise awareness about what some young people see as the destructive nature of shearing off the tops of mountains for coal.

Lisa Wilner, director of religious education at First Unitarian Church in Louisville, described as a huge success the event she helped organize. Some 450 people packed into the church’s sanctuary before event planners started turning them away, she told me during a telephone interview. The event raised just less than $6,500, she said.

When it comes to the huge issue of mountaintop mining, those numbers may seem insignificant. But Lisa said something else that occurred after the concert is not.

“To me, the most significant thing is that I got an e-mail from Bill Caylor (of the Kentucky Coal Association), a leading person in the coalmining industry,” she said. “He wants to come and meet with the kids to offer then the other side of the story. Here we are a little church with a little group of 10 kids, and we got the attention of the coal industry.”

Indeed, isn’t that how it should and does work?

President Abraham Lincoln took center stage in Kentucky in February, too.

All kinds of special events marked the centennial celebration of the 16th president’s birth in Hodgenville. Actor Sam Waterston of “Law & Order” fame often portrays Lincoln. A reporter from the Courier-Journal recently interviewed Waterston about the challenges that come with the role.

Something Waterston said gets to the issue of succumbing to the temptation to become complacent and non-participatory at the cost of doing something that might really lead to change.

Many look at the political process these days and conclude that just voting, much less actively participating, represents a giant waste of time. The enormous and perhaps broken system belongs to a few and really does not represent many, I often hear. Why get involved?

Here’s what Waterston said about that and Lincoln: “Because the (political) system wasn’t screwy in the ways that it’s screwy now, because it was screwy in its own way then, but it didn’t prevent the emergence of this really enormously important thinker who made such an enormous difference to our history.”

Young people, all people, need to think aloud when it comes to civic life. Something tells me more than one great thinker stands among the ranks of Lisa’s youth group — and in plenty of other places, too.

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