Fourteen people, including the 76-year-old writer and farmer Wendell Berry, spent the weekend locked inside the Kentucky governor’s office demanding an end to mountaintop removal coal mining. Wendell Berry spoke to journalist Jeff Biggers about why he was committing civil disobedience.

bq.Wendell Berry: “Over these years, there’s been one protest after another, one march on Frankfort after another, one visit to a legislator after another. And last year we visited the governor. And all this has been without any perceptible political effect, no acknowledgment even that the problems exist. And so, we’re doing this simply as the next logical step. We’ve exhausted all other possibilities.”