
The quick background: Last month, Tim DeChristopher, an activist and recent University of Utah graduate, was convicted for derailing an illegal auction that would have leased a huge chunk of his state’s public lands for oil and gas drilling. And in February, thirteen Kentuckians including Wendell Berry and Teri Blanton risked arrest to stage a sit-in (dubbed Kentucky Rising) in their Governor’s office, refusing to leave for four days until they got what they wanted: a promise from the Governor that he would pay attention, finally, to the havoc caused by mountaintop-removal coal mining in Kentucky.