Anti-fracking groups prepare for national convergence in Washington D.C. on 28JUL12

I learned about the rally in D.C. through 350.org ( http://www.350.org ) and will be attending because I am from NW Pennsylvania where fracking is happening and because the gop / tea-bagger governor, tom corbett, and the gop / tea-bagger controlled legislature has turned the exploitation of Pennsylvania's environment and natural resources over to big oil and gas companies. Governor corbett has decided the best course of action concerning fracking is to take no action at all, the same course of action he decided to take on the Penn State - jerry sandusky child molestation scandal that came to light while he was the Attorney General of the Commonwealth. He showed no concern for jerry sandusky's victims and shows no concern for the victims of fracking in the state. This from Waging Nonviolence and StopTheFrackAttack.org www.stopthefrackattack.org/schedule/

by Mike Sandmel  

Opponents of the natural gas-drilling practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, will take another major step in building their movement this weekend when they gather in Washington D.C. for a national convergence called Stop The Frack Attack. There will be two days of trainings and workshops, a day of citizen lobbying on Capital Hill and then a rally and march that will deliver toxic fracking waste water to the headquarters of the American Petroleum Institute and the American Natural Gas Alliance. Organizers are expecting upwards of 3,000 people to participate — an impressive number, considering that just a few years ago fracking was something few Americans knew about.
In those few years, however, “fracktavists” have managed to elevate concerns over the air, water and climate impacts of unconventional natural gas drilling from rural kitchen tables to the national stage. They’ve fought tireless state and regional campaigns using a combination of savvy media strategies and good old-fashioned community organizing and they’ve won some significant victories.
More than 200 municipalities, as well as the state of Vermont, have passed ordinances to ban fracking. In New Jersey, conservative Governor Chris Christie has been pressured into signing a one-year moratorium on the practice. Meanwhile, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has also signed a moratorium, but looks poised to lift it selectively to allow drilling in the state’s gas-rich southern tier. He is already facing heavy criticism and significant political mobilization.
The issue has become so salient in New York that Late Show host David Letterman, known for his reliably light and inoffensive material, went on a strikingly unfunny minute long rant against fracking last week, decrying:

Greedy oil and gas companies of this country have decided that they can squeeze every last little ounce of oil and gas out of previously pumped wells by injecting the substrata of our planet with highly toxic carcinogenic chemicals … they’re poisoning our drinking water … ladies and gentlemen, we’re screwed.

Why did Letterman make this statement now? Maybe fracking just really touches a nerve for Dave, or perhaps he’s trying to keep from being outdone by the likes of Jimmy Fallon, who also recently criticized the controversial gas-drilling practice on his show. Whatever the combination of reasons, it seems pretty unlikely that Letterman would have taken on the power of the fossil fuel industry if he didn’t recognize that he’d have the support of an enormous and rapidly growing grassroots movement.
Up to this point, anti-fracking activism has largely occurred at the state and local level but organizers are hoping that this weekend’s events will help elevate their concerns within the broader national debate about energy and the environment.
According to Lauren Pagel, policy coordinator for Earthworks, Stop the Frack Attack “emerged through conversations with impacted communities, grassroots groups and national environmental organizations … we want to push members of Congress to pass laws that make fracking less dangerous, and make sure the Obama administration is doing the same with their policies. But, we also know that the majority of the regulation of fracking goes on at the state level, so we want to support state efforts as much as possible. ”
There’s reason to believe that organizing at all levels can be synergistic. Russell Mendell, an organizer for Water Defense in New York City expressed:

My hope is that our success at stopping fracking in New York will give strength to other fights in other states, but it goes both ways. It’s been widely speculated that Governmer Cuomo will run for president in 2016 and we know he’s keeping an eye on the national conversation. We also know that other states may follow New York’s lead. A big national presence is important for the fight in New York and vice versa.

This recognition that there is strength in a network has allowed the Stop The Frack Attack coalition to grow to include 136 environmental, labor and religious groups of varying sizes. Of course, the diversity of this coalition poses some challenges. There are significant rifts in the movement between those calling for tighter regulation of fracking and those who will not be satisfied with anything less than a complete ban. Pagel recognizes this challenge, but points to the benefits of a “big tent” strategy to advance the common agenda of all of the groups involved.

This sentiment is echoed by Kari Matsko, a 40-year-old project manager for a software-consulting firm who discovered in 2006 that her Lake County, Ohio home was smack in the middle of oil and gas fields leased by her distant neighbors. As Matsko explained:

I was introduced to the risks of oil and gas when I was sickened by fumes from the drilling, my neighbors were a little bit closer to the drill site and they had to evacuate their house. Their children were in the hospital at 3 a.m. It was terrible. … I felt like it was my civic duty to act. I wanted to get the word out there in terms of the risk. No one was conveying the risks. We want to raise awareness and to get information out there and empower people to make informed decisions in the face of all the ads that the industry has been running on TV. … It’s going to be helpful to Ohio … to get attention on the issue and build awareness.

But for Matsko, who now serves on the coalition’s advisory committee, the networking and capacity-building components of the convergence are just as important as the public demonstrations. For her, a successful outcome is one in which “folks are able to walk away with new relationships and new information that may aide in work with their governments. If we can prevent just one case of what happened to me and my neighbors that’s a victory … this mission is ongoing and never ending and these kind of efforts help keep your spirits up and remind you that you’re not alone even if you lose one battle.”
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/07/anti-fracking-groups-prepare-for-national-convergence-in-washington-d-c/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WagingNonviolence+%28Waging+Nonviolence%29

Thousands to Protest Dirty and Dangerous Fracking on Saturday

 Above is a map of the Rally Site, Marked by “B”. The Closet Metro is Union Station, Marked by “A”!

Posted on July 25th, 2012 by Hilary Lewis
Contact: Molly Haigh, 907-750-1999, molly@fitzgibbonmedia.com

Thousands to Protest Dirty and Dangerous Fracking on Saturday

“Stop the Frack Attack” is First-Ever National Rally on Fracking

Rally Endorsed by Mark Ruffalo, Ed Begley Jr., Margot Kidder, Bill McKibben, Josh Fox, Cornel West, Vandana Shiva, and James Hansen

Washington, DC– Thousands of “fracktivists” will travel to Washington DC this week for Stop the Frack Attack, the first-ever national protest to stop dirty and dangerous fracking. The 3-day summit will culminate in a rally on the West Lawn of the Capitol on Saturday, July 28 at 2pm, followed by a march at 3:30pm to the headquarters of America’s Natural Gas Alliance and the American Petroleum Institute. More than 130 local and national organizations are joining the summit to call on Congress to take action to protect community rights, public health, drinking water, and the global climate from the impacts of fracking. They will also demand the closure of legal loopholes that allow the oil and gas industry to ignore parts of the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and other bedrock environmental laws while fracking.
Who: 136 local, state, and national organizations and thousands of fracktivists, environmentalists, and climate activists.
Speakers include: Bill McKibben, Board President and Co-Founder of 350.org; Josh Fox, producer of “Gasland;” Calvin Tillman, former Mayor of DISH, Texas; Allison Chin, Board President of the Sierra Club; and community members from swing states affected by fracking.
What: First-ever national mobilization to “Stop the Frack Attack”.
Where: West Lawn of the Capitol.
When: 2pm,  Saturday, July 28th, followed by a march to America’s Natural Gas Alliance and the American Petroleum Institute departing from the Capitol at 3:30pm.
Visuals: Thousands of activists in front of the US Capitol building with signs and banners calling on Congress to take immediate action to stop dangerous fracking. Activists in hazmat suits will deliver jugs of contaminated water to the headquarters of the America’s Natural Gas Alliance, and large drilling rigs will transform into windmills in front of the American Petroleum Institute headquarters.
**Full schedule for the Stop the Frack Attack  is available at www.stopthefrackattack.org/schedule/ **

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Stop the Frack Attack will be a national mobilization on the West Lawn of the Capitol on July 28th, 2012. The mobilization has been endorsed by over 130 community based and national organizations and has an advisory board of fracking-affected community representatives from 8 states.

http://www.stopthefrackattack.org/ 

Obama Rejects Keystone XL from 350.ORG 18JAN12

THIS IS HUGE!!!! Pres Obama defied the threats from the president of the american petroleum institute of there being repercussions if the keystone xl pipeline was not approved and decided today to DENY APPROVAL of the project. The repiglicans and tea-baggers and too many democrats in congress are squealing like the oil industry owned pigs they are, but the President listened to the people and to the science and made the right decisionfor the nation, not just one powerful industry. This from 350.org, leader in the flight against transcanada and keystone xl. AND by the by this battle is far from over, if fact, from this point on it is going to get down and dirty because this is an election year. I hope you will click the link and join 350.org and participate in their campaign against this filthy tar sands oil pipeline and for cleaner, greener renewable energy. 


Dear Friends

We wanted to share with you the news: this afternoon the Obama Administration announced that they are denying the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. You did good work, against some of the longest possible odds.

For years, the knock on the President Obama was that he backed down too easily in the face of opposition. Not here. When Republicans in Congress forced the issue again by passing a 60-day time limit on the President's final decision, he stood strong and denied the permit. And that was despite the most explicit threats from Big Oil: that they would exact ‘huge political consequences’ if he did the right thing on Keystone. Make no mistake—this is a brave decision.

And make no mistake about this either—Big Oil will do everything it can to overturn that decision, because they are not used to losing. They have one weapon—money. They’ve used it to buy the allegiance of many Representatives and Senators and now they’ll use Congress to try and get their dirty work done. That’s what happened when the President delayed the permit last November, and we should expect them to try again now.

That’s why we’re going to Congress and Big Oil, beginning next Tuesday the 24th. If you can join us, we’re meeting at noon on the West Lawn, and you should wear a referee’s shirt. We’re going to ‘blow the whistle’ on the corruption that passes for business as usual on Capitol Hill, where people take money from companies whose interests they vote on. If this happened at the Super Bowl it would be a national scandal; we’ve got to make sure it’s seen that way in our political life too. We know it’s short notice, but we hope we can get at least 500 people there. Not to get arrested, at least not this time, but to make quite a noise.

If you can make it, click here to join the action in DC.
If you can't make it (or even if you will be there) can you help us spread the word about the good news, and the action next week?
Click here to share on Facebook
Click here to Tweet

We’ll be fighting to prevent Keystone, but we’ll also be fighting to shut off the flow of handouts to the oil, gas, and coal industries, and to take away their right to use the atmosphere as an open sewer into which to dump their carbon for free. This industry, simply because it iss rich, has been cosseted too long. Time to fight back.

What you’ve done these past eight months is quite amazing—and against all the odds. We’ve won no permanent victory (environmentalists never do) but we have shown that spirited people can bring science back to the fore. Blocking one pipeline was never going to stop global warming—but it is a real start, one of the first times in the two-decade fight over climate change when the fossil fuel lobby has actually lost.

Rest assured they’ll fight like heck—their world-record profits depend on it. We better fight just as hard, because the world depends on it.
-Bill

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350.org is building a global movement to solve the climate crisis. Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for email alerts. You can help power our work by getting involved locally and donating here.
What is 350? Go to our website to learn about the science behind the movement.

Direct threats from Big Oil (KEYSTONE XL BATTLE CONTINUES) 5JAN12

THE battle against the keystone xl pipeline is not over and the pres of the american petroleum institute is making flat out threats against politicians who get in their way on this issue. Join in this call to action by 350.org (tar sands action) and send a message to Pres Obama to stand firm against the tar sands pipeline. Click the link or the header to participate.....

Just in case you thought there was anything subtle about the Keystone battle, you need to hear what the president of the American Petroleum Institute -- the oil industry's #1 front group -- said today: if the President doesn’t approve the project there will “huge political consequences.”

That’s as direct a threat as you’re ever going to hear in DC, and it shows just how mad you made the oil industry last year by exposing Keystone for the climate-killing danger it is.  And the oil industry can obviously make good on their threats -- they’ve got all the money on earth, and thanks to Citizens United they can use it without restriction in our elections. They’re not used to ever losing.

So far the Obama administration is standing firm in the face of Big Oil's bullying -- the White House made it completely clear last month that if the oil industry and its harem in Congress forced a speeded-up review, it would lead to an outright rejection of the permit for the pipeline. We expect they’ll keep their word.

Here's what I think we need to do.

1- Let the president know you’ve got his back when he rejects the pipeline. Tell him that addressing climate change is the key to our future, and that you’re glad he’s not bending.

2- Take the offensive against the oil industry. If they’re going to try and ram Keystone down our throats we’re going to try and take away something they hold dear, the handouts that Congress gives them each and every year. They’re the richest industry on earth, they’re doing great damage to the planet -- and they expect us to pay for it with our tax dollars. 

Can you send a quick note to President Obama covering those two key points?

Click here to send a message to the President: www.350.org/stand-strong

Here's the note I'm sending:

President Obama: Thank you for opposing the rushed Keystone XL pipeline permit. Responding to climate change is critical to preserving our collective future, and I hope this is a first step towards the dramatic changes we need to avoid catastrophe. PS: Please take handouts for the fossil fuel industry out of next year’s budget. There are people in America who need that money more.

There’s lots more to be done, of course. In the slightly longer run, we’ve got to take on the greatest subsidy of all: the special privilege that Congress gives the fossil fuel industry to use the atmosphere as an open sewer into which to dump its carbon for free.

But today -- right now, in the face of this kind of straight-up bullying -- it’s time to punch back. We’re nonviolent, but we’re not wimps.

Bill

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350.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries. You can join 350.org on Facebook by becoming a fan of our page at facebook.com/350org and follow us on twitter by visiting twitter.com/350. To join our list (maybe a friend forwarded you this e-mail) visit www.350.org/signup. To support our work, donate securely online at 350.org/donate.

What is 350? 350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Scientists measure carbon dioxide in "parts per million" (ppm), so 350ppm is the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. To get there, we need a different kind of PPM–a "people powered movement" that is made of people like you in every corner of the planet.