What do movie stars Matt Damon and Daryl Hannah have in common? They draw attention to environmental problems. Both have been in the news recently, Damon for a movie on the subject of dangers of gas fracking and Hannah for getting arrested in Texas for trying to block the building of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Pushing the “green message” to a largely disinterested public can be tough. But many people appear willing to sit up and listen when their favorite entertainers chime in.
Both Damon and Hannah are no laggards when it comes to trying to highlight threats to the environment. They should receive thanks for this.
On this score, movie stars might have their uses.
But why does it have to take a well-known star to wake up the mainstream media? And why does the general public only seem to listen when a star plugs the green message?
Living in a dream world
The modern-day world is packed with false heroes. The latest moves of the Kardashians, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are followed with baited breath. Every slip of the façade around the British royal couple is followed closely. James Bond star Daniel Craig just can’t keep out of the media spotlight. Even the reputation of dead DJs, it seems, can be dragged from the grave to be poured over.
Trash news gets attention, can make front page, and often edges out what is important.
On the political stage, presidents and presidential hopefuls become heroes (or villains) and their every utterance is debated ad nauseum. The “servants of the people” become inflated with self-importance and far too much is expected of them. So often the media focuses on the fluff, not the substance. On this score, money, jobs and growth is the mantra.
The mainstream media so often fails to recognize what is really important, not helped by the corporations that own the big media houses, driven by bottom-line issues and business as usual. And dependence on advertising twists editorial values.
The real heroes
Politicians are fiddling while the world burns. Little wonder that the actions of relatively small groups of people to protect the environment get little or no attention, or conversely, are labeled as “radical.” Maybe reporters don’t want to get their shoes dirty, can’t afford the gas to get to the protest site, or are corralled in their office, pressured 24/7 for “more important news.”
These are not the courageous, principled journalists we would like to see.
Actress Hannah was alongside her and it was the arrest of the actress that made mainstream headlines.
Fairchild refused to sign TransCanada’s contract so they took a swath of her 300 acre farm through “eminent domain,” a claim on land in the public interest. “I hate to see my land torn up… it just breaks my heart,” she said.
The great-grandmother and the actress were put in jail.
Clearly, quipped Hannah’s manager to the media, “The streets of Winnsboro will be much safer tonight now that they’ve gotten that 78-year-old great grandmother off the streets.”
Young and old
Maggie Gorry, 22, was a blockade hero for spending 48 hours up a 40-foot timber pole in the path of the pipeline.
She delayed further clear-cutting operations on the site for two days. When she descended from her perch, she was arrested and released on $11,000 bail. (See full story here.)
“People need to take a stand” on the project, he said.
Global struggle
As great-grandmother Fairchild said, her protest is not just about her land. It is bigger than that.
These individuals are putting their freedom and in some cases their lives on the line for a just cause. They need to win the hearts and minds of the people and it is a difficult struggle. And the mainstream media tends to ignore their stories, on occasion writing the protestors off as oddballs or radicals.
On the other hand, the momentum is growing, to a large extent fuelled by alternative media and social media, including Facebook.
Individuals do matter
Although most people around the world are asleep, lulled into a false sense of security or feeling of entitlement, or just struggling to survive, there is a growing movement for change, with alternative media and social media picking up the story and providing an alternative to the failure of the mainstream hacks.
As environmentalist Michael Asher told Earth Tribe: “What we need is not the support of governments, but to win the hearts and minds of others. When enough people agree – when a critical mass is reached – governments will become simply irrelevant. The man sitting on the box loses his power when everyone walks away and gets their food elsewhere.”
While mainstream Western media obsesses about Kate Middleton’s breasts, U.S. President Obama’s “stumblings,” Mitt Romney’s “aggressiveness” and the popularity of viral Gangnam style pop, a movement is growing, a movement driven by ordinary people, individuals.
The thanks are due to these individual heroes who put themselves on the line.
Eleanor Fairchild and Daryl Hannah protest
“Why I am against the pipeline”
