Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Monday, May 28, 2012
Fracking? Here? Around My Mom?
Parents Against Everyday Poisons (PAEP) is having Fun with Posters as you may have noticed. This little guy is helping us send our message out. The photos are of course, download-able printable, full color Posters which can be made borderless on any home printer. We simply ask that you keep the copyright intact.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
A Rallying Cry: From One Mom Against Fracking to Many
An amazing thing is happening. All over North America, and in fact,
all over the world an astounding set of events is unfolding. Ordinary people are rising up against what's
wrong in this world and they are rising up with noble hearts and steel in their
spines. Yes, folks this is happening in
YOUR community and mine, in your back
yard and down the street, in shopping malls, and barber shops.
There is a movement afoot - a movement that is democracy in action, at
its core and full-blown. And although it
is Democracy at its best, it is not however, diplomacy - it refuses to tiptoe
around the issues that beset us, the dangers that threaten us at our very
doorsteps, it refuses to 'whitewash' or "greenwash" the facts, it
refuses to back down or bow out. It
refuses to euphemize the truth until it is unrecognizable from a lie. It refuses to talk about "gray"
areas when the writing is on the wall for all to see in black and white. It is a voice that will be heard in the hallowed halls of government, from the Town
Hall to the Offices of Prime Ministers and Presidents. FOR IT IS THE TRUE VOICE OF DEMOCRACY - it
is the voice of the people - and it won't be quelled!
Mothers have become a part of this "voice" - mothers in
Erie, Colorado who fight to keep shale gas industry, a.k.a. "fracking"
out of the schoolyards where their children play and whose children breathe the
very air that may one day, in the not too distant future, become laced with cancer-causing
benzene from the "fracking" industry that stands to profit handsomely
from it.
Mothers and Fathers can be found all over North America who will
continue to fight for their children's well-being and a future bright with
hope. Calvin Tillman the father of two
young boys is another one of those parents who will not back down from the
fight. His children suffered health
problems in the tiny Town of Dish, Texas - a Town surrounded by Gas Wells. Mr. Tillman, now the former Mayor of the
Town, continues to fight the unreasonable demands that the Industry places on
Communities, Families and children's health. The demands of the Industry insist that you breathe benzene-laced air, quench your thirst with industry-tainted water and raise your children in the cesspool of toxic waste and human misery that Frack Industry leaves behind.
Another community of Mothers and Fathers and Grandparents are taking
the lead to keep Shale Gas from threatening the health and lives of their
children - and that is the Community of Wales, New York where Grandmothers and
Grandfathers are leading the charge to stop plans to turn the Sgt. Mark A. Rademacher
Memorial Park into a Shale Gas Industrial Zone of Compressor Stations.
We could examine every scientific fact - pro and con - surrounding the Fracking Industry, but as
Parents and Grandparents, only one scientific fact is important to us - and
that is the finding that children are more susceptible to toxins and to damage by air
pollution due to the physiological differences between them and adults (Mt. Sinai Children's Environmental Clinic). This finding is the single most important fact concerning Shale Gas Fracking Industry. It is the one thing that occupies my mind when I get up in the morning and when I go to bed at night. This one fact tells me that whatever we as adults suffer at the hands of Fracking Industry - our precious children will suffer immeasurably more.
In an Industry where fully-grown lies appear more and more to
masquerade as 'truth' - the Mothers and Fathers, indeed the Grandparents of
Erie, CO and the Right to Farm Community in Wales, New York, and the folks in
the tiny Town of Dish, Texas do not sit idly by and will not stand for a shabby
counterfeit of the truth. These Mothers and Fathers and Grandparents fight for
our children, our next generation with everything in their being and they are
not about to stop.
A human mother (or father)
becomes completely fearless in the face of danger where that danger concerns
her/his helpless offspring. A threat to their child becomes the flashpoint
- the point of no return - the point where the mother's one goal - her
single-minded and sole focus is to remove all threat to her child - her beloved
son or daughter.
When danger threatens - mothers
can be counted on for several things - a Mother will possess an astonishingly
razor-sharp mind completely focused on the eradication of danger, instantly
equipped to face and neutralize the danger that threatens her child to the
extent that her own well-being is no longer of any consequence. A Mother will become the immovable, unstoppable
force - a line drawn in the sand THAT YOU
WILL NOT CROSS! - a force greater than any other on earth!
It is our Raison D'etre - our Reason for Being - as Mothers - to
defend our Children from any and all threats and we join with the Parents and
Grandparents of Erie, Colorado along with the Parents and Grandparents of the Community
of Wales, New York and with Fathers like Calvin Tillman who have fought the
good fight in Dish Texas - we stand in solidarity with you in defence of your
children.
Mothers - WE ARE the Leading Edge! -
the Unstoppable Force - the Immovable Obstacle rising up in our
Communities and Community Centers, our Towns and in our Town Halls, our Villages
and Recreation Centers, in our Cities, our Daycare Centers and Nursery Schools,
our Elementary, Middle Schools, Junior and High Schools, on the Schoolyard and
off, at Soccer Matches, in Football Fields and Baseball Diamonds, in our
Churches and at our Places of Work - in
the United States AND Canada
....to defend and protect OUR CHILDREN from the threat of Shale Gas
Industry - in defence of our children's health and their lives - their
very future! THIS IS OUR SOLEMN DUTY AND
OUR GOD-GIVEN RIGHT AND OUR BELOVED PRIVILEGE AS PARENTS!
WE arE mothers
and we WILL TAKE ON ALL COMERs!
Will YOU join the Fight to Protect Our Children?
and Stand with
Moms (and ALL Parents) Against Fracking?
(Parents
Against Everyday Poisons - copyright 2012)
There is
no fear in love.
But perfect love drives out
fear.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Taking Environmental Protection Agency Down Constitutes Bragging Rights in Texas
Bloomberg News
Texas Judge’s Campaign Says He’s Taken on the EPA
A Texas state judge is promoting his recent decisions favoring a gas driller in its dispute with a local landowner as part of his election campaign, a move some legal scholars say may violate state judicial ethics rules.With aspects of the case still pending in his courtroom, Judge Trey Loftin sent fliers to voters saying he forced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to back down.
Loftin, who is campaigning to keep his state judgeship in a county west of Dallas, also sent out materials with the image of talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who credited the judge’s ruling in favor of driller Range Resources Corp. (RRC) (RRC), based in Fort Worth, Texas, for getting the EPA to reverse course.
“The problem of having judges run for office is that sometimes they cross a line in trying to get elected,” James Alfini, a professor of law at South Texas College of Law in Houston and co-author of a book on judicial ethics, said in an interview. “In this case, I think he crossed a line.”
Texas is one of 39 states that select trial court judges by election, and one of eight that do so through partisan elections, according to the American Bar Association. Others chose judges through appointment.
The Texas code of judicial conduct prohibits judges from commenting on pending or impending cases “in a manner which suggests to a reasonable person the judge’s probable decision.”Alfini said that the State Commission on Judicial Conduct should conduct an inquiry.
Commission Reaction
The commission’s executive director, Seana Willing, said it doesn’t disclose whether a complaint has been filed against a judge. Unless a complaint is filed and examined, there is no way to know if a particular campaign statement violates the state code, she said in an e-mail.Loftin, who is running to retain the post to which he was appointed on the 43rd district court in Parker County, has ruled in favor of Range three times in a legal dispute with landowner Steven Lipsky and consultant Alisa Rich. Lipsky sued Range, accusing it of contaminating his well water. Range, in a countersuit, alleged that Rich and Lipsky conspired to defame the company by getting the Environmental Protection Agency to intervene in the case, which prompted media coverage.
While one decision in the case is under appeal, parts of the case continue to be argued in Loftin’s courtroom. Last week, Loftin ruled that blogger Sharon Wilson must turn over e-mails Range demanded.
“The EPA, using falsified evidence provided by a liberal activist environmental consultant, accused and fined a local gas driller of contaminating wells,” according to a campaign flier for Loftin’s campaign. President Barack “Obama’s EPA backed down only after Judge Trey Loftin ruled that the evidence was‘deceptive.’”
In Public Record
A message left at Loftin’s office was returned by Craig Murphy, who runs the Austin-based political consulting firm Murphy Turner Associates. Murphy, who said he is a campaign spokesman for Loftin, declined to elaborate on the text in the brochures, or even say whether they referred to this case.“We were real careful in the mailings to make sure everything in there was appropriate,” he said. “What we’ve done is strictly reprint things that are in the public record.”
Range, Rich and Lipsky aren’t named in either of the two fliers provided to Bloomberg. The news stories and Limbaugh commentaries they cite are about the case.
Loftin’s campaign Facebook page includes a reprinted“morning update” by Limbaugh from April 9, in which he says the judge’s decision in favor of Range in the Lipsky case forced the EPA to backtrack. Loftin’s campaign mailer also credits a story in the Fort-Worth Star Telegram about his decision in the Range case.
Recusal Could be Sought
Even without specific references, the mailer may cause a reasonable person to think Loftin was biased in the case, said Keith Swisher, a professor of law at the Phoenix School of Law and expert on judicial ethics.“The fact that a specific name wasn’t used doesn’t provide” an out, Swisher said in an interview. The materials could also be used by Lipsky or Rich’s lawyers to get Loftin removed from the case, he said.
Lipsky didn’t return a telephone message seeking comment.
“It would be disturbing to think that there was any association between this mailer and myself,” Rich said in an interview. Rich’s lawyer, George Carlton, said he is reviewing the documents.
“I’ve never run across anything like this before,” he said in an interview. “We’re deciding what, if anything, we need to do.”
Loftin’s Opponent
“I don’t think a judge should ever comment about a case pending in his court,” Craig Towson, Loftin’s opponent in the Republican primary on May 29, said in an interview. “One could feel slighted if you have a judge commenting on the case.”The case in Weatherford, Texas, has become fodder for a nationwide fight between activists increasingly worried about the effects of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas on human health, and drillers complaining about increasing scrutiny from federal regulators.
It is one of at least three examples nationwide in which the EPA initially linked water contamination in a well to fracking, in which millions of gallons of water are mixed with sand and chemicals and shot deep underground to free gas trapped in rock. The agency has since backed off in each case, settling with Range, agreeing to more testing in another case and concluding that homes in a third area are largely free of contamination.
Lipsky initially sued Range in early 2011, after the EPA had issued an administrative order saying Range was responsible for contaminating his water with dangerous levels of methane and benzene, which can cause cancer. Range countersued, saying Lipsky and Rich conspired to persuade the EPA to intervene.
Loftin ruled that Lipsky had to take his original complaint to the state Railroad Commission, not to the court.
SLAPP Law
Lawyers for Rich and Lipsky tried to get Loftin to throw out Range’s countersuit, arguing that it violates a Texas law against so-called Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs. Loftin rejected that argument on Feb. 16, and the case was appealed to the Texas Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth.A month after Loftin made that decision, the EPA settled its dispute with Range. In his campaign materials, Loftin takes credit for EPA’s about face.
“Judge Loftin’s decision regarding deceptive actions by environmental extremists made the EPA re-evaluate its national policy,” his campaign said in a flier.
The case in Texas state court is Lipsky v. Durant, 11-cv-0798, 43rd District Court of Texas, Parker County (Weatherford, Texas).
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net
Monday, May 21, 2012
The NEW Declaration of Independece AGAINST FRACKING - May 10 2012
Dr. J. Stephen Cleghorn's Solemn Remembrance of his Wife, Lucinda.
Today I act to declare my farm, all that lives above on its surface, the very air and sunlight that caresses and enlivens all of us here today, and all that lies below it as firmament, I hereby declare off-limits from shale gas extraction and its toxic impacts, in perpetuity. Some will say what I do is against the law. But I say this: I act in the spirit of the founders of this nation who proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence that “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” entitled them to throw off the oppression of the British Crown. I act to throw off an oppression manifesting itself in the threat of “fracking” for methane gas, an extreme form of fossil fuel extraction that is but representative of a much bigger oppression that is bearing down on all of us.
There is an increasing collusion between corporate power and the governmental powers of the United States of America, Pennsylvania and other states. This flag beside me is losing its potency as a symbol of justice and freedom. The republic for which it stands is being bought and sold as though being traded on the commodities market. We are losing our democracy. Governments are protecting corporations, not people.
Seeing energy companies dictate laws such as the recently passed Act 13, I can now understand better what our nation’s founders discovered in trying to negotiate with the British Crown. Act 13 is a corporate-sponsored form of organized crime perpetrated upon the people and democracy of Pennsylvania, written by politicians purchased for that purpose by lubricious campaign contributions that exceeded $4.4 million in the 2010 election cycle, more than one-third of which went to Governor Corbett, and almost two-thirds of which went to Gov. Corbett, Senator Joe Scarnati, Speaker Sam Smith and the Republican Party Committee. That is not to count the $5 million in gas company lobbying in Harrisburg and being the Gold Sponsors of the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors.
We are being systematically colonized by multinational corporations who give no quarter. There has come a time when negotiation is capitulation, when our petitioning for redress “in the most humble terms” has failed, and when our “repeated Petitions” are being “answered only by repeated injury.”
The America we love is fast becoming America, Inc. – a wholly owned subsidiary of faceless corporations that get to speak with money to get the politicians they want to make the laws they need to despoil our environment and even what we eat for their exorbitant profits. Monsanto is buying up and patenting our seeds and poisoning us with their genetically engineered crops. The USDA and Food Safety Administration – at the behest of the industrial food lobby – are preventing the labeling of genetically modified food products that a super majority of Americans want to see labeled. Chesapeake Energy and Range Resources and CONSOL Energy and EXCO Resources (allied with British Petroleum) and Cabot Oil & Gas and Shell Oil and many others are being given license to run roughshod over local zoning protections. Their transgressions against water and air and human and animal life where they drill are being shielded by court gag orders. PNC and other banks are financing mountaintop removal of coal that is destroying entire ecosystems in West Virginia.
Our political leaders, beholden to corporations to fund their campaigns, refuse to lead us out of a fossil fuel era that is warming our planet, and refuse to prevent the chemical contamination of our environment and food for corporate profits. The environment is becoming more and more toxic. Species are disappearing by the hundreds annually and many of our own human kind are finding themselves dealing more and more with the calamities of climate change.
Act 13 codifies injuries against our democracy and our earth itself. It was an outright victory for the “Shale Army” of which one energy executive boasted: “The shale army has arrived. Resistance is futile.”
But resistance is not futile. The “shale army” will find that out soon enough, after we have taken more losses at their hands, to be sure, but soon enough. Resistance can be liberating. It is also a little scary, of course. That is why our Declaration of Independence ends, knowing that war is at hand, on a somber note that appeals “to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions” and comes to a close with these words: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
That is what today is for me. And I dare say many of my friends gathered here. Our lives. Our fortunes. Our sacred honor. Maybe even our liberty will be required of us as we resist the shale army. But we shall pay those costs. We shall pledge all that to Nature and to our fellow human beings who are part of Nature, God’s Nature, even those who perpetrate the harm.
I am putting all of that into this fight, risking it all without any assurance of victory.
Why? Because we need a new paradigm for how we live on this Earth. Our individual acts of resistance such as this one today must be part of an ongoing organization to create a foundation of law based on the Rights of Nature.
Now, for a moment, let me turn to those who were invited but chose not to come today. Mr. & Mrs. Burkett. Senator Scarnati and Speaker Smith. J. Brett Harvey of CONSOL Energy and Douglas Miller of EXCO Resources.
Mr. & Mrs. Burkett – If you were here I’d say this to you. When you bought the deed to the gas rights for $150 in 1995 from a previous heir of this farm, you could not have known anything about the highly invasive and toxic processes of drilling into an unconventional gas field such as the tight shale of the Marcellus. No one did. And you could not have known that someday two people would come and pour their entire life savings into making this an organic farm. And when you made a smart deal for $80,000 in leasing bonus and looked forward to 12 ½% royalties, it must have seemed such a good thing for your family, but you had no idea that this type of drilling could destroy another family’s dreams for sustainable farming and nurturing a new generation of young farmers. But now you do know, and when you told Lucinda and me that you were not interested in selling the gas rights back to us, you said it was because you were “greedy.” I asked how you could allow the earth to be destroyed for some money, and you told me that it did not really matter because at the end of time, according to your faith, Jesus Christ would return and make the world whole again for his faithful, and those people who did the damage to the world would receive their just due. But don’t you see, Mr. & Mrs. Burkett, that “those people” are you? “Those people” are all of us if we allow the destruction of our earth.
Senator Scarnati, for two years I have tried to get you to understand the suffering that afflicts people and animals in contact with this drilling, wherever it has occurred. You refuse to take in any information about that. In fact you recently blocked a $2 million fund to develop a health registry that would track cases of people who are being sickened. Today we have presented news accounts of more than 115 such cases, but for you (on purpose) you will not pay attention to these. These are all the “disappeared ones” for you (on purpose). They do not exist for you, they cannot exist for you, and you do not want information about them to exist for anyone else. I pity you, sir, and – believe it or not – I continue to keep you in my prayers.
Speaker Smith, Mr. Harvey and Mr. Miller – let me offer this to all of you who have refused to be here today. Also to you, Mr. & Mrs. Burkett and Senator Scarnati. If you were here I’d ask you to stand up, turn slowly and look around this beautiful farm, this beautiful farmland and woods before you. Just turn your bodies slowly around and see all of it, see and imagine it as habitat for me, my family and friends, my neighbors, these goats, the fox and the deer and the moles and the mice and the groundhogs, the ground-nesting birds and peeping frogs and the slithering snakes. “Look Out” on this place and see it as a home for many, not a commodity to be exploited. “Look Out” on this particular place, which in some ways stands for all places where earth and sky and water and air and life are under threat by our insatiable “economy” built on fossil fuels, built on wars for fossil fuels, and try to hear there words from a poem called “Look Out” by the farmer Wendell Berry. Hope that these words are not about you. Hope that some day these words will not describe any of us:
Look Out – by Wendell Berry
Come to the window, look out, and see
the valley turning green in remembrance
of all springs past and to come, the woods
perfecting with immortal patience
the leaves that are the work of all of time,
the sycamore whose white limbs shed
the history of a man’s life with their old bark,
the river quivering under the morning’s breath
like the touched skin of a horse, and you will see
also the shadow cast upon it by fire, the war
that lights its way by burning the earth.
Come to your windows, people of the world,
look out at whatever you see wherever you are,
and you will see dancing upon it that shadow.
You will see that your place, wherever it is,
your house, your garden, your shop, your forest, your farm,
bears the shadow of its destruction by war
which is the economy of greed which is plunder
which is the economy of wrath which is fire.
The Lords of War sell the earth to buy fire,
they sell the water and air of life to buy fire.
They are little men grown great by willingness
to drive whatever exists into its perfect absence.
Their intention to destroy any place is solidly founded
upon their willingness to destroy every place.
Every household of the world is at their mercy,
the households of the farmer and the otter and the owl
are at their mercy. They have no mercy.
Having hate, they can have no mercy.
Their greed is the hatred of mercy.
Their pockets jingle with the small change of the poor.
Their power is the willingness to destroy
everything for knowledge which is money
which is power which is victory
which is ashes sown by the wind.
Leave your windows and go out, people of the world,
go into the streets, go into the fields, go into the woods
and along the streams. Go together, go alone.
Say no to the Lords of War which is Money
which is Fire. Say no by saying yes
to the air, to the earth, to the trees,
yes to the grasses, to the rivers, to the birds
and the animals and every living thing, yes
to the small houses, yes to the children. Yes.
My friends, please, now join me as we set aside this farm from the destruction of shale gas drilling.
The Invocations:
(To those gathered). As I move now to release a portion of my wife’s ashes upon this land, I will end each invocation with her name. When I do that, please say with me “¡Presente!” to recognize that she is here with us in spirit. “¡Presente!” is a way of saying that she here with us to take new spiritual action as guardian and protector of this farm that she so loved. So… (lifting the first handful ashes)
1. May she who was soft, warm and moist to me – now made dry by cancerous death – come now in these ashes to mingle with earth and water below our feet, come to protect the soil and water of this farm and all the lives which they sustain. Come now, Dr. Lucinda Hart-Gonzalez! (¡Presente!)
2. May she who was quench to my thirst, who was water of this good earth’s loving waters – now made grit and grief to me by cancerous death – may she come now to her final home, come speak with these ashes her final words of peace and wellness for her beloved organic farm. Come now, Dr. Lucinda Hart-Gonzalez. (¡Presente!)
3. May she who was tender and close and loving of me – now made dust and distant from me by cancerous death – come now in these ashes to declare this farm forever inviolate of shale gas drilling or any other attack upon it as a living system. Here now she declares a new right of love on the surface and below this farm that no gas drill will ever penetrate.” Come, be with us now, Dr. Lucinda Hart-Gonzalez. (¡Presente!)
Thank you. Now we will take your questions.
Blessing the land with Lucinda’s ashes.
Welcome, everyone.Today I act to declare my farm, all that lives above on its surface, the very air and sunlight that caresses and enlivens all of us here today, and all that lies below it as firmament, I hereby declare off-limits from shale gas extraction and its toxic impacts, in perpetuity. Some will say what I do is against the law. But I say this: I act in the spirit of the founders of this nation who proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence that “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” entitled them to throw off the oppression of the British Crown. I act to throw off an oppression manifesting itself in the threat of “fracking” for methane gas, an extreme form of fossil fuel extraction that is but representative of a much bigger oppression that is bearing down on all of us.
There is an increasing collusion between corporate power and the governmental powers of the United States of America, Pennsylvania and other states. This flag beside me is losing its potency as a symbol of justice and freedom. The republic for which it stands is being bought and sold as though being traded on the commodities market. We are losing our democracy. Governments are protecting corporations, not people.
Seeing energy companies dictate laws such as the recently passed Act 13, I can now understand better what our nation’s founders discovered in trying to negotiate with the British Crown. Act 13 is a corporate-sponsored form of organized crime perpetrated upon the people and democracy of Pennsylvania, written by politicians purchased for that purpose by lubricious campaign contributions that exceeded $4.4 million in the 2010 election cycle, more than one-third of which went to Governor Corbett, and almost two-thirds of which went to Gov. Corbett, Senator Joe Scarnati, Speaker Sam Smith and the Republican Party Committee. That is not to count the $5 million in gas company lobbying in Harrisburg and being the Gold Sponsors of the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors.
We are being systematically colonized by multinational corporations who give no quarter. There has come a time when negotiation is capitulation, when our petitioning for redress “in the most humble terms” has failed, and when our “repeated Petitions” are being “answered only by repeated injury.”
The America we love is fast becoming America, Inc. – a wholly owned subsidiary of faceless corporations that get to speak with money to get the politicians they want to make the laws they need to despoil our environment and even what we eat for their exorbitant profits. Monsanto is buying up and patenting our seeds and poisoning us with their genetically engineered crops. The USDA and Food Safety Administration – at the behest of the industrial food lobby – are preventing the labeling of genetically modified food products that a super majority of Americans want to see labeled. Chesapeake Energy and Range Resources and CONSOL Energy and EXCO Resources (allied with British Petroleum) and Cabot Oil & Gas and Shell Oil and many others are being given license to run roughshod over local zoning protections. Their transgressions against water and air and human and animal life where they drill are being shielded by court gag orders. PNC and other banks are financing mountaintop removal of coal that is destroying entire ecosystems in West Virginia.
Our political leaders, beholden to corporations to fund their campaigns, refuse to lead us out of a fossil fuel era that is warming our planet, and refuse to prevent the chemical contamination of our environment and food for corporate profits. The environment is becoming more and more toxic. Species are disappearing by the hundreds annually and many of our own human kind are finding themselves dealing more and more with the calamities of climate change.
Act 13 codifies injuries against our democracy and our earth itself. It was an outright victory for the “Shale Army” of which one energy executive boasted: “The shale army has arrived. Resistance is futile.”
But resistance is not futile. The “shale army” will find that out soon enough, after we have taken more losses at their hands, to be sure, but soon enough. Resistance can be liberating. It is also a little scary, of course. That is why our Declaration of Independence ends, knowing that war is at hand, on a somber note that appeals “to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions” and comes to a close with these words: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
That is what today is for me. And I dare say many of my friends gathered here. Our lives. Our fortunes. Our sacred honor. Maybe even our liberty will be required of us as we resist the shale army. But we shall pay those costs. We shall pledge all that to Nature and to our fellow human beings who are part of Nature, God’s Nature, even those who perpetrate the harm.
I am putting all of that into this fight, risking it all without any assurance of victory.
Why? Because we need a new paradigm for how we live on this Earth. Our individual acts of resistance such as this one today must be part of an ongoing organization to create a foundation of law based on the Rights of Nature.
Now, for a moment, let me turn to those who were invited but chose not to come today. Mr. & Mrs. Burkett. Senator Scarnati and Speaker Smith. J. Brett Harvey of CONSOL Energy and Douglas Miller of EXCO Resources.
Mr. & Mrs. Burkett – If you were here I’d say this to you. When you bought the deed to the gas rights for $150 in 1995 from a previous heir of this farm, you could not have known anything about the highly invasive and toxic processes of drilling into an unconventional gas field such as the tight shale of the Marcellus. No one did. And you could not have known that someday two people would come and pour their entire life savings into making this an organic farm. And when you made a smart deal for $80,000 in leasing bonus and looked forward to 12 ½% royalties, it must have seemed such a good thing for your family, but you had no idea that this type of drilling could destroy another family’s dreams for sustainable farming and nurturing a new generation of young farmers. But now you do know, and when you told Lucinda and me that you were not interested in selling the gas rights back to us, you said it was because you were “greedy.” I asked how you could allow the earth to be destroyed for some money, and you told me that it did not really matter because at the end of time, according to your faith, Jesus Christ would return and make the world whole again for his faithful, and those people who did the damage to the world would receive their just due. But don’t you see, Mr. & Mrs. Burkett, that “those people” are you? “Those people” are all of us if we allow the destruction of our earth.
Senator Scarnati, for two years I have tried to get you to understand the suffering that afflicts people and animals in contact with this drilling, wherever it has occurred. You refuse to take in any information about that. In fact you recently blocked a $2 million fund to develop a health registry that would track cases of people who are being sickened. Today we have presented news accounts of more than 115 such cases, but for you (on purpose) you will not pay attention to these. These are all the “disappeared ones” for you (on purpose). They do not exist for you, they cannot exist for you, and you do not want information about them to exist for anyone else. I pity you, sir, and – believe it or not – I continue to keep you in my prayers.
Speaker Smith, Mr. Harvey and Mr. Miller – let me offer this to all of you who have refused to be here today. Also to you, Mr. & Mrs. Burkett and Senator Scarnati. If you were here I’d ask you to stand up, turn slowly and look around this beautiful farm, this beautiful farmland and woods before you. Just turn your bodies slowly around and see all of it, see and imagine it as habitat for me, my family and friends, my neighbors, these goats, the fox and the deer and the moles and the mice and the groundhogs, the ground-nesting birds and peeping frogs and the slithering snakes. “Look Out” on this place and see it as a home for many, not a commodity to be exploited. “Look Out” on this particular place, which in some ways stands for all places where earth and sky and water and air and life are under threat by our insatiable “economy” built on fossil fuels, built on wars for fossil fuels, and try to hear there words from a poem called “Look Out” by the farmer Wendell Berry. Hope that these words are not about you. Hope that some day these words will not describe any of us:
Look Out – by Wendell Berry
Come to the window, look out, and see
the valley turning green in remembrance
of all springs past and to come, the woods
perfecting with immortal patience
the leaves that are the work of all of time,
the sycamore whose white limbs shed
the history of a man’s life with their old bark,
the river quivering under the morning’s breath
like the touched skin of a horse, and you will see
also the shadow cast upon it by fire, the war
that lights its way by burning the earth.
Come to your windows, people of the world,
look out at whatever you see wherever you are,
and you will see dancing upon it that shadow.
You will see that your place, wherever it is,
your house, your garden, your shop, your forest, your farm,
bears the shadow of its destruction by war
which is the economy of greed which is plunder
which is the economy of wrath which is fire.
The Lords of War sell the earth to buy fire,
they sell the water and air of life to buy fire.
They are little men grown great by willingness
to drive whatever exists into its perfect absence.
Their intention to destroy any place is solidly founded
upon their willingness to destroy every place.
Every household of the world is at their mercy,
the households of the farmer and the otter and the owl
are at their mercy. They have no mercy.
Having hate, they can have no mercy.
Their greed is the hatred of mercy.
Their pockets jingle with the small change of the poor.
Their power is the willingness to destroy
everything for knowledge which is money
which is power which is victory
which is ashes sown by the wind.
Leave your windows and go out, people of the world,
go into the streets, go into the fields, go into the woods
and along the streams. Go together, go alone.
Say no to the Lords of War which is Money
which is Fire. Say no by saying yes
to the air, to the earth, to the trees,
yes to the grasses, to the rivers, to the birds
and the animals and every living thing, yes
to the small houses, yes to the children. Yes.
My friends, please, now join me as we set aside this farm from the destruction of shale gas drilling.
The Invocations:
(To those gathered). As I move now to release a portion of my wife’s ashes upon this land, I will end each invocation with her name. When I do that, please say with me “¡Presente!” to recognize that she is here with us in spirit. “¡Presente!” is a way of saying that she here with us to take new spiritual action as guardian and protector of this farm that she so loved. So… (lifting the first handful ashes)
1. May she who was soft, warm and moist to me – now made dry by cancerous death – come now in these ashes to mingle with earth and water below our feet, come to protect the soil and water of this farm and all the lives which they sustain. Come now, Dr. Lucinda Hart-Gonzalez! (¡Presente!)
2. May she who was quench to my thirst, who was water of this good earth’s loving waters – now made grit and grief to me by cancerous death – may she come now to her final home, come speak with these ashes her final words of peace and wellness for her beloved organic farm. Come now, Dr. Lucinda Hart-Gonzalez. (¡Presente!)
3. May she who was tender and close and loving of me – now made dust and distant from me by cancerous death – come now in these ashes to declare this farm forever inviolate of shale gas drilling or any other attack upon it as a living system. Here now she declares a new right of love on the surface and below this farm that no gas drill will ever penetrate.” Come, be with us now, Dr. Lucinda Hart-Gonzalez. (¡Presente!)
Thank you. Now we will take your questions.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Another Hero in the Fight Against Fracking
In a World Run Amuck - we need Heroes - Stephen Cleghorn is one such Hero. He lives on the Marcellus Shale in PA. He has just lost his wife to cancer. And still he fights a tireless battle against Shale Gas to save our next generation. Please read his words of wisdom and visit his site.
jstephencleghorn
Henderson Township, Jefferson County, PA
My name is Stephen Cleghorn. I am an organic farmer operating a 50-acre certified organic farm in Jefferson County, PA. If you’d like to know more about me, visit the farm’s website at www.paradisegardensandfarm.com and you can learn more about this farm and about me. You can also link to a PowerPoint I have done on the need for a moratorium on unconventional drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale by a means commonly known as “fracking” – which refers to the whole process known as “high volume slickwater fracking of long laterals” to release gas from tight shale formation such as the Marcellus. This blog will be occasional posts about the “fracking” and those who would transform one-half the land mass of Pennsylvania into an industrialized zone to get at the shale gas and realize millions in profits for themselves. The blog’s name is taken from the writings of Saint Augustine who believed “Hope” to be the greatest of spiritual gifts. And, says Augustine, Hope has two lovely daughters: anger and courage. Anger so that what must not be may not be; courage so that what should be can be. Anger and Courage. We will need both in this struggle to defeat the fracking that could lay waste to one-half of Pennsylvania and threaten the water supplies of millions of people. This blog will be about having the courage to stand up to the massive global corporations that would ruin our state, take their profits, and leave the mess to future generations of Pennsylvanians to clean up. We need to rise up, my friends and be not afraid.
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