This short story is true but the names of folks and organizations have been changed.
For my aunt…
On April 11th, hundreds of folks flocked to Albany. It was the largest anti-fracking demo I had been to up unto that point, and perhaps that had emerged in the U.S.A. until that point.
Part 1. Ride Up
Felix and I rode up in the back of the bus that was organized by US Eco Watch Dogs. Change in Action rode up from Manhattan but somehow we ended up in the USEWD bus from Brooklyn. Since Tracy left USEWD, this guy Brian had taken her roll. He wore a distinguishing old fashion brown hat, glasses, suit and tie. He was maybe forty. For some reason I thought we were going to chant on the bus like USF did at the spontaneous North Africa Meeting after the protests exploded. Brian said when it filled up, “Don’t worry. The coffee is coming.”
Felix wore my blue bandana around her eyes and slept across two seats. We picked up folks in Newpaltz. Natasha, a student from Brooklyn College gave her seat up and sat next to me. We had met at a Frack Boom screening at BC, where I told her about Power Now and everything else. “So you’re not going to Power Now?”
Her eyes lit up. “I am. It’s Friday.”
“Are you going with a group from BC?”
“No. Just myself. How are you getting there?”
“I’m not going. I’d rather go to this. Have you lobbied before?”
“Yea. For the Farm Bill.”
After some time Brian got on the mike and talked about the four bills. Natasha took notes. I watched the trees, mountains, streams and wooden houses go by. One bill was a state version of the FRAC Act, (it would make companies disclose chemicals and details of the processes, which was mostly good for the sake of court). One was about waste disposal. One was a five-year moratorium. I said to Natasha, “That’s radical enough.” And of course there was a ban bill.
Brian disclosed that his group supported the ban, but there were over half a dozen organizations on the bus. He then asked if anyone didn’t know what lobbying team they were on. Everyone raised their hand including me. Evidently a certain email hadn’t gone out properly. There was no list. Felix wasn’t even on the bus list for signing up late. When we got there, a woman named Jan said we should form a team. “Okay. Felix can be on it too.” I asked Felix to name it.
“Team Cool,” she said.
Part 2. The Rally
Albany is a tall, little city with a big egg-shaped statue called, “The Egg.” Adjacent to the Egg was a field like a miniature version of the National Mall, next to two adjacent Capital buildings, in which politicians could see and hear us from the windows. Amidst seven hundred citizens abound, four hundred were wearing blue, and among those, there were one hundred t-shirts that said, “NY Water Dogs.” A woman offered me one right away. Since Felix had my blue bandana I accepted it and put it on.
Sal was a guy who I met at Appalachia Fights Back in DC the previous September and at the True Food Justice Conference in Boston in February. He had come into the dim back room of the church in DC at one a.m. when people were sleeping on the first night. He was with a group of students from Utica. I asked him if he knew about fracking. He didn’t so I explained it. It was clear he was the thrust of his crew, and got everyone into environmental justice.
He called me out. He seemed on his own. He asked if I were going to Power Now. He said he was helping to organize an action there. I said, “With Roaring Waters?”
He said, “No, it’s on Friday. It’s Specifically about corporate influence.”
I said, “Hm. Maybe I will go.”
“I’ll send you info,” he said.
Morgan was a woman that CIA recruited. She had invited me to a green meet-up in February. She was one of your light hearted, open minded, easy going, healthy activists that was equally ready to green the neighborhood and lobby the Assembly. It started when she saw Frack Boom, and CIA was there. She was talking to Felix. “Why haven’t you told her about Change in Action?”
“What?”
“Felix is your school friend?”
“Yea.”
“And you haven’t told her about Change in Action?”
“Yea. Change in Action.”
Amanda came up and asked if I was still handing out flyers. In my hand was a stack of May 2nd flyers for coming back and marching through Albany. She added to my job a petition to ban fracking.
Everyone was listening to the speeches. It was much harder to approach people with the petition than with the flyers. There were two politicians that spoke, a woman who had cancer due to the air pollution from a rig operation, and Roy Davies, director of Frack Boom. The first politician spoke for her state version of the FRAC Act Bill. The other spoke for the five year moratorium. Like Jim Genero, he said he used to be a geologist. Thus, our leading politicians on the issue in New York used to be geologists.
Roy Davies said that our state had inspired folks everywhere, and in the South of France, twenty thousand people marched against fracking. Then he had us call the White House, which doesn't usually seem to be as easy as calling a local office.
When lobby teams got together, Amanda announced a march right then to the DEC. I considered doing it instead. Someone informed me I was on Luis Michigan's team. Felix said she wanted to go on the march because she wasn't ready to talk to politicians about the issue. I said okay and we'd meet at four on the bus. I said, "Can you please be ready to pick up your phone if I call you?" She dug for her phone in her bag and made sure it was on. She left with the big march that left me standing there with the lobbyists.
Part 3. Lobbying
Lobbying in Albany consists of going through security but you could keep your shoes on and probably your belt. Your team packs into an elevator with a bunch of people who don't know what you're doing there. I still had my blue Water Dogs t-shirt on. Some people individually popped into offices spontaneously. We had three appointments. There were seven or eight people on our team. We represented a miasma of organizations, and ourselves and communities.
The Assembly had just been called in for session when we arrived so we were going to see interns and assistants. The first intern was maybe twenty. He was his own person. On the wall of the office was a picture of a man kneeling with a rifle over a corpse. The intern sat next to the desk, we sat on couches and Luis Michigan sat behind the desk and folded his hands. "We're here," he said, "because we're opposed to hydraulic fracturing." He went on about the science and the process. The intern took notes. A woman stopped Luis after a few minutes to talk about how it would affect farmland. The intern nodded and assured us several times that he understood it was a serious issue. They asked if he had seen Frack Boom and he hadn't yet. Luis came to his last piece, which was about the feasibility of renewable energy. I followed him up by talking about how gas was being sold to America as a "transition fuel," but how really it was going to postpone green jobs while risking public health.
Two women on our team left us in the hall for some reason. An assistant invited us into the next room and invited the intern who was writing a paper on fracking. There was a moose head on the wall. A man with a ponytail and jeans asked if he could join us. The assistant sat behind the desk and wore a serious face like someone who represented someone who must have called us lunatics behind our backs because now she had to listen to us. We talked the usual drift but I couldn't find my way in. Half way through, two young interns, of both genders, a couple years younger than me were waved in by the assistant so they could learn about the issue. The guy sat next to me and the girl sat across from me. At this time Luis went into his piece on renewable energy. The assistant asked the older intern to ask us questions. She said with an expression of genuine seriousness, "I've been studying all these sources and I don't see renewable energy being ready to meet our current energy needs."
I jumped at it. "I'd like to address that. We've been racing the natural gas industry at a monthly basis. We may not know exactly how this is all going to work, sustainability. We're here because fracking is dangerous. The industry rushed across the country, telling everyone it was the practical, transitional thing to do, while not stopping as hundreds of people got sick or affected. They allowed no time for discussion while dividing up communities." I looked at the younger intern across from me. "It's like my friend Nina, who wanted to take over her parents' farm, in the new sustainable way. But her parents signed a lease. These are the stories of this thing happening too fast without discussion."
The mysterious man said to us in a huddle in the hallway, "Listen. They're asking us things we can't easily answer. They're going to try to trip us up with questions about renewable energy. The point is fracking is dangerous. That's our niche."
"This is my district rep," said Luis at the last office. There was an I Heart NY sticker on the door and a gay marraige poster inside. There was just one young intern at the assistant desk. He took us into the office and turned off the session radio. After some talk he said, "I'm sure she'll do what she could but it doesn't really affect New York City. I mean, I'm from Syracuse."
Everyone said, "No, no, no."
"We get out water from Upstate," said Luis.
"This could be a great opportunity," said the mysterious man in a way that seemed like he had just thought of it, "for her to really turn things around and be a hero."
"Well I know people talk about the jobs this will bring," the intern said.
A guy said, "These are often people that come from out of state."
"I'd like to say something about that," I said. "I went to Detroit for a conference and I met these people from Pennsylvania. They came all the way to Detroit to talk about fracking because no one else in their town wanted to hear that it posed a risk. But they heard about Dimoch and they had seen the bubbling waters and they knew it was being dumped in the Susquehanna. They were surrounded. They were alone. And hotels were going up for all these workers coming into town. And they saw all these unfamiliar people who walked like Texans, and talked like Texans. But what do you do when no one wants to hear your case?"
Part 3. Down Stream
Suddenly I was by myself in the middle of the building downstairs. It was five to four when the bus was supposed to leave. I called Felix while taking the recognizable way, the super long way past the painting that looks like a rugged old flag in green, dark orange and amber stripes. She didn't pick up. She wasn't on the bus. At ten after, everyone was on. I told the bus driver and Brian to give me a minute to find her. Ten minutes later Brian said, "You can't hold up forty people." A professor said, "People have things they have to do, appointments." My friend from CIA said, "Just get on the bus Pink. She'll find a way home."
"I can't leave her here," I said. "Let me get my stuff." I passed by Natasha with my things and said, "I have to find my friend. I'll see ya."
She said, "Okay."
Back in the sunshine, as the bus door closed, my thought was, "If I get stuck here, I might have to cancel my appointment tomorrow." I had been working as a real estate agent and my first showing was scheduled for the next morning. My second thought was, "If I spend the money my father lent me on a bus, what am I going to do?" My third thought was, "How hard will it be to hitch hike?" I put my stuff down by some steps closer to the Egg and listened to the scarce pairs of folks to see what direction they might be heading.
"Pink!" It was Felix coming from the Egg.
"Felix!" I yelled, picking the things. "We missed our bus." I ran up the steps.
"Aw, were you waiting for me? I lost track of time talking to this lady."
"Maybe they'll come back," I said calling Brian.
"I saw a bus going to Manhattan that way."
"Let's go. Brian? Where are you now? The freeway? Ok, never mind."
"Do you want me to hold something?"
"Okay. Here. Was it that way?" My voice was strained. We passed the Egg.
On the other side, we stopped in the street. "No one from CIA is picking up," I said on my phone. "Luis!"
There were seven people getting on a van behind a church. "Sharon left early," said Luis. "We lost one and gained two."
There were two or three people I didn't know. "We were kicked off our bus," I said to them.
We rode in the back again, behind a guy and a woman I didn't know. They were a few years older than us, and married. The guy was from the South. They were in a band. We talked to them and I asked them questions the whole way back, which was over three hours. I called Louise Dorris across the van several times to ask her about her day and whatever happened to Van Jones? She looked it up on her iPhone. "Glenn Beck did him in, because in his past he was in a Mao inspired leftist organization called STORM." We all talked about Green Fist! and nonviolence. It got dark and the woman in front of us dozed off while we talked to the couple anyway. "What do you think about Mountaintop Removal?"
It was like that time Stone, Lucy and I came back from Boston on the Megabus at night. We talked the entire way back without stopping once.
Felix and I walked to the subway. I said, "I'm sorry I was such a nerd when we lost our bus."
"A nerd?"
"Yea. I mean, I got strung out."
"Oh. You call that being a nerd?"
"Yea, I mean, wasn't I a nerd?"
"I don't think so."
"I should have just been cool like you. Because we were going to catch that ride anyway."
"It was worth it."
"Missing the bus?"
"Yea." She looked at me curiously. "Right? We got to meet those people."
No comments:
Post a Comment