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."
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Friday, November 12, 2010
Marcellus Protest in Pittsburgh
This is liberally based on a true story. Names of people and organizations have been changed. Quotes are not direct and are sometimes entirely made up. Some details may have been left out or changed to protect privacy and confidence of those who were involved in the actual story that inspired this one. Literary techniques have been applied within the framework of actual events. This is 9 pages.
Oslow
On November 2nd I voted for the midterm. It was sunny but cold. At noon I took the train a few stops up to Northern Westchester. Oslow was on it but he came from the city. I asked the conductor, “Have you seen a guy with picket signs?”
“Not in my section.”
He was leaning against the wall at the station in a green skullcap, holding giant picket signs in a garbage bag. He took it off to show me. They were blue water droplets that said, “OUR ECONOMY” and “OUR HEALTH” on them.
“I couldn’t bring my drum,” he said.
“That’s too bad.”
“I only slept two hours.”
“Oh yea? Worked late?”
“Oh yea. I might have used my bus ticket otherwise.”
“How do you know these guys?”
“From the Green Fist! Rendezvous in Maine,” he said.
“Oh, right. Is Clarisse coming?”
“She’s taking a bus. She’s been really busy with the whole vote-for-Schneiderman thing.”
“I know,” I said.
“Are you still working with Jenna?” he asked.
“Not so much lately. I’ve been reaching out to students. Last night, interestingly, I talked to a school club. They seemed to reflect this general view amongst student environmentalists all over the country, that protesting doesn’t work.”
“I think it’s worth creating a network,” he said.
The car came, an old blue car. There were three guys, younger than me, still basically in college. Tim, James and Stone. Tim had a very Italian, big-jawed face and black earrings. James wore a jacket with an anarchy symbol on it and had long dreadlocks. Stone shook my hand enthusiastically and smiled. He was tall; had long strait hair and glasses.
Tim drove, and Stone was up front. I sat in between James and Oslow, who tried to sleep against the window. Billy Holiday music played on the stereo as we took off on the seven-hour trip from New York across New Jersey and all the length of Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh. James had a pile of Fracking literature, which I read. An old, swingy Tarzan TV show song from the fifties or so came on, something like, “A modern life, ain’t no life for me.”
“Seems so appropriate,” said Stone
In Pennsylvania we entered a gas station store. Both Oslow and I marveled at the ingredients on all the food. The purest was classic, salted nuts. I got them in a cardboard tube because it wouldn’t be as toxic as a plastic bag.
Outside, Stone and James were talking to a woman. Stone said, “We’re going to Pittsburgh to protest Hydrofracking.”
The woman said, “Oh, great! It’s terrible what they’re doing. I wish I could do something about it.”
“Come to Pittsburgh,” said Stone. “It’s noon tomorrow.”
“Maybe I will.”
I said, “Are there any groups fighting it in your town?”
“There’s just one guy who follows the trucks at night and writes in the local paper.”
Stone gave her a Green Fist! flyer.
I asked if they were into the Education Movement. They were.
“I was supposed to get full financial aid,” said Stone, “but they said I missed a form and now I owe an astronomical load and my dad was laid off at the time, and hence I’m not in school.”
He said he was trying to get into a certain school in the city anyway, to which I responded, “Really?! You’re going to be around?”
“Plan to.”
“You have an apartment ready and everything?”
“I’ve got a floor for a few weeks.”
“Do you know Sam Garab and Kitty Gin?”
“I think I know Kitty,” said Stone. “How do you know her?”
“We were arrested together at Appalachia Rising.”
“Yea, I know her.”
James said, “Sam goes to school in Westchester right?”
“Yea,” I said.
“I know Sam. She’s cool.”
“Yea. We all need to get together and organize.”
We rolled into Pittsburgh at eight-thirty. A social had started at six at a bar. Outside a familiar guy asked me my name right away. He was wearing a tight, pink shirt. There were about thirty people inside, five to ten of who were at least vaguely familiar. Right away, Andy, the guy with the goatee who first gave me notice of the protest at Appalachia Rising, talked to Oslow and I. We also met him at the Green Fist! gathering in June where I met Oslow and Clarisse. He was in our first little circle when we planned the press conferences at the DEC offices.
He said to us at the bar something like, “The companies are disposing Frack Fluid in the Alleghany River where Pittsburgh gets its drinking water.”
He talked more to Oslow directly while I faded out, having one of those moments where I was really ten years old experiencing meaninglessness and flash forward to I’m twenty-three talking to someone like this.
Oslow went to fetch one of his own beers while Tim, James and Stone got food and drinks from the bar. A guy came around with the open mike list so I put myself on number seven. I needed a guitar and spotted a young guy with a hipster hat, sitting alone at a table with his guitar against the wall.
I sat down with him. “Hey, are you performing?”
“Yea.”
“Could I borrow your guitar for a song?”
“Sure. In standard?”
“Yea.”
“Put the capo on the second fret.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks. Are you coming to the protest?”
“I just heard of it when I walked in.”
“What’s your general conception of it?”
“This region of the country is on bedrock called the Marcellus Shale, which has gas in it so companies are drilling with poisonous water to fracture the rock.”
“Right, so they go into rural towns and offer people money for their property rights, prying on their poverty often and they talk about terrorism and foreign oil. These people are the first to get poisoned. It creates internal conflict in the towns since everyone shares the water. It’s an Environmental Injustice.”
“So why don’t they just use regular drilling?”
“Well it seems like Shale or the Middle East right now. Clearly we need Renewable Energy, right?”
“Yea, but it seems like jobs or the environment,” he said very genuinely.
“These companies could easily create Green Jobs. They can’t plunder the Earth forever. We need people to build and operate Solar Powered Public Trains.”
“See, I think what you guys are doing is great but we also need people to be innovators. I want to be an entrepreneur. I feel
there aren’t enough young entrepreneurs.”
“Yea, totally. I hang around that crowd sometimes, students aching to invent something. And sometimes I get the excitement. You seem like an artist though.”
“Well I write spiritual music. Spirituality makes you want to do everything creative.”
It felt as though I was experiencing the Midwest. It felt as though I were shaking, talking fast and that I seemed to him thwarted from a political-intellectual madhouse in Manhattan while he had stars and dreams in his eyes, a whole different view of the world, and was perhaps wary of me all together.
“You’re in school?” I asked.
“University of Pittsburgh.”
“There activism groups there?”
“It’s not a very progressive student body. I mean, we have a socialist club.”
“Oh really? Cool. We had one at my school and we didn’t have a very progressive student body either. In fact, most of my
friends in the city are socialists and most of my friends outside of the city are anarchists.”
“What are you?”
“I like to think I have a lot in common with all these people.”
James came over and said they were all heading out. The guy wrote his musician name on a napkin so I could find him on You Tube and I did likewise.
After crossing my name off the mike list, I saw Kristin, the blonde girl that I square danced with at Appalachia Rising and talked about America. While we talked I noticed she had an open notebook in her hand so I asked, “Are you going to recite a poem?”
“Maybe. These are all recent poems. I don’t know what’s good. Are you?”
“I would but we’re leaving.”
“Would it have been about Fracking?”
“Yea, actually, part of it.”
“Can I share it on my website?”
“Okay.”
She gave me her book and I wrote some lines in it.
“Thanks,” she said. “Guess I’ll see you at Alleghany Landing.”
Wire
We rode through an ally onto a dense, hilly street with houses at the sidewalk. The three guys were going to stay with their friends and we were going to stay with Oslow’s friends. Oslow and I took out our things and went through a narrow side of the house. There was a tiny backyard with food growing in it and 3D art pieces. “They said we could just go in,” he said. We entered the little, dark kitchen and flicked a light. There was a Pittsburgh Pirates sign on the wall and pictures of people on the fridge. It was cold. There was no heat. We entered the living room. There was a book-shelf at one wall, four big hooks on another wall and two couches at the other two walls with a big copy machine in between them in the corner. Oslow lied on the small couch with his jacket and boots on. I sat on the large couch.
“Is no one else crashing here?” I asked.
“Clarisse but she has a sleeping bag and there’s that mat on the floor.”
The door opened and a young woman and man came in with bikes. They told us the bathroom was upstairs and that it was a Gray Water system. They put their bikes on the hooks.
“That’s what those are for,” said Oslow. “How many people live here?”
“Four bikes, four people,” said the woman.
“Are you coming to the protest?”
“Of course.”
In the kitchen I filled my water bottle from their Pennsylvania faucet with my tongue in my cheek and put it in the fridge.
While Oslow slept hard in the morning, Clarisse on the floor, a guy played radio music in the kitchen anyway. I didn’t feel like sleeping. He was tall, bearded, had a friendly-face and wore brown rugged over-alls and a bandana around his neck. “I’m Pluto,” he said.
“Pink.”
“Help yourself. The apples in the fridge are from my friend’s organic farm. We also have almond milk and muesli.”
“What’s muesli?”
“Granola, dried fruit and nuts.” It was in a loose, plastic bag tied in a knot, obviously without a company seal on it.
I sat down to eat and I was joined by a shorter, young woman, maybe my age with oddly cut, red hair, big glasses and two feathers in her hair.
“Morning. I’m Wire.” She had a southern accent.
“Pink. Do you live here?”
“No. I’m one of the organizers.”
“Cool. Were you an environmentalist before the Fracking?”
“I’m from North Carolina. I used to fight Mountaintop Removal.”
“Were you at Appalachia Rising?”
“Too busy organizing this. Were you?”
“Yea, in Solidarity.”
“Did you get arrested?” she asked.
“Yea.”
“Court?”
“No.”
“I had to go to court when I was arrested for strapping myself to an MTR site. I didn’t have to pay the charges but the lawyer cost six hundred.”
“That sucks.”
“Yea. What were you doing before the Fracking phenomenon?”
“Climate Justice mainly.”
Oslow, Clarisse and I didn’t have bikes so we walked to the bus. It was beautiful, the sunshine and the city. There were art
murals on the walls, it was quiet and there weren’t any ads anywhere. We caught a bus.
“I saw so many Frack trucks on the way here,” said Clarisse.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I’ve seen so many pictures of them.” She explained specifically what differentiated Fracking trucks from others. Then she
asked, “What have you been doing Pink?”
“Trying to get into school. Also I’ve been trying to get students involved in this.”
When we got off the bus on an empty street I felt like we were walking in slow motion like in Reservoir Dogs and Clarisse probably felt it too because she looked at me funny. There was an abstract statue made of machine parts. “Pittsburgh is the Steal Belt,” said Clarisse.” A guy on a bike rode towards us from the bridge ahead of us. There was the Alleghany River on which several other bridges crossed in our sight and then tall buildings on the other side. There was a picture of Andy Warhol on the bridge.
“Why is there a picture of Andy Warhol?” said Oslow.
“This is the Andy Warhol Bridge,” said Clarisse.
“What did Any Warhol have to do with Pittsburgh?”
“He loved Pittsburgh. The Andy Warhol Museum is right over there.”
The grass was dewy at Alleghany Landing, a ceremonial space looking over the Rachel Carson Bridge. There were only ten people at first. Pluto and Wire came with a giant farmer puppet that had a big, turquoise, power-fist.
People were setting up microphones. I sat down with two young women. One was from Portland but moved to Pennsylvania. She had a patchy, purple hoody. I asked if she was already an environmentalist before moving. She said she did all sorts of campaigns in Portland. The other girl had to move back in with her parents in Pennsylvania because of her staggering Student Debt. She decided, without enthusiasm to then master in library science.
As more people emerged I filmed with my little camera the slumber of people waiting to act and signs like “Benzine Causes Cancer,” while that old song played on the speakers. “Oh, oh it is to go oh, but you don’t know what you’ve got til’ it’s gone. Pave paradise just to put up a parking lot…” There were clean-cut youth in green t-shirts that said, “Frack That!” on the back, taking a picture together with their Pennsylvania environmental student club banner.
I walked down to the small dock area that lined the landing. It was a sight I had never seen in New York City; right in the downtown of a city I could touch the river. I sat on a small, wooden pole and enjoyed tranquility.
Soon there were two or three hundred people and a rock band playing and speakers. I sat on the grass filming everyone sitting around.
In between speakers, Andy walked across the grass wearing a white suit-shirt, tight underwear and sunglasses like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, holding a sign that said, “Fracking is Risky Business.”
An old time rock n roller played an upbeat song as we marched out with our signs by the river. Someone gave me a small tombstone-sign that said, “RIP: Sasquahanna River.” People cheered, “No Fracking Way! No Fracking Way!” I filmed from a bench as the marching band came by playing a fierce number. Their sound became funeral-like as the mob squeezed onto the narrow staircase to the Rachel Carson Bridge. I ran ahead on the bridge to get a good shot. They played more fun, fierce music while I stood high on a ledge filming. Oslow came by with a drum after all and he seemed happy. His giant water droplet signs were in different parts of the crowd. Pluto walked on running stilts holding a long sign of a broken gas-rig and a black power-fist above it. The giant puppet followed behind everyone.
After running farther down the bridge to catch up, I found Kristin leading a chant at the front with a megaphone. “It’s Our Water, It’s Our Right! It’s our Water, We Will Fight!” It was good to see her leading as such. As we entered a busier part of the city, people chanted, “The Water, The Water, The Water’s On Fire! We don’t No Profits, Let The Corporations Burn!” but Kristin cut out the second part on the megaphone.
As the march went on, two people struggled to throw a rope over an arching lamp to hang a banner but couldn’t get it over sufficiently and gave up to catch up with the march.
Tim, James and Stone
We rallied outside of the Drilling Unconventionally for Gas convention. I filmed above the crowd from atop a concrete pillar three feet high. Wire gave a speech. She said, “From the Coal Mines in Pennyslvania and on Indigenous land, to the blasted Mountains of Southern Appalachia, to the Coal Plants in Chicago, Offshore Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, to the Tar Sand Pipelines in Indigenous Canada, to the rivers and taps of the Marcellus and other Shales, and the list goes on and on and on, the problem is systemic.”
Afterwards I waited on line at the Food Not Bombs table and got bean soup and a chocolate muffin. It was all young people sitting on the street eating. First I walked over to Wire and said I loved her speech; that it was exactly how I was feeling too. Then I walked over to Tim, James and Stone. They were standing by a banner that said, “Natural Gas is a DIRTY Fossil Fuel.” I said, “So someone was saying in their speech we need to use Civil Disobedience. What do you guys think?”
Stone nodded at a guy facing the other direction ten feet away wearing a brown suit, as if he’d come from the convention.
I nodded and said, “Right, right.”
He whispered to me, “Tomorrow, at noon, there’s going to be an action at a Frack disposal site.”
As the rally dispersed I used a port-a-potty and the three guys, and Oslow and I headed to the Green Fist! meet-up. James and Stone carried the Natural Gas banner with them, hoping to hang it somewhere and Oslow and I carried the giant water droplet signs on our shoulders.
“What were you all protesting?” said a middle-aged black woman standing next to a school bus.
“Fracking,” said James.
“Frack, what now?”
We talked to her for some time. The woman said, “Were there a lot of college students at this protest?”
“Probably half of them were college students,” I said.
“That’s good,” she said. “When I was in college, I was the rallying type.”
“There’s going to be an action tomorrow,” said Stone, giving her a flyer.
As we came to the bridge, James said, “Look. A highway goes under this side of the bridge. Let’s hang it here.” He and Stone tied it to the side of the bridge over the highway. I filmed it and we moved on.
The Green Fist! meeting was on some grass by the river near a corporate-looking building. There were some forty people sitting in the circle. We could hardly hear each other over a street cleaner going around in the nearby parking lot. Someone shouted, “Why didn’t we take more serious action?” The moderator didn’t hear him. “I said, ‘Why didn’t we take more serious action?’”
Someone responded, “This event was organized by a coalition of groups in
Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania. They agreed on what was appropriate. This was not a Green Fist! action.”
“What?”
“This was not a Green Fist! action.”
Elena Blue, who I also met at the Green Fist! gathering in June, was there. When the moderator announced the two breakouts, Elena said, “I’d like to facilitate stretching over here if anyone wants to stretch.” She didn’t seem like a typical member of Green Fist! and it occurred to me that since June she had become a member. Like many of us, we got involved with a radical group because there was an environmental and health emergency, amongst many in the nation, and we knew we could count on the group to make things happen when other groups were too passive or focusing on Climate Change instead.
As the meeting broke into a few bunches of groups, Oslow said to me, “I’m going to use my bus ticket after all. I have work tomorrow and I won’t be able to sleep in the car.”
“Do you want to talk strategy real fast?”
“I have to catch the bus.”
We hugged and he took off as I rendezvoused with Elena, who was with a bearded guy in a wizard hat.
“Are you from Rochester too?” I asked.
He nodded, smiling.
“We have an action next week in Rochester,” Elena said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We’re going to dress up like corporate gas executives and hold a Dump-In.”
“What’s a dump-in?”
“We’re going to pretend like we’re dumping Frack Fluid in this public reservoir.”
“Are you going to film it?”
“We’ll have independent media.”
“Okay. Good. Maybe we could talk about a day of action to happen before the moratorium ends, you know, if it passes the senate or whatever.”
“So in April or so?”
“Yea. There are two gigantic student conferences in February in which we could recruit people and then have it on Earth Day. Actually, come to think of it, when did the Horizon break in the Gulf?” Elena reminded me of the Gulf Oil Catastrophe because she so badly wanted to use the Gulf to draw attention to Fracking in June, and we did.
“You know it’s crazy but it happened two days before Earth Day.”
“So let’s do it on April 20th; day of action to ban hydrofracking everywhere.”
Tim, James and Stone came over and sat down with us. I introduced everyone and filled the guys in with what we were talking about and asked, “What should we do on that day?”
“We’ll send millions of messages to their internet servers all day,” said Stone.
“What?” I said, taking notes. “I was thinking like a public demonstration, you know?”
“I just always wanted to do that,” he said.
“Let’s do something with hula hoops,” said Elena, “symbolic of the Haliburton Loophole.”
“Let’s drink fake Fracked water and have a die-in,” said James.
“Or walk around like zombies that drank Fracked water,” said Stone.
“Let’s have a die-in and then be zombies,” I said.
“We should set up mini drilling rigs,” said Elena, “and sit in them in public places.”
“I like that one,” I said.
The people that the guys stayed with the night before worked in a punk pizza and sandwich place so we went there for “hoagies” before leaving Pittsburgh. James and I needed a restroom so we went next door to an independent bookstore. It was really small but dense with books and one woman worked there. She said, “It’s in the basement. You can’t miss it.”
James went down and I saw a flyer by the register for the protest.
“We were here for the protest,” I said.
“Oh great. I was there.”
“Really?”
“Oh yea. I just learned about Fracking a couple weeks ago. It really scares me, you know? How could this be happening?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did you all come from?”
“We came from the New York City area, just past the Shale’s border. There weren’t many people here from New York City
but there’s a substantial Anti-Fracking movement there.”
“Are they doing it in New York?”
“They haven’t been able to start. They hit Penn first and they leased up Western New York but there’s sort of a moratorium
until May.”
“Well it’s terrible. Here. On this bookmark is a coupon for a free cup of coffee at Renegade Coffee, which is in Pittsburgh.”
“Thanks.”
We left the punk pizza place with hoagies in paper bags and walked through the twilight singing.
“James,” I said in the back of the car as we left Pittsburgh. “How the hell are we going to get all these Green students involved in Environmental Justice?”
“I don’t know. How did you get involved in it?”
“It started with Climate Change.”
“Well everyone’s into Climate Change.”
At midnight we stopped at a gas station where I followed Tim to the coffee counter. He told me, “Sorry I’ve been kind of quiet. It’s just a girl in my mind.”
“Oh.” He reminded me of something in and out of my own mind. “Sometimes I think about nonpolitical things,” I said.
“Could have fooled me,” he said.
James and Stone were looking at a big map of Pennsylvania on the wall. It showed that we were two thirds through.
We walked past a group of teenagers that were standing around outside the gas station. I said, “Let’s ask those kids what they think about Fracking.” We walked back over to them and I said, “Hey there. Hey. We just drove all the way to Pittsburgh from New York City to protest Hydrofracking and we were wondering what you all thought about it.”
“What’s hydrofracking?” said a girl.
James said, “An intense, dangerous form of Gas Drilling.”
“I just worked on a pad yesterday,” said a guy that was apparently older than them and was smoking a cigarette. “I don’t know if it was hydrofracking.”
“Well just be wary of it,” I said. “Lots of home tap water is being poisoned where they do it.”
They all turned their heads from us and continued to talk to each other. We walked back to the car speechlessly.
When we got in the car we belted up and took off. When we got on the road, Stone turned around and said, “That’s what’s wrong with this fucking country!”
“How do they not know about it?” said James.
“Hey, they know about it now,” I said.
“That actually took my mind off that stupid girl,” said Tim.
“What’s the deal with that anyway?” I asked. “Who is this girl?”
Stone said, “He’s just mad because he left this intense message on her phone last night and she hasn’t called back.”
Tim turned the music on.
James said, “This song reminds me of the IMF protest.”
“What was that like?” I asked.
They told me funny stories about the protest and made me laugh all the way to New York, where by the time we road in, it
was lightly raining. They dropped me off at my home at 2AM.
After jogging around in the drizzling rain for fresh air I couldn’t sleep so I uploaded my footage and looked for my poem on Kristin’s blog. It was there. While my eyelids grew heavy I read nearly all the many posts on her blog. On it was a video of her getting arrested protesting the G20. Most of her posts were about Environmental Justice. At four o’clock I went to sleep.
Oslow
On November 2nd I voted for the midterm. It was sunny but cold. At noon I took the train a few stops up to Northern Westchester. Oslow was on it but he came from the city. I asked the conductor, “Have you seen a guy with picket signs?”
“Not in my section.”
He was leaning against the wall at the station in a green skullcap, holding giant picket signs in a garbage bag. He took it off to show me. They were blue water droplets that said, “OUR ECONOMY” and “OUR HEALTH” on them.
“I couldn’t bring my drum,” he said.
“That’s too bad.”
“I only slept two hours.”
“Oh yea? Worked late?”
“Oh yea. I might have used my bus ticket otherwise.”
“How do you know these guys?”
“From the Green Fist! Rendezvous in Maine,” he said.
“Oh, right. Is Clarisse coming?”
“She’s taking a bus. She’s been really busy with the whole vote-for-Schneiderman thing.”
“I know,” I said.
“Are you still working with Jenna?” he asked.
“Not so much lately. I’ve been reaching out to students. Last night, interestingly, I talked to a school club. They seemed to reflect this general view amongst student environmentalists all over the country, that protesting doesn’t work.”
“I think it’s worth creating a network,” he said.
The car came, an old blue car. There were three guys, younger than me, still basically in college. Tim, James and Stone. Tim had a very Italian, big-jawed face and black earrings. James wore a jacket with an anarchy symbol on it and had long dreadlocks. Stone shook my hand enthusiastically and smiled. He was tall; had long strait hair and glasses.
Tim drove, and Stone was up front. I sat in between James and Oslow, who tried to sleep against the window. Billy Holiday music played on the stereo as we took off on the seven-hour trip from New York across New Jersey and all the length of Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh. James had a pile of Fracking literature, which I read. An old, swingy Tarzan TV show song from the fifties or so came on, something like, “A modern life, ain’t no life for me.”
“Seems so appropriate,” said Stone
In Pennsylvania we entered a gas station store. Both Oslow and I marveled at the ingredients on all the food. The purest was classic, salted nuts. I got them in a cardboard tube because it wouldn’t be as toxic as a plastic bag.
Outside, Stone and James were talking to a woman. Stone said, “We’re going to Pittsburgh to protest Hydrofracking.”
The woman said, “Oh, great! It’s terrible what they’re doing. I wish I could do something about it.”
“Come to Pittsburgh,” said Stone. “It’s noon tomorrow.”
“Maybe I will.”
I said, “Are there any groups fighting it in your town?”
“There’s just one guy who follows the trucks at night and writes in the local paper.”
Stone gave her a Green Fist! flyer.
I asked if they were into the Education Movement. They were.
“I was supposed to get full financial aid,” said Stone, “but they said I missed a form and now I owe an astronomical load and my dad was laid off at the time, and hence I’m not in school.”
He said he was trying to get into a certain school in the city anyway, to which I responded, “Really?! You’re going to be around?”
“Plan to.”
“You have an apartment ready and everything?”
“I’ve got a floor for a few weeks.”
“Do you know Sam Garab and Kitty Gin?”
“I think I know Kitty,” said Stone. “How do you know her?”
“We were arrested together at Appalachia Rising.”
“Yea, I know her.”
James said, “Sam goes to school in Westchester right?”
“Yea,” I said.
“I know Sam. She’s cool.”
“Yea. We all need to get together and organize.”
We rolled into Pittsburgh at eight-thirty. A social had started at six at a bar. Outside a familiar guy asked me my name right away. He was wearing a tight, pink shirt. There were about thirty people inside, five to ten of who were at least vaguely familiar. Right away, Andy, the guy with the goatee who first gave me notice of the protest at Appalachia Rising, talked to Oslow and I. We also met him at the Green Fist! gathering in June where I met Oslow and Clarisse. He was in our first little circle when we planned the press conferences at the DEC offices.
He said to us at the bar something like, “The companies are disposing Frack Fluid in the Alleghany River where Pittsburgh gets its drinking water.”
He talked more to Oslow directly while I faded out, having one of those moments where I was really ten years old experiencing meaninglessness and flash forward to I’m twenty-three talking to someone like this.
Oslow went to fetch one of his own beers while Tim, James and Stone got food and drinks from the bar. A guy came around with the open mike list so I put myself on number seven. I needed a guitar and spotted a young guy with a hipster hat, sitting alone at a table with his guitar against the wall.
I sat down with him. “Hey, are you performing?”
“Yea.”
“Could I borrow your guitar for a song?”
“Sure. In standard?”
“Yea.”
“Put the capo on the second fret.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks. Are you coming to the protest?”
“I just heard of it when I walked in.”
“What’s your general conception of it?”
“This region of the country is on bedrock called the Marcellus Shale, which has gas in it so companies are drilling with poisonous water to fracture the rock.”
“Right, so they go into rural towns and offer people money for their property rights, prying on their poverty often and they talk about terrorism and foreign oil. These people are the first to get poisoned. It creates internal conflict in the towns since everyone shares the water. It’s an Environmental Injustice.”
“So why don’t they just use regular drilling?”
“Well it seems like Shale or the Middle East right now. Clearly we need Renewable Energy, right?”
“Yea, but it seems like jobs or the environment,” he said very genuinely.
“These companies could easily create Green Jobs. They can’t plunder the Earth forever. We need people to build and operate Solar Powered Public Trains.”
“See, I think what you guys are doing is great but we also need people to be innovators. I want to be an entrepreneur. I feel
there aren’t enough young entrepreneurs.”
“Yea, totally. I hang around that crowd sometimes, students aching to invent something. And sometimes I get the excitement. You seem like an artist though.”
“Well I write spiritual music. Spirituality makes you want to do everything creative.”
It felt as though I was experiencing the Midwest. It felt as though I were shaking, talking fast and that I seemed to him thwarted from a political-intellectual madhouse in Manhattan while he had stars and dreams in his eyes, a whole different view of the world, and was perhaps wary of me all together.
“You’re in school?” I asked.
“University of Pittsburgh.”
“There activism groups there?”
“It’s not a very progressive student body. I mean, we have a socialist club.”
“Oh really? Cool. We had one at my school and we didn’t have a very progressive student body either. In fact, most of my
friends in the city are socialists and most of my friends outside of the city are anarchists.”
“What are you?”
“I like to think I have a lot in common with all these people.”
James came over and said they were all heading out. The guy wrote his musician name on a napkin so I could find him on You Tube and I did likewise.
After crossing my name off the mike list, I saw Kristin, the blonde girl that I square danced with at Appalachia Rising and talked about America. While we talked I noticed she had an open notebook in her hand so I asked, “Are you going to recite a poem?”
“Maybe. These are all recent poems. I don’t know what’s good. Are you?”
“I would but we’re leaving.”
“Would it have been about Fracking?”
“Yea, actually, part of it.”
“Can I share it on my website?”
“Okay.”
She gave me her book and I wrote some lines in it.
“Thanks,” she said. “Guess I’ll see you at Alleghany Landing.”
Wire
We rode through an ally onto a dense, hilly street with houses at the sidewalk. The three guys were going to stay with their friends and we were going to stay with Oslow’s friends. Oslow and I took out our things and went through a narrow side of the house. There was a tiny backyard with food growing in it and 3D art pieces. “They said we could just go in,” he said. We entered the little, dark kitchen and flicked a light. There was a Pittsburgh Pirates sign on the wall and pictures of people on the fridge. It was cold. There was no heat. We entered the living room. There was a book-shelf at one wall, four big hooks on another wall and two couches at the other two walls with a big copy machine in between them in the corner. Oslow lied on the small couch with his jacket and boots on. I sat on the large couch.
“Is no one else crashing here?” I asked.
“Clarisse but she has a sleeping bag and there’s that mat on the floor.”
The door opened and a young woman and man came in with bikes. They told us the bathroom was upstairs and that it was a Gray Water system. They put their bikes on the hooks.
“That’s what those are for,” said Oslow. “How many people live here?”
“Four bikes, four people,” said the woman.
“Are you coming to the protest?”
“Of course.”
In the kitchen I filled my water bottle from their Pennsylvania faucet with my tongue in my cheek and put it in the fridge.
While Oslow slept hard in the morning, Clarisse on the floor, a guy played radio music in the kitchen anyway. I didn’t feel like sleeping. He was tall, bearded, had a friendly-face and wore brown rugged over-alls and a bandana around his neck. “I’m Pluto,” he said.
“Pink.”
“Help yourself. The apples in the fridge are from my friend’s organic farm. We also have almond milk and muesli.”
“What’s muesli?”
“Granola, dried fruit and nuts.” It was in a loose, plastic bag tied in a knot, obviously without a company seal on it.
I sat down to eat and I was joined by a shorter, young woman, maybe my age with oddly cut, red hair, big glasses and two feathers in her hair.
“Morning. I’m Wire.” She had a southern accent.
“Pink. Do you live here?”
“No. I’m one of the organizers.”
“Cool. Were you an environmentalist before the Fracking?”
“I’m from North Carolina. I used to fight Mountaintop Removal.”
“Were you at Appalachia Rising?”
“Too busy organizing this. Were you?”
“Yea, in Solidarity.”
“Did you get arrested?” she asked.
“Yea.”
“Court?”
“No.”
“I had to go to court when I was arrested for strapping myself to an MTR site. I didn’t have to pay the charges but the lawyer cost six hundred.”
“That sucks.”
“Yea. What were you doing before the Fracking phenomenon?”
“Climate Justice mainly.”
Oslow, Clarisse and I didn’t have bikes so we walked to the bus. It was beautiful, the sunshine and the city. There were art
murals on the walls, it was quiet and there weren’t any ads anywhere. We caught a bus.
“I saw so many Frack trucks on the way here,” said Clarisse.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I’ve seen so many pictures of them.” She explained specifically what differentiated Fracking trucks from others. Then she
asked, “What have you been doing Pink?”
“Trying to get into school. Also I’ve been trying to get students involved in this.”
When we got off the bus on an empty street I felt like we were walking in slow motion like in Reservoir Dogs and Clarisse probably felt it too because she looked at me funny. There was an abstract statue made of machine parts. “Pittsburgh is the Steal Belt,” said Clarisse.” A guy on a bike rode towards us from the bridge ahead of us. There was the Alleghany River on which several other bridges crossed in our sight and then tall buildings on the other side. There was a picture of Andy Warhol on the bridge.
“Why is there a picture of Andy Warhol?” said Oslow.
“This is the Andy Warhol Bridge,” said Clarisse.
“What did Any Warhol have to do with Pittsburgh?”
“He loved Pittsburgh. The Andy Warhol Museum is right over there.”
The grass was dewy at Alleghany Landing, a ceremonial space looking over the Rachel Carson Bridge. There were only ten people at first. Pluto and Wire came with a giant farmer puppet that had a big, turquoise, power-fist.
People were setting up microphones. I sat down with two young women. One was from Portland but moved to Pennsylvania. She had a patchy, purple hoody. I asked if she was already an environmentalist before moving. She said she did all sorts of campaigns in Portland. The other girl had to move back in with her parents in Pennsylvania because of her staggering Student Debt. She decided, without enthusiasm to then master in library science.
As more people emerged I filmed with my little camera the slumber of people waiting to act and signs like “Benzine Causes Cancer,” while that old song played on the speakers. “Oh, oh it is to go oh, but you don’t know what you’ve got til’ it’s gone. Pave paradise just to put up a parking lot…” There were clean-cut youth in green t-shirts that said, “Frack That!” on the back, taking a picture together with their Pennsylvania environmental student club banner.
I walked down to the small dock area that lined the landing. It was a sight I had never seen in New York City; right in the downtown of a city I could touch the river. I sat on a small, wooden pole and enjoyed tranquility.
Soon there were two or three hundred people and a rock band playing and speakers. I sat on the grass filming everyone sitting around.
In between speakers, Andy walked across the grass wearing a white suit-shirt, tight underwear and sunglasses like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, holding a sign that said, “Fracking is Risky Business.”
An old time rock n roller played an upbeat song as we marched out with our signs by the river. Someone gave me a small tombstone-sign that said, “RIP: Sasquahanna River.” People cheered, “No Fracking Way! No Fracking Way!” I filmed from a bench as the marching band came by playing a fierce number. Their sound became funeral-like as the mob squeezed onto the narrow staircase to the Rachel Carson Bridge. I ran ahead on the bridge to get a good shot. They played more fun, fierce music while I stood high on a ledge filming. Oslow came by with a drum after all and he seemed happy. His giant water droplet signs were in different parts of the crowd. Pluto walked on running stilts holding a long sign of a broken gas-rig and a black power-fist above it. The giant puppet followed behind everyone.
After running farther down the bridge to catch up, I found Kristin leading a chant at the front with a megaphone. “It’s Our Water, It’s Our Right! It’s our Water, We Will Fight!” It was good to see her leading as such. As we entered a busier part of the city, people chanted, “The Water, The Water, The Water’s On Fire! We don’t No Profits, Let The Corporations Burn!” but Kristin cut out the second part on the megaphone.
As the march went on, two people struggled to throw a rope over an arching lamp to hang a banner but couldn’t get it over sufficiently and gave up to catch up with the march.
Tim, James and Stone
We rallied outside of the Drilling Unconventionally for Gas convention. I filmed above the crowd from atop a concrete pillar three feet high. Wire gave a speech. She said, “From the Coal Mines in Pennyslvania and on Indigenous land, to the blasted Mountains of Southern Appalachia, to the Coal Plants in Chicago, Offshore Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, to the Tar Sand Pipelines in Indigenous Canada, to the rivers and taps of the Marcellus and other Shales, and the list goes on and on and on, the problem is systemic.”
Afterwards I waited on line at the Food Not Bombs table and got bean soup and a chocolate muffin. It was all young people sitting on the street eating. First I walked over to Wire and said I loved her speech; that it was exactly how I was feeling too. Then I walked over to Tim, James and Stone. They were standing by a banner that said, “Natural Gas is a DIRTY Fossil Fuel.” I said, “So someone was saying in their speech we need to use Civil Disobedience. What do you guys think?”
Stone nodded at a guy facing the other direction ten feet away wearing a brown suit, as if he’d come from the convention.
I nodded and said, “Right, right.”
He whispered to me, “Tomorrow, at noon, there’s going to be an action at a Frack disposal site.”
As the rally dispersed I used a port-a-potty and the three guys, and Oslow and I headed to the Green Fist! meet-up. James and Stone carried the Natural Gas banner with them, hoping to hang it somewhere and Oslow and I carried the giant water droplet signs on our shoulders.
“What were you all protesting?” said a middle-aged black woman standing next to a school bus.
“Fracking,” said James.
“Frack, what now?”
We talked to her for some time. The woman said, “Were there a lot of college students at this protest?”
“Probably half of them were college students,” I said.
“That’s good,” she said. “When I was in college, I was the rallying type.”
“There’s going to be an action tomorrow,” said Stone, giving her a flyer.
As we came to the bridge, James said, “Look. A highway goes under this side of the bridge. Let’s hang it here.” He and Stone tied it to the side of the bridge over the highway. I filmed it and we moved on.
The Green Fist! meeting was on some grass by the river near a corporate-looking building. There were some forty people sitting in the circle. We could hardly hear each other over a street cleaner going around in the nearby parking lot. Someone shouted, “Why didn’t we take more serious action?” The moderator didn’t hear him. “I said, ‘Why didn’t we take more serious action?’”
Someone responded, “This event was organized by a coalition of groups in
Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania. They agreed on what was appropriate. This was not a Green Fist! action.”
“What?”
“This was not a Green Fist! action.”
Elena Blue, who I also met at the Green Fist! gathering in June, was there. When the moderator announced the two breakouts, Elena said, “I’d like to facilitate stretching over here if anyone wants to stretch.” She didn’t seem like a typical member of Green Fist! and it occurred to me that since June she had become a member. Like many of us, we got involved with a radical group because there was an environmental and health emergency, amongst many in the nation, and we knew we could count on the group to make things happen when other groups were too passive or focusing on Climate Change instead.
As the meeting broke into a few bunches of groups, Oslow said to me, “I’m going to use my bus ticket after all. I have work tomorrow and I won’t be able to sleep in the car.”
“Do you want to talk strategy real fast?”
“I have to catch the bus.”
We hugged and he took off as I rendezvoused with Elena, who was with a bearded guy in a wizard hat.
“Are you from Rochester too?” I asked.
He nodded, smiling.
“We have an action next week in Rochester,” Elena said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We’re going to dress up like corporate gas executives and hold a Dump-In.”
“What’s a dump-in?”
“We’re going to pretend like we’re dumping Frack Fluid in this public reservoir.”
“Are you going to film it?”
“We’ll have independent media.”
“Okay. Good. Maybe we could talk about a day of action to happen before the moratorium ends, you know, if it passes the senate or whatever.”
“So in April or so?”
“Yea. There are two gigantic student conferences in February in which we could recruit people and then have it on Earth Day. Actually, come to think of it, when did the Horizon break in the Gulf?” Elena reminded me of the Gulf Oil Catastrophe because she so badly wanted to use the Gulf to draw attention to Fracking in June, and we did.
“You know it’s crazy but it happened two days before Earth Day.”
“So let’s do it on April 20th; day of action to ban hydrofracking everywhere.”
Tim, James and Stone came over and sat down with us. I introduced everyone and filled the guys in with what we were talking about and asked, “What should we do on that day?”
“We’ll send millions of messages to their internet servers all day,” said Stone.
“What?” I said, taking notes. “I was thinking like a public demonstration, you know?”
“I just always wanted to do that,” he said.
“Let’s do something with hula hoops,” said Elena, “symbolic of the Haliburton Loophole.”
“Let’s drink fake Fracked water and have a die-in,” said James.
“Or walk around like zombies that drank Fracked water,” said Stone.
“Let’s have a die-in and then be zombies,” I said.
“We should set up mini drilling rigs,” said Elena, “and sit in them in public places.”
“I like that one,” I said.
The people that the guys stayed with the night before worked in a punk pizza and sandwich place so we went there for “hoagies” before leaving Pittsburgh. James and I needed a restroom so we went next door to an independent bookstore. It was really small but dense with books and one woman worked there. She said, “It’s in the basement. You can’t miss it.”
James went down and I saw a flyer by the register for the protest.
“We were here for the protest,” I said.
“Oh great. I was there.”
“Really?”
“Oh yea. I just learned about Fracking a couple weeks ago. It really scares me, you know? How could this be happening?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did you all come from?”
“We came from the New York City area, just past the Shale’s border. There weren’t many people here from New York City
but there’s a substantial Anti-Fracking movement there.”
“Are they doing it in New York?”
“They haven’t been able to start. They hit Penn first and they leased up Western New York but there’s sort of a moratorium
until May.”
“Well it’s terrible. Here. On this bookmark is a coupon for a free cup of coffee at Renegade Coffee, which is in Pittsburgh.”
“Thanks.”
We left the punk pizza place with hoagies in paper bags and walked through the twilight singing.
“James,” I said in the back of the car as we left Pittsburgh. “How the hell are we going to get all these Green students involved in Environmental Justice?”
“I don’t know. How did you get involved in it?”
“It started with Climate Change.”
“Well everyone’s into Climate Change.”
At midnight we stopped at a gas station where I followed Tim to the coffee counter. He told me, “Sorry I’ve been kind of quiet. It’s just a girl in my mind.”
“Oh.” He reminded me of something in and out of my own mind. “Sometimes I think about nonpolitical things,” I said.
“Could have fooled me,” he said.
James and Stone were looking at a big map of Pennsylvania on the wall. It showed that we were two thirds through.
We walked past a group of teenagers that were standing around outside the gas station. I said, “Let’s ask those kids what they think about Fracking.” We walked back over to them and I said, “Hey there. Hey. We just drove all the way to Pittsburgh from New York City to protest Hydrofracking and we were wondering what you all thought about it.”
“What’s hydrofracking?” said a girl.
James said, “An intense, dangerous form of Gas Drilling.”
“I just worked on a pad yesterday,” said a guy that was apparently older than them and was smoking a cigarette. “I don’t know if it was hydrofracking.”
“Well just be wary of it,” I said. “Lots of home tap water is being poisoned where they do it.”
They all turned their heads from us and continued to talk to each other. We walked back to the car speechlessly.
When we got in the car we belted up and took off. When we got on the road, Stone turned around and said, “That’s what’s wrong with this fucking country!”
“How do they not know about it?” said James.
“Hey, they know about it now,” I said.
“That actually took my mind off that stupid girl,” said Tim.
“What’s the deal with that anyway?” I asked. “Who is this girl?”
Stone said, “He’s just mad because he left this intense message on her phone last night and she hasn’t called back.”
Tim turned the music on.
James said, “This song reminds me of the IMF protest.”
“What was that like?” I asked.
They told me funny stories about the protest and made me laugh all the way to New York, where by the time we road in, it
was lightly raining. They dropped me off at my home at 2AM.
After jogging around in the drizzling rain for fresh air I couldn’t sleep so I uploaded my footage and looked for my poem on Kristin’s blog. It was there. While my eyelids grew heavy I read nearly all the many posts on her blog. On it was a video of her getting arrested protesting the G20. Most of her posts were about Environmental Justice. At four o’clock I went to sleep.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Appalachia Rising: Part 3
On the morning of the action we got up at 6:30 AM in the church even though there was no breakfast served, and the opening rally was at 11. I guess we had to get our stuff out of there. It was raining. Some of us wore trash bags that we found, mine eventually turned into a toga. I shoved my stuff in Ed's car but he left with half of the Connecticut crew and I wound up going to a bakery with that musician couple that rocked with me the night before, those two young girls that whispered strategy with me, and Russel. We were warned to try not to have to go to the bathroom during the action, because who knew how long the cops would keep us on the sidewalk in front of the White House, so I didn't drink any water or eat anything, even though the big, puffy pastries at the bakery were super cheap compared to New York.
As we walked to the subway, Russel was barefoot on the wet ground. We passed some cool looking Solar Panel-art figurations. The first subway trip was okay, during rush hour, but when we tried to transfer it was really impossible herd stuff so we walked instead. We used a bathroom at a Starbucks but later they would actually blockade the bathroom with garbage cans and cones and stuff. Actually, while I was waiting for it originally, I talked to this guy from Appalachia who said he really dug the Reverend Billy but in Coal Country, a preacher could never talk about Coal.
I got some really great footage of the rally getting together, just a lot of people hanging out with signs. It wasn't raining. A girl with a megaphone, a green Kentuckians for the Commonwealth t-shirt and a red bandana around her neck walked all over a giant Beehive Collective poster explaining some of the story on it. People were dancing and people were playing music about Mountaintop Removal. There were a lot of songs like this that went on in different kinds of Appalachian country music, blue grass sorts of styles, and a Native America guy played a tune.
Soon the place was packed with what looked like 1500 people, but later I felt I could say there might have been more than 2000 people there. Anyway, I didn't listen to all the speeches but James Hansen gave one and Jonas Larry, the man who wouldn't give up his mountain, really a pretty old man, shouted, "The science is in! Coal Kills! Coal Kills!" Then we marched.
It was really beautiful and I was trying to find the banner I was supposed to be behind, wasn't sure if it was the Safe Jobs in Appalachia one, but let it go. At the EPA there were speeches and I climbed up the steps to film. We chanted, "Do Your Jobs! Do Your Jobs!" At this point it rained on us as we chanted this and I cried and could hardly cheer. I don't think I had ever cried at a demonstration before this and later in retrospect I figured I should take this into serious consideration, because I don't think of myself as an emotional person, but really- I don't plan on being an emotional activist. I don't think Gandhi and King cried too much. Just know that the thing that made me cry was that we were protesting the EPA for hardly taking care of the things our generation cared about or properly standing up for what was right.
We protested PNC bank for funding MTR. Inside the bank, Rev Billy, his choir and a bunch of young people were doing some awesome sermon, and at least Billy got arrested. We chanted, "PNC, We're Killing Our Communities!" I saw Al and told him to hold onto my camera. At last I didn't have to worry about getting arrested with my camera.
After some speeches in Lafayette Park, a path was cleared for people risking arrest. I went behind the Safe Jobs in Appalachia! banner with ten other people. We were third after Safe Water Now! or whatever and Protect Our Homeland with the people from Appalachia in the front. For kids walking onto the path, people shouted, "Get off this path unless you're going to get arrested."
We were in front of the White House. The police had a big "Clean Air Natural Gas" green-washing bus and 1 or 2 little vans for prisoners, and a few cop cars. They taped off the whole section of the street making a square and the protesters stayed behind the tape chanting with us, "The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated!" There were just over a hundred of us on the sidewalk, standing. The cops read us the law and told us to go away. Someone from Appalachia gave us the key to disobey and the people behind banners at the front, in front of two of three other rows of people, sat down. Actually, everyone sat down except for a line of Appalachian elders in the back, something like that. We would have decorated the fence but it was also barred off behind us. So as they read us more stuff we sang songs and passed the banners behind us to the back. We locked arms, mostly for a symbolic visual. We sang a millions songs and chants,like one I even led, and without deliberation, it just happened, "When I Say Mountain, You Say Justice!" and there was this back and forth between the sidewalk people and the people at the perimeter. So all the back and forth chants were like that and sometimes my side of the sidewalk people started them, sometimes the other, and sometimes the people at the perimeter started the chants. One was, "One! We Are the People, Two! You Can't Ignore us, Three! We Will Not Let You, Blow, Up, Mountains, One!..." We even sang old songs from the 60s like Joan Baez: We Shall Over Come... We Are Not Afraid... Oh deep in my heart, I do believe, that We Shall Overcome, some day...
There was a reason why one of the cops counted us at the beginning, I found, because although most of the front line to my left had been arrested, the cop skipped the two people remaining to my left and gestured me to get up. I stood up and people applauded as he tied my hands behind my back. A few young people, when they were arrested had started new chants, like "Save Our Mountains," but when the time came I swallowed and didn't say anything, but just thought about Gandhi and dignity and boldness. And this nice dude with a straw hat said to me, "What do you want us to chant for ya?" So I chanted, "Eco Justice Now!" and soon all two thousand or whatever people were chanting, for the first time that day, "ECO JUSTICE NOW! ECO JUSTICE NOW!" At the "Clean air natural gas bus" the cop said to the other, "This is number 35," I thought, "well there you go, that was the amount of people that were in the 350 CCNY shot."
James Hansen smiled at me, the man already cuffed, sitting on the bus, as I was escorted two seats past him and talked to a nice older woman from West Virginia who said she loved Obama, I said I think there's still hope, and this guy Charlie across the walkway who had black earrings and told me all about the people that police the borders and how either Earth First! or one of his Radical groups protested some Republican speech at I think Chapel Hill in North Carolina by literally holding a banner in front of the speaker, and how there's actually a student society there that is conservative, I said, holy shit, at City College in Harlem, well, we don't have a single conservative club, just a Left. And I brought up how the White House, looking at it right there handcuffed, looked equally oppressive with it's rich and conservative qualities and beautiful at the same time, neutralizing it. He said, "We should paint a big red fist on it," and I said, "Yea, and a rainbow prism!" The guy next to him, I started listening to him speak, said, "My family in Appalachia, we are descendents of indentured servants." Then the cop said, "I'm sorry we have to wait so long but unfortunately some of your friends decided to not cooperate and they have to go through a more complicated process." Charlie said, "Don't listen to him! He's trying to pit us against each other!" And then the bus flew through DC with cop cars and blazing sirens in front of it, through all the red lights and stuff, while the cop gave us a tour guide speech of DC, making jokes about monuments and Charlie kept arguing with him about stuff like whether America is really a Democratic country. He said, "I've never seen a ballot that actually said abolish all prisons."
We sat on on concrete floor somewhere while some people used a porta potty then they called us in by groups of 6 and I wound up in a little cell with one little bench, a toilet, a sink, and 5 other guys who were all at least 10 years older than me, including one guy from DC. There was one old man from Upstate New York who was in such Solidarity with Appalachia that he chained himself to some machinery on a mountain. They took us out one by one every few minutes and I was left with the DC guy and he had been talking about March 2nd One Nation and I said how the March 4 Education Movement was part of it and all about what happened with how k-university schools were in Solidarity on that day last year and how it goes on et cetera.
Well, a guy took my thumbprint and gave me a ticket that said my city of birth was Long Island, which isn't a city and then I was led out into the parking lot confused, and I walked halfway through the cars and saw some people sitting on a fence far away past a field of grass and so I walked that way and soon people were cheering and applauding as I walked up onto the grass. There were 25 people there, behind the fence and we did it for everyone who came out of jail. Seeds for Peace had pasta and bananas for everyone! and someone explained that no one knew anything but it seemed we had to come back to the same place the next day or within 15 days to pay 100 dollars and they couldn't reimburse us right away and Jonas Larry said he was refusing to pay his fine and so did this long haired guy from Coal Country and most people just wanted to pay the next day and get out of there like me. Also, I ended up changing my ride to a guy John who had a big car and was going right through New York City and I invited Kitty. The sun set and then I realized that in the opposite direction, over the odd empty road, you could see over DC, it was twinkling in the twilight.
This girl Erica in squeezed in a truck with me, going to a place where App Rising could put us up this extra night, said she came because she didn't go to Power Shift 09 and regretted it so much after hearing from her friends that she had to go to this, and we met this bearded Vermont guy with a guitar too. And we were brought to this room, just us at first and on the other side of a sliding wall was an AA meeting that was ending so we tried to be a little quiet but when they left I played for them one of my eco-political songs on guitar. And then Erica and I went into the lobby, sat on pluffy couches and I showed her how to play some chords. She was from Seattle but going to school in Upstate New York. I remembered that I still had no one to cover my Climate Justice talk the next day at 6:30PM and it was 10PM! so I called a bunch of people and found that it was actually noon the next day! but at last I got this wonderful woman from the Sierra Club Mid Atlantic Chapter to do it and she agreed to do it just on Hydrofracking, I was so free! except I had to pay 100 bucks the next day.
In the morning I was supposed to meet John after taking the subway somewhere but Erica's phone was dead and she was afraid her ride didn't know where she was so she was trying to figure out what to do. I convinced her to come with me and we put a paper on the door saying she was with me somewhere but eventually we realized, after 30 minutes of losing our heads, that we had the same ride. But she was so not wanting to pay the fine that she didn't want to pay for the subway and we convinced John to come get us event though either way it would cost almost 30 minutes and she wouldn't let me buy her breakfast but I got chai. John came with his buddy Scott in the car. We also picked up a girl named Eileen who had a Rev. Billy album to listen to later. The two girls sat in the middle and I sat way in the back with a bunch of stuff next to me.
At the station there were like fifteen people and someone relayed to us that they were letting us go to different stations since there was only one agent that could process each person at a time and it took a long time. So we drove to another station but they said that they couldn't do the opposite of what our tickets said even though we saw some kids outside from our demo that they processed. So we went back and there were still a lot of people. We sat on the floor. It was a small room with no staff person to be seen. There were just some posters on the wall about America and drive safely and stuff. The guy from DC and his wife came in. Kitty was there, she said she thought I was gone but wanted to come with us and was all happy. The agent said he would called stations and see who would take us. In the meantime the DC guy and his wife said they were going to another protest, this one of the FBI who broke into some activist houses or other and making them look like terrorists or something and people wanted to go and the agent came back and sent us to different stations. But when we got to the other station they said they didn't process fines there so we came all the way back and I went out to the back with this bearded dude with an earring because we needed to pee and in the field over a little hill there were tall grasses, butterflies and moths everywhere. It was like a little Utopia or something and we peed facing different directions and when we got back his group was leaving so it was just my group. We played Adlibs and laughed. We made fun of and discussed the stupid posters on the wall. I made an adlibs about a protest and with the words filled in it turned out hysterical and awesome, we even read it like 3 times. And then Erica said she was starving and Eileen had this great idea so we ordered a pizza and ate it sitting on the middle of the floor. When the guy finally finished processing our fines he said, "Are you all coming back for the John Stuart rally?" We shrugged and said, "No." He said, "Ya'll are no activists."
Some of the way back I drove because John, Scott an Eileen had to go all the way to Massachusetts. At a gas station Erica and I ran across a major highway to use the bathroom at a diner. I bought a muffin and a coffee. I could only drive until it got dark because of my terrible vision. As the sun set we listened to the Rev Billy Choir CD. They sang, "This Town Aint No Super Ma-ll." and he was like, "Where's Ginsberg and Coltrane?" and I said to Scott, "You ever read Ginsberg?" and he said, "Been meaning to," I said, "Man, you've got to read Ginsberg, like the poem America."
And I was in the middle and John was in the back and Kitty was driving and Eileen said, "Kitty, why do you have a book about reaching love's deepest bliss?" and she said, "Some woman at the party-" (Erica and I didn't feel like going) "-gave it to me and said I had to read it." Eileen read some passages which were both spiritual and sexual and it made everybody laugh, we passed the book around and I said we had to stop because it was disturbing me and we debated whether sex could be spiritual or not or whatever and then we debated whether casual sex was Sustainable. Eileen said that there are herbs that women can take for birth control that are Natural and her ancestors were burnt as witches for using that stuff. And soon we were talking about Gandhi and... as we went into the blazing lights of New York City John was talking about this philosophy about what is really Natural and what do we consider Natural and everybody was talking about this and the different ways they saw it and whether they would rather live in the country or what and soon we were in Midtown and John said, "The buildings are just so imposing," and they dropped Erica and me off and she said something similar like, when you live in the country it's so bizarre to be in Manhattan and I said I'm there everyday and I walked her to her bus and soon I was all alone on 42nd Street.
As we walked to the subway, Russel was barefoot on the wet ground. We passed some cool looking Solar Panel-art figurations. The first subway trip was okay, during rush hour, but when we tried to transfer it was really impossible herd stuff so we walked instead. We used a bathroom at a Starbucks but later they would actually blockade the bathroom with garbage cans and cones and stuff. Actually, while I was waiting for it originally, I talked to this guy from Appalachia who said he really dug the Reverend Billy but in Coal Country, a preacher could never talk about Coal.
I got some really great footage of the rally getting together, just a lot of people hanging out with signs. It wasn't raining. A girl with a megaphone, a green Kentuckians for the Commonwealth t-shirt and a red bandana around her neck walked all over a giant Beehive Collective poster explaining some of the story on it. People were dancing and people were playing music about Mountaintop Removal. There were a lot of songs like this that went on in different kinds of Appalachian country music, blue grass sorts of styles, and a Native America guy played a tune.
Soon the place was packed with what looked like 1500 people, but later I felt I could say there might have been more than 2000 people there. Anyway, I didn't listen to all the speeches but James Hansen gave one and Jonas Larry, the man who wouldn't give up his mountain, really a pretty old man, shouted, "The science is in! Coal Kills! Coal Kills!" Then we marched.
It was really beautiful and I was trying to find the banner I was supposed to be behind, wasn't sure if it was the Safe Jobs in Appalachia one, but let it go. At the EPA there were speeches and I climbed up the steps to film. We chanted, "Do Your Jobs! Do Your Jobs!" At this point it rained on us as we chanted this and I cried and could hardly cheer. I don't think I had ever cried at a demonstration before this and later in retrospect I figured I should take this into serious consideration, because I don't think of myself as an emotional person, but really- I don't plan on being an emotional activist. I don't think Gandhi and King cried too much. Just know that the thing that made me cry was that we were protesting the EPA for hardly taking care of the things our generation cared about or properly standing up for what was right.
We protested PNC bank for funding MTR. Inside the bank, Rev Billy, his choir and a bunch of young people were doing some awesome sermon, and at least Billy got arrested. We chanted, "PNC, We're Killing Our Communities!" I saw Al and told him to hold onto my camera. At last I didn't have to worry about getting arrested with my camera.
After some speeches in Lafayette Park, a path was cleared for people risking arrest. I went behind the Safe Jobs in Appalachia! banner with ten other people. We were third after Safe Water Now! or whatever and Protect Our Homeland with the people from Appalachia in the front. For kids walking onto the path, people shouted, "Get off this path unless you're going to get arrested."
We were in front of the White House. The police had a big "Clean Air Natural Gas" green-washing bus and 1 or 2 little vans for prisoners, and a few cop cars. They taped off the whole section of the street making a square and the protesters stayed behind the tape chanting with us, "The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated!" There were just over a hundred of us on the sidewalk, standing. The cops read us the law and told us to go away. Someone from Appalachia gave us the key to disobey and the people behind banners at the front, in front of two of three other rows of people, sat down. Actually, everyone sat down except for a line of Appalachian elders in the back, something like that. We would have decorated the fence but it was also barred off behind us. So as they read us more stuff we sang songs and passed the banners behind us to the back. We locked arms, mostly for a symbolic visual. We sang a millions songs and chants,like one I even led, and without deliberation, it just happened, "When I Say Mountain, You Say Justice!" and there was this back and forth between the sidewalk people and the people at the perimeter. So all the back and forth chants were like that and sometimes my side of the sidewalk people started them, sometimes the other, and sometimes the people at the perimeter started the chants. One was, "One! We Are the People, Two! You Can't Ignore us, Three! We Will Not Let You, Blow, Up, Mountains, One!..." We even sang old songs from the 60s like Joan Baez: We Shall Over Come... We Are Not Afraid... Oh deep in my heart, I do believe, that We Shall Overcome, some day...
There was a reason why one of the cops counted us at the beginning, I found, because although most of the front line to my left had been arrested, the cop skipped the two people remaining to my left and gestured me to get up. I stood up and people applauded as he tied my hands behind my back. A few young people, when they were arrested had started new chants, like "Save Our Mountains," but when the time came I swallowed and didn't say anything, but just thought about Gandhi and dignity and boldness. And this nice dude with a straw hat said to me, "What do you want us to chant for ya?" So I chanted, "Eco Justice Now!" and soon all two thousand or whatever people were chanting, for the first time that day, "ECO JUSTICE NOW! ECO JUSTICE NOW!" At the "Clean air natural gas bus" the cop said to the other, "This is number 35," I thought, "well there you go, that was the amount of people that were in the 350 CCNY shot."
James Hansen smiled at me, the man already cuffed, sitting on the bus, as I was escorted two seats past him and talked to a nice older woman from West Virginia who said she loved Obama, I said I think there's still hope, and this guy Charlie across the walkway who had black earrings and told me all about the people that police the borders and how either Earth First! or one of his Radical groups protested some Republican speech at I think Chapel Hill in North Carolina by literally holding a banner in front of the speaker, and how there's actually a student society there that is conservative, I said, holy shit, at City College in Harlem, well, we don't have a single conservative club, just a Left. And I brought up how the White House, looking at it right there handcuffed, looked equally oppressive with it's rich and conservative qualities and beautiful at the same time, neutralizing it. He said, "We should paint a big red fist on it," and I said, "Yea, and a rainbow prism!" The guy next to him, I started listening to him speak, said, "My family in Appalachia, we are descendents of indentured servants." Then the cop said, "I'm sorry we have to wait so long but unfortunately some of your friends decided to not cooperate and they have to go through a more complicated process." Charlie said, "Don't listen to him! He's trying to pit us against each other!" And then the bus flew through DC with cop cars and blazing sirens in front of it, through all the red lights and stuff, while the cop gave us a tour guide speech of DC, making jokes about monuments and Charlie kept arguing with him about stuff like whether America is really a Democratic country. He said, "I've never seen a ballot that actually said abolish all prisons."
We sat on on concrete floor somewhere while some people used a porta potty then they called us in by groups of 6 and I wound up in a little cell with one little bench, a toilet, a sink, and 5 other guys who were all at least 10 years older than me, including one guy from DC. There was one old man from Upstate New York who was in such Solidarity with Appalachia that he chained himself to some machinery on a mountain. They took us out one by one every few minutes and I was left with the DC guy and he had been talking about March 2nd One Nation and I said how the March 4 Education Movement was part of it and all about what happened with how k-university schools were in Solidarity on that day last year and how it goes on et cetera.
Well, a guy took my thumbprint and gave me a ticket that said my city of birth was Long Island, which isn't a city and then I was led out into the parking lot confused, and I walked halfway through the cars and saw some people sitting on a fence far away past a field of grass and so I walked that way and soon people were cheering and applauding as I walked up onto the grass. There were 25 people there, behind the fence and we did it for everyone who came out of jail. Seeds for Peace had pasta and bananas for everyone! and someone explained that no one knew anything but it seemed we had to come back to the same place the next day or within 15 days to pay 100 dollars and they couldn't reimburse us right away and Jonas Larry said he was refusing to pay his fine and so did this long haired guy from Coal Country and most people just wanted to pay the next day and get out of there like me. Also, I ended up changing my ride to a guy John who had a big car and was going right through New York City and I invited Kitty. The sun set and then I realized that in the opposite direction, over the odd empty road, you could see over DC, it was twinkling in the twilight.
This girl Erica in squeezed in a truck with me, going to a place where App Rising could put us up this extra night, said she came because she didn't go to Power Shift 09 and regretted it so much after hearing from her friends that she had to go to this, and we met this bearded Vermont guy with a guitar too. And we were brought to this room, just us at first and on the other side of a sliding wall was an AA meeting that was ending so we tried to be a little quiet but when they left I played for them one of my eco-political songs on guitar. And then Erica and I went into the lobby, sat on pluffy couches and I showed her how to play some chords. She was from Seattle but going to school in Upstate New York. I remembered that I still had no one to cover my Climate Justice talk the next day at 6:30PM and it was 10PM! so I called a bunch of people and found that it was actually noon the next day! but at last I got this wonderful woman from the Sierra Club Mid Atlantic Chapter to do it and she agreed to do it just on Hydrofracking, I was so free! except I had to pay 100 bucks the next day.
In the morning I was supposed to meet John after taking the subway somewhere but Erica's phone was dead and she was afraid her ride didn't know where she was so she was trying to figure out what to do. I convinced her to come with me and we put a paper on the door saying she was with me somewhere but eventually we realized, after 30 minutes of losing our heads, that we had the same ride. But she was so not wanting to pay the fine that she didn't want to pay for the subway and we convinced John to come get us event though either way it would cost almost 30 minutes and she wouldn't let me buy her breakfast but I got chai. John came with his buddy Scott in the car. We also picked up a girl named Eileen who had a Rev. Billy album to listen to later. The two girls sat in the middle and I sat way in the back with a bunch of stuff next to me.
At the station there were like fifteen people and someone relayed to us that they were letting us go to different stations since there was only one agent that could process each person at a time and it took a long time. So we drove to another station but they said that they couldn't do the opposite of what our tickets said even though we saw some kids outside from our demo that they processed. So we went back and there were still a lot of people. We sat on the floor. It was a small room with no staff person to be seen. There were just some posters on the wall about America and drive safely and stuff. The guy from DC and his wife came in. Kitty was there, she said she thought I was gone but wanted to come with us and was all happy. The agent said he would called stations and see who would take us. In the meantime the DC guy and his wife said they were going to another protest, this one of the FBI who broke into some activist houses or other and making them look like terrorists or something and people wanted to go and the agent came back and sent us to different stations. But when we got to the other station they said they didn't process fines there so we came all the way back and I went out to the back with this bearded dude with an earring because we needed to pee and in the field over a little hill there were tall grasses, butterflies and moths everywhere. It was like a little Utopia or something and we peed facing different directions and when we got back his group was leaving so it was just my group. We played Adlibs and laughed. We made fun of and discussed the stupid posters on the wall. I made an adlibs about a protest and with the words filled in it turned out hysterical and awesome, we even read it like 3 times. And then Erica said she was starving and Eileen had this great idea so we ordered a pizza and ate it sitting on the middle of the floor. When the guy finally finished processing our fines he said, "Are you all coming back for the John Stuart rally?" We shrugged and said, "No." He said, "Ya'll are no activists."
Some of the way back I drove because John, Scott an Eileen had to go all the way to Massachusetts. At a gas station Erica and I ran across a major highway to use the bathroom at a diner. I bought a muffin and a coffee. I could only drive until it got dark because of my terrible vision. As the sun set we listened to the Rev Billy Choir CD. They sang, "This Town Aint No Super Ma-ll." and he was like, "Where's Ginsberg and Coltrane?" and I said to Scott, "You ever read Ginsberg?" and he said, "Been meaning to," I said, "Man, you've got to read Ginsberg, like the poem America."
And I was in the middle and John was in the back and Kitty was driving and Eileen said, "Kitty, why do you have a book about reaching love's deepest bliss?" and she said, "Some woman at the party-" (Erica and I didn't feel like going) "-gave it to me and said I had to read it." Eileen read some passages which were both spiritual and sexual and it made everybody laugh, we passed the book around and I said we had to stop because it was disturbing me and we debated whether sex could be spiritual or not or whatever and then we debated whether casual sex was Sustainable. Eileen said that there are herbs that women can take for birth control that are Natural and her ancestors were burnt as witches for using that stuff. And soon we were talking about Gandhi and... as we went into the blazing lights of New York City John was talking about this philosophy about what is really Natural and what do we consider Natural and everybody was talking about this and the different ways they saw it and whether they would rather live in the country or what and soon we were in Midtown and John said, "The buildings are just so imposing," and they dropped Erica and me off and she said something similar like, when you live in the country it's so bizarre to be in Manhattan and I said I'm there everyday and I walked her to her bus and soon I was all alone on 42nd Street.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Appalachia Rising: Part 2
Ed & Russel, a new friend named Lexington and I wandered out from the CD discussion, into the night to catch the bus, debating whether or not each of us were still willing to get arrested. Lexington was just a freshman at some progressive school, and even went to a progressive high school where everyone walked out to protest the war. I said I only know one progressive person at my high school like that. Ed seemed to be unsure whether he was going to do it. Russel said his goal was to take pictures so if he had to cross police lines, he would risk arrest for good pictures.
We merged with a bigger crowd at the bus stop and Jassie was there. She wanted to sing songs with us so Lexington clanged on her jar full of tea. I took the cap off my water bottle and clanged that. One person played harmonica and there were some other noises. We had a good groove going at the bus stop. Then we crowded the bus. There I met this long haired dude from Knoxville, named Knox. Jassie had a Beehive Collective poster sticking out of her backpack.
Because Jassie had offered to keep my stuff safe in her jeep, she took it out for me when we got back and I sat on the steps in front of the church playing my guitar with two people I had met in New York, a couple that did some political theatre against Carbon Trading in the Financial District. They both had wild, black hair. I played for them a couple songs I had written. Then the one guy asked to play a song he wrote and it was so good and his girlfriend sang along. He wailed, singing in the night, and later someone said people were sleeping across the street.
A bunch of people crashed at the church because they had been locked out of this other place a few blocks away, including Knox. So I walked with them, just because I ended up with them, back to that place at 7AM. Still it was locked so I went to the store to get change and came back. Knox said he was going to walk with his friend. Only one other person was ready to take the bus so I took the bus with him, this blonde haired guy from I think Portland who lived in Kentucky doing some Sustainable Agriculture camp job or something. He said he'd never been to New York and we talked about how when you get off in the Village a sign says, "Welcome to the Gay and Lesbian Community," or other.
We did get to breakfast on time and someone was playing a song on, I think a cello and singing. He sung a song about wanting to change the world. When my friend left I found Knox. He said the walk felt good. I said I'd do it later. He said he was a Journalism major. He said his assignment was to report on some Republican speaker somewhere and he hated everything the guy said, so he wrote up the quotes that he found the most racist, classist, and backwards.
We weren't allowed to leave our stuff in the Church on Sunday so I had all my stuff. I left it against the wall in the lunch room except for my guitar and side-tote. At the opening plenary we watched Al's movie, and it made me cry. When the lights went on I saw some women crying. It probably didn't have that affect on me the first time. It was only maybe a 30 minute film. So then after some talks there were workshops and you stayed if you were going to be in the action the next day. Sam had to leave later that day but she said she wanted to stay in the room anyway. Maybe 500 or more people stayed in the room. We moved the chairs all to the side and made 4 long lines or 2 with partners. My partner was a skinny guy with glasses from Appalachia. The facilitators were the woman with the strait, gray hair and her friend with red hair, both in their 40s or so. They told us to reach across the gap and hold one hand with the other person. Our objective, they said, was going to be to switch sides with that person. When they said go we all struggled to pull the person across. My partner and I just didn't go anywhere. Then they had one partnernship demonstrate how they did it. They simply cooperated with each other and swung about. Then we broke into 4 big groups.
My new partner ended up being this big, friendly dude. He looked more like an athlete than an activist. First, I was role playing the activist and he a pro-Coal person on the offensive. He shouted stuff at me like, "You're trying to take our jobs away! Coal is my life! I'm an American!" I said, "I'm also an American and I believe in Sustainability." Later he said he thought that was a good point. Then I had to be a police officer and he an activist. So I said, "Those people have brainwashed you. They talked you into doing something you don't want to do." But he said stuff like, "MTR is killing the people in Appalachia."
Then our whole group had to be police guarding the White House while the some 4 or 5 hundred other people came marching at us with banners. They looked so peaceful it seemed crazy to arrest them but we did anyway. Then on the second go, they sat down before us, locked arms and legs. We simply couldn't pull them apart. Two cops would carry one person by all limbs. We hardly arrested anyone. Then the two women showed us some careful places where the police could easily knock us out like under our chins or on the sides of our knecks, just things good to know.
Before lunch I tried to fill out a jail support form, but I wasn't sure who to put down for an emergency contact. They said I had until 8:30PM to return the form. So I went with it to lunch, talking to someone about their 10/10/10 plan on the phone, not informing them about what was going on. I realized also, that on Tuesday, I was supposed to lead a discussion about Climate Justice somewhere at 6:30. The line for lunch went all the way through the lunch room, which was a school gym really, up the stairs, and around the corner of the school, which was a sort of arts elementary school. Ned was the last person on line. I asked him if he knew anyone in New York that could maybe lead the discussion for me. He gave me a number and I left a message with that person. Then I called this guy named R. Jeremy. He said he maybe could do it. Then I forgot about it for a while, made a friend named Jamie that lived in Mass, and we talked to this older guy from Northern West Virginia. He said, and I forget why but, "You never know who you're talking to."
Someone called a Northeat meet-up. There were about twenty of us, including Jassie. Going around everyone said their name, where they were from and their favorite part so far of the conference, but I just said my name, where I was from and that I that I felt we not only needed to be in Soidarity as the Northeast but more so as the Fracking Movement. I got everyone's contact to get them involved in Fracking. Some people also said they just learned about Fracking there and couldn't believe how bad it was. So afterwards a bunch of people wanted to talk to me about Fracking. I ended up missing something called, "Know Your Rights." Then I talked to this organizer for a while from Connecticut and we found Kitty in a Rising Tide group, planning another CD action. I wasn't interested in getting involved, it was getting too complex for me but I wanted to meet Rising Tide people. So I walked back with people from Rising Tide asking them a million questions.
Back at the conference center, I went to a room specifically for people risking arrest. Someone was explaining to Ed that the citation is like a speeding ticket, and that most likely the emergency contact won't be contacted. I called someone at WE ACT for Justice and left a message asking if they could do Tuesday. Then it started. There were a hundred people. They asked us what our concerns were. One person said their things. They said to leave all things with someone else or with them. If we weren't willing to let go of our cellphones, just take out numbers that we don't want called, or something like that. If we weren't willing to let go of our cameras, delete footage or organizers speaking at the summit. I think this was only in case of a worse case scenerio and there would be investigation. Someone said money, so they told us to raise our hands if we were still on the fence because of money. I raised my hand and so did fifty people. They said that it most likely would be a hundred dollars flat but they could fundraise to pay us back. One guy said that he worked with an organization that raised money for activists, that one they raised 300,000 in ten days or something, or ten hours, and he could probably raise 10,000. The woman with gray hair said, "So that's it. Money's not a problem." Someone asked about minors. She said, "If you are a minor, do it."
Then we broke into three groups. One was for people from Appalachia. The two others had decide if they wanted to be behind the Clean Water Now banner of Safe Jobs in Appalachia. I knew I should go to Water, since I'm in the Frack Movement, but I felt more inspired to go to Safe Jobs in Appalachia. There were thirty of us in the circle. We had to make decisions about things to bring to the larger group. We decided to sit, not stand on the sidewalk, after the time was right. We decided to lock arms in long lines, not make circles and lock legs. We decided to let the people from Appalachia decide if we'd go limp when arrested. We decided to maybe square dance, after considerable time. We decided only maybe 10 I think or more of us were willing to do Jail Solidarity, so we'd see how many more later. This didn't include me. So then the Water group made almost the exact same decisions and we left much up to the Appalachia group. They wanted us to basically not go limp and din't seem to have an opinion about square dancing after considerable time.
Back on the long line at dinner I called my friend Ojo in New York. He said I could put him down for an emergency contact. Talking it out, I realized I could put Betty, my Frack and Youth organizer friend in New York down for the second. I got off line and walked all the way back to give in my form. I came back and got some soup, and met a girl who was from the town next to mine on Long Island, only she lived in Florida. Seeds for Peace had to move the tables so I said I'd meet her outside and I sat on the concrete outside and she never found me. This girl from Appalachia said she wasn't totally against Coal all together because her father was a miner and he'd lose his job. I thought to myself, if I were her, I would just have very radical demands for Just Transition, but it occurred to me that only if I were her could I have such a Socialist view, which confused me.
Then I went back into the lunch room and sat on the floor for a discussion with Appalachia Rising's law expert person. There were really only 60 or us sitting around. Honestly, I don't remember anything that he said other than that he was an Anarchist, or at least I think he said that. He repeated things we heard, like don't touch a cop's horse. He explained the different sections of police in DC and we'd probably face the park police.
I ended up walking back with some guy I just met, all the way back. He worked in DC he said, he had just graduated. He said he put his father as an emergency contact. He said, "I'll just say, I'm twenty-three years old. I can make my own decisions." We stopped at an ATM to get extra cash even though I had exactly 100 bucks on me. His stop was much sooner and he said I didn't have to walk far, only I really did have to walk far. I talked to my friend Lin from NY and told her to send out a Fb blast to our EJ group saying to go to the meeting I might not make, and explained the CD thing. I got lost and she actually gave me directions. But still it was a long way and by the time I got there I felt extremely energized, as soon as I put my things down.
The night ended as I talked to two young girls from a school in Connecticut about Student Activism, talkig to your classes and how to get attention, how to message. People kept telling us to quite down because they were sleeping. We whispered in front of the stage. I told them the same thing I told Kristin, that we can't be fighting for Climate legislation just yet, not anymore. We have to fight for Environmental Justice, knocking out the worst of the worst, like Fracking, Offshore Drilling and MTR. We need to fight for Justice for people that live along the Gulf, who live in most toxic areas, like moving or shutting down the Incinerator in Detroit, for example. Maybe we can get legislation encompassing all of those things. But that's like kicking a monster in the knees, eventually the whole thing will fall down. But most importantly, we create a mental shift, so that in general consciousness, we're not fighting for our surroundings, we're fighting for the people, which is true, and people will be able to equate that with the severe destruction happening abroad, and then we'll win Climate Justice, by breaking the bridge. Their names were Ronda and Luisa. It turned out they were travelling with Ed & Russel and the political theatre couple. Ed said I could ride back with them and in the morning I could put my things in his car.
We merged with a bigger crowd at the bus stop and Jassie was there. She wanted to sing songs with us so Lexington clanged on her jar full of tea. I took the cap off my water bottle and clanged that. One person played harmonica and there were some other noises. We had a good groove going at the bus stop. Then we crowded the bus. There I met this long haired dude from Knoxville, named Knox. Jassie had a Beehive Collective poster sticking out of her backpack.
Because Jassie had offered to keep my stuff safe in her jeep, she took it out for me when we got back and I sat on the steps in front of the church playing my guitar with two people I had met in New York, a couple that did some political theatre against Carbon Trading in the Financial District. They both had wild, black hair. I played for them a couple songs I had written. Then the one guy asked to play a song he wrote and it was so good and his girlfriend sang along. He wailed, singing in the night, and later someone said people were sleeping across the street.
A bunch of people crashed at the church because they had been locked out of this other place a few blocks away, including Knox. So I walked with them, just because I ended up with them, back to that place at 7AM. Still it was locked so I went to the store to get change and came back. Knox said he was going to walk with his friend. Only one other person was ready to take the bus so I took the bus with him, this blonde haired guy from I think Portland who lived in Kentucky doing some Sustainable Agriculture camp job or something. He said he'd never been to New York and we talked about how when you get off in the Village a sign says, "Welcome to the Gay and Lesbian Community," or other.
We did get to breakfast on time and someone was playing a song on, I think a cello and singing. He sung a song about wanting to change the world. When my friend left I found Knox. He said the walk felt good. I said I'd do it later. He said he was a Journalism major. He said his assignment was to report on some Republican speaker somewhere and he hated everything the guy said, so he wrote up the quotes that he found the most racist, classist, and backwards.
We weren't allowed to leave our stuff in the Church on Sunday so I had all my stuff. I left it against the wall in the lunch room except for my guitar and side-tote. At the opening plenary we watched Al's movie, and it made me cry. When the lights went on I saw some women crying. It probably didn't have that affect on me the first time. It was only maybe a 30 minute film. So then after some talks there were workshops and you stayed if you were going to be in the action the next day. Sam had to leave later that day but she said she wanted to stay in the room anyway. Maybe 500 or more people stayed in the room. We moved the chairs all to the side and made 4 long lines or 2 with partners. My partner was a skinny guy with glasses from Appalachia. The facilitators were the woman with the strait, gray hair and her friend with red hair, both in their 40s or so. They told us to reach across the gap and hold one hand with the other person. Our objective, they said, was going to be to switch sides with that person. When they said go we all struggled to pull the person across. My partner and I just didn't go anywhere. Then they had one partnernship demonstrate how they did it. They simply cooperated with each other and swung about. Then we broke into 4 big groups.
My new partner ended up being this big, friendly dude. He looked more like an athlete than an activist. First, I was role playing the activist and he a pro-Coal person on the offensive. He shouted stuff at me like, "You're trying to take our jobs away! Coal is my life! I'm an American!" I said, "I'm also an American and I believe in Sustainability." Later he said he thought that was a good point. Then I had to be a police officer and he an activist. So I said, "Those people have brainwashed you. They talked you into doing something you don't want to do." But he said stuff like, "MTR is killing the people in Appalachia."
Then our whole group had to be police guarding the White House while the some 4 or 5 hundred other people came marching at us with banners. They looked so peaceful it seemed crazy to arrest them but we did anyway. Then on the second go, they sat down before us, locked arms and legs. We simply couldn't pull them apart. Two cops would carry one person by all limbs. We hardly arrested anyone. Then the two women showed us some careful places where the police could easily knock us out like under our chins or on the sides of our knecks, just things good to know.
Before lunch I tried to fill out a jail support form, but I wasn't sure who to put down for an emergency contact. They said I had until 8:30PM to return the form. So I went with it to lunch, talking to someone about their 10/10/10 plan on the phone, not informing them about what was going on. I realized also, that on Tuesday, I was supposed to lead a discussion about Climate Justice somewhere at 6:30. The line for lunch went all the way through the lunch room, which was a school gym really, up the stairs, and around the corner of the school, which was a sort of arts elementary school. Ned was the last person on line. I asked him if he knew anyone in New York that could maybe lead the discussion for me. He gave me a number and I left a message with that person. Then I called this guy named R. Jeremy. He said he maybe could do it. Then I forgot about it for a while, made a friend named Jamie that lived in Mass, and we talked to this older guy from Northern West Virginia. He said, and I forget why but, "You never know who you're talking to."
Someone called a Northeat meet-up. There were about twenty of us, including Jassie. Going around everyone said their name, where they were from and their favorite part so far of the conference, but I just said my name, where I was from and that I that I felt we not only needed to be in Soidarity as the Northeast but more so as the Fracking Movement. I got everyone's contact to get them involved in Fracking. Some people also said they just learned about Fracking there and couldn't believe how bad it was. So afterwards a bunch of people wanted to talk to me about Fracking. I ended up missing something called, "Know Your Rights." Then I talked to this organizer for a while from Connecticut and we found Kitty in a Rising Tide group, planning another CD action. I wasn't interested in getting involved, it was getting too complex for me but I wanted to meet Rising Tide people. So I walked back with people from Rising Tide asking them a million questions.
Back at the conference center, I went to a room specifically for people risking arrest. Someone was explaining to Ed that the citation is like a speeding ticket, and that most likely the emergency contact won't be contacted. I called someone at WE ACT for Justice and left a message asking if they could do Tuesday. Then it started. There were a hundred people. They asked us what our concerns were. One person said their things. They said to leave all things with someone else or with them. If we weren't willing to let go of our cellphones, just take out numbers that we don't want called, or something like that. If we weren't willing to let go of our cameras, delete footage or organizers speaking at the summit. I think this was only in case of a worse case scenerio and there would be investigation. Someone said money, so they told us to raise our hands if we were still on the fence because of money. I raised my hand and so did fifty people. They said that it most likely would be a hundred dollars flat but they could fundraise to pay us back. One guy said that he worked with an organization that raised money for activists, that one they raised 300,000 in ten days or something, or ten hours, and he could probably raise 10,000. The woman with gray hair said, "So that's it. Money's not a problem." Someone asked about minors. She said, "If you are a minor, do it."
Then we broke into three groups. One was for people from Appalachia. The two others had decide if they wanted to be behind the Clean Water Now banner of Safe Jobs in Appalachia. I knew I should go to Water, since I'm in the Frack Movement, but I felt more inspired to go to Safe Jobs in Appalachia. There were thirty of us in the circle. We had to make decisions about things to bring to the larger group. We decided to sit, not stand on the sidewalk, after the time was right. We decided to lock arms in long lines, not make circles and lock legs. We decided to let the people from Appalachia decide if we'd go limp when arrested. We decided to maybe square dance, after considerable time. We decided only maybe 10 I think or more of us were willing to do Jail Solidarity, so we'd see how many more later. This didn't include me. So then the Water group made almost the exact same decisions and we left much up to the Appalachia group. They wanted us to basically not go limp and din't seem to have an opinion about square dancing after considerable time.
Back on the long line at dinner I called my friend Ojo in New York. He said I could put him down for an emergency contact. Talking it out, I realized I could put Betty, my Frack and Youth organizer friend in New York down for the second. I got off line and walked all the way back to give in my form. I came back and got some soup, and met a girl who was from the town next to mine on Long Island, only she lived in Florida. Seeds for Peace had to move the tables so I said I'd meet her outside and I sat on the concrete outside and she never found me. This girl from Appalachia said she wasn't totally against Coal all together because her father was a miner and he'd lose his job. I thought to myself, if I were her, I would just have very radical demands for Just Transition, but it occurred to me that only if I were her could I have such a Socialist view, which confused me.
Then I went back into the lunch room and sat on the floor for a discussion with Appalachia Rising's law expert person. There were really only 60 or us sitting around. Honestly, I don't remember anything that he said other than that he was an Anarchist, or at least I think he said that. He repeated things we heard, like don't touch a cop's horse. He explained the different sections of police in DC and we'd probably face the park police.
I ended up walking back with some guy I just met, all the way back. He worked in DC he said, he had just graduated. He said he put his father as an emergency contact. He said, "I'll just say, I'm twenty-three years old. I can make my own decisions." We stopped at an ATM to get extra cash even though I had exactly 100 bucks on me. His stop was much sooner and he said I didn't have to walk far, only I really did have to walk far. I talked to my friend Lin from NY and told her to send out a Fb blast to our EJ group saying to go to the meeting I might not make, and explained the CD thing. I got lost and she actually gave me directions. But still it was a long way and by the time I got there I felt extremely energized, as soon as I put my things down.
The night ended as I talked to two young girls from a school in Connecticut about Student Activism, talkig to your classes and how to get attention, how to message. People kept telling us to quite down because they were sleeping. We whispered in front of the stage. I told them the same thing I told Kristin, that we can't be fighting for Climate legislation just yet, not anymore. We have to fight for Environmental Justice, knocking out the worst of the worst, like Fracking, Offshore Drilling and MTR. We need to fight for Justice for people that live along the Gulf, who live in most toxic areas, like moving or shutting down the Incinerator in Detroit, for example. Maybe we can get legislation encompassing all of those things. But that's like kicking a monster in the knees, eventually the whole thing will fall down. But most importantly, we create a mental shift, so that in general consciousness, we're not fighting for our surroundings, we're fighting for the people, which is true, and people will be able to equate that with the severe destruction happening abroad, and then we'll win Climate Justice, by breaking the bridge. Their names were Ronda and Luisa. It turned out they were travelling with Ed & Russel and the political theatre couple. Ed said I could ride back with them and in the morning I could put my things in his car.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Appalachia Rising: Part 1
Appalachia is rising, and has risen. I spent 4 nights and 4 days in DC.
It began in Brooklyn, where I met my ride from the ride-share online, on Atlantic Avenue. It turned out to just be one person, who was well older than me. Let's just say his oldest kid was applying to college. Me, I'm trying to get into graduate school.
He drove a hybrid, so we never stopped for gas. I had a guitar, a small gym bag, my side-tote, and a sleeping bag, just enough to be able to walk around covered in stuff. It turned out he was the filmmaker for a doc I saw on Mountaintop Removal over a year ago, some six months after I had heard about it at Power Shift. But he wasn't from Appalachia, he was from New York, and was into Climate Change, was shooting nature stuff at the time, came into the issue somehow. He told me about his experience at Klimaforum and how he is very conscious of the America that doesn't believe in Climate Change. He told me that a guy who would do a workshop with him was well known in the Movement for buying a huge amount of land in Utah at an auction so the Industry couldn't buy it for Tar Sands extraction. He fundraised the money. He was a hero, he said.
When we got to DC we stopped at his hotel to drop off his projector and camera gear. I stretched in the parking lot. Someone said my name with a question mark. It was Suzie T, who basically introduced me to Climate Justice and Climate Tax 12 to 18 months prior. She had moved from Harlem back to Ohio and rode in with "major figures" as Al, the filmmaker called them, of the MTR Movement. He introduced me to Jonas Larry, stout, older man who refused to sell his mountain.
Al went to do a radio show in the basement of a church where I signed in and made a name tag. There was a small table for people people willing to risk arrest. I signed my name there.
They directed me through the chapel, down a hallway to a room with a stage. A band played country music and twenty four people square danced and thirty watched.
Sam and Kitty, girls that I had just met in Manhattan at a Tar Sands protest with Friends of the Earth days prior, were dancing in a sweat. They took a break and sat down with me. They said they were staying at a friend's house. A rather non-feminine girl asked me to dance. We were couple 1 amongst 2, 3 & 4 in our group, meaning our backs were to the stage. It was a 15 minute dance. It was easy with my expert partner. Push ma, lose pa, fellow go around in the outside track.
2 dances later I was far from the stage and my new group talked while the instructor explained the new dance. So we were lost and pathetic. It kept going so we tried on, mainly because of Kristin who wouldn't give up, or stop laughing. But then we all tried again. We got it that time. What does it mean? It meant I felt closest to the group I struggled with. Then I talked to Kristin. She lived in DC. She suddenly seemed 5 years older while stationary. Her blonde hair rather poofed to the side. We talked about America. She said the Tea Party is not America. She said there's hope for Climate Legislation. It seemed we could have kept talking.
People slept throughout the church. A group from Upsate Ny came in. They said just one of them convinced them all to go and I talked to him about the Fracking Movement, and he wanted to get involved.
Then a group of 30 people came and crashed on the stage, mostly girls, one bearded, shirtless guy with long dreadlocks.
A friendly girl with braided blonde hair, a flowery shirt and overalls approached me with a smile. She said she loved how people with similar interests found each other, and I think she meant mystically. I thought she was from Appalachia, because of her friendliness, but she was from Rhode Island, and had moved down to Appalachia because she loved Nature. Her name was Jassie. We took the bus together at 7AM, just us. It was sunny. She never stopped smiling. She told me her story. We had to transfer and a woman on line at Starbucks actually broke my dollar. The fee was 1.70 & 1 for the Circulator. In George Town, Seeds for Peace served tofu, eggsalad and potato stuff. I had tofu and coffee. Jassie talked to an old Earth Firster.
I lost Jassie & met a guy I already met in the woods once. He was organizing against Fracking in Baltimore. He said there would be a week of action in early November in Baltimore.
People from App spoke at the plenary. In the hall were huge Beehive Collective posters, buttons, a paper called Tennessee Mountain Defender, which I took.
I went to MTR 101. Someone sang old Strip Mining protest songs and Sam & I passed a ball of thread around in a big circle connecting words like water, slurry, banks, hillbilly, and prisons.
At lunch I met 2 guys, Ed and Russel. They were at Connecticut schools. They had met at Power Shift. Russel wore a bike helmet and had a deep voice. Ed had red hair and a goatee. They said they worked with some prestigous school where the students were pushing for 450ppm. They thought it was funny how out of the loop they were.
Suddenly I was doing dishes in a small yard with ten people exchanging stories.
I went to a workshop on Economic Diversification. There were 70 people. In Coal Country in Appalachia, there is a Mono-Economy of Coal work. They had every person state their name and what their grandfather's occupation was. Maybe more than half said Coal Mining. Some people not from Appalachia said lawyer, doctor, the rail road, farmer, auto-factories. Many said military service. I was last. I said, "Some sort of textile designer and the other worked in factories and started a business in New York." I thought it was going to be awkward but I almost went off telling a whole story.
One guy explained how Industrial Agriculture put people more or less in the Coal Mines. We broke into groups to discuss diversificatin ideas. There were maybe 5 but I only remember Renewable Energy and Sustainable Agriculture, which I was in. You have soil issues, mainly near MTR sites. It's not like in the city where easily you start group projects. Everyone is spread out. Yea so, I'm not sure we made too much progress. So need radical demands to bring Just Transition.
After dinner there was a concert with Reverand Billy & others but I went to a small discussion for those risking arrest. There were only 50 people. First I talked to this guy Ned who everyone knows for hanging a Green Jobs Now! banner in some official building, which he was arrested for. I also talked to a guy who I met at a 350.org workshop at the US Social Forum. He was like 5 years older than me, named Terry. He worked with the Tar Sands hero in Utah.
Then they told us what the plan was. We were going to remain stationary on the sidewalk in front of the White House, which is illegal, and refuse to move until they arrested us. Two older people from appalachia told us that they really admired the CD of the Civil Rights Movement, and wanted to show the people back at home something really dignified. This woman with strait, gray hair and a lot of energy, our expert on CD, explained that we could do Jail Solidarity, which is where everyone refuses to give their name or pay the fine. This jams up their system and keeps the drama going longer, possibly bringing more attention to us. This woman from Appalachia told us that there is a long history of Coal Country Civil Disobedience. It started with a woman called the Widow Combs, who with her two sons, sat in front of a bulldozer, launching the Strip Mining Resistance Movement. The woman said she had been waiting for this great day to come, and to not think of ourselves as outsiders.
It began in Brooklyn, where I met my ride from the ride-share online, on Atlantic Avenue. It turned out to just be one person, who was well older than me. Let's just say his oldest kid was applying to college. Me, I'm trying to get into graduate school.
He drove a hybrid, so we never stopped for gas. I had a guitar, a small gym bag, my side-tote, and a sleeping bag, just enough to be able to walk around covered in stuff. It turned out he was the filmmaker for a doc I saw on Mountaintop Removal over a year ago, some six months after I had heard about it at Power Shift. But he wasn't from Appalachia, he was from New York, and was into Climate Change, was shooting nature stuff at the time, came into the issue somehow. He told me about his experience at Klimaforum and how he is very conscious of the America that doesn't believe in Climate Change. He told me that a guy who would do a workshop with him was well known in the Movement for buying a huge amount of land in Utah at an auction so the Industry couldn't buy it for Tar Sands extraction. He fundraised the money. He was a hero, he said.
When we got to DC we stopped at his hotel to drop off his projector and camera gear. I stretched in the parking lot. Someone said my name with a question mark. It was Suzie T, who basically introduced me to Climate Justice and Climate Tax 12 to 18 months prior. She had moved from Harlem back to Ohio and rode in with "major figures" as Al, the filmmaker called them, of the MTR Movement. He introduced me to Jonas Larry, stout, older man who refused to sell his mountain.
Al went to do a radio show in the basement of a church where I signed in and made a name tag. There was a small table for people people willing to risk arrest. I signed my name there.
They directed me through the chapel, down a hallway to a room with a stage. A band played country music and twenty four people square danced and thirty watched.
Sam and Kitty, girls that I had just met in Manhattan at a Tar Sands protest with Friends of the Earth days prior, were dancing in a sweat. They took a break and sat down with me. They said they were staying at a friend's house. A rather non-feminine girl asked me to dance. We were couple 1 amongst 2, 3 & 4 in our group, meaning our backs were to the stage. It was a 15 minute dance. It was easy with my expert partner. Push ma, lose pa, fellow go around in the outside track.
2 dances later I was far from the stage and my new group talked while the instructor explained the new dance. So we were lost and pathetic. It kept going so we tried on, mainly because of Kristin who wouldn't give up, or stop laughing. But then we all tried again. We got it that time. What does it mean? It meant I felt closest to the group I struggled with. Then I talked to Kristin. She lived in DC. She suddenly seemed 5 years older while stationary. Her blonde hair rather poofed to the side. We talked about America. She said the Tea Party is not America. She said there's hope for Climate Legislation. It seemed we could have kept talking.
People slept throughout the church. A group from Upsate Ny came in. They said just one of them convinced them all to go and I talked to him about the Fracking Movement, and he wanted to get involved.
Then a group of 30 people came and crashed on the stage, mostly girls, one bearded, shirtless guy with long dreadlocks.
A friendly girl with braided blonde hair, a flowery shirt and overalls approached me with a smile. She said she loved how people with similar interests found each other, and I think she meant mystically. I thought she was from Appalachia, because of her friendliness, but she was from Rhode Island, and had moved down to Appalachia because she loved Nature. Her name was Jassie. We took the bus together at 7AM, just us. It was sunny. She never stopped smiling. She told me her story. We had to transfer and a woman on line at Starbucks actually broke my dollar. The fee was 1.70 & 1 for the Circulator. In George Town, Seeds for Peace served tofu, eggsalad and potato stuff. I had tofu and coffee. Jassie talked to an old Earth Firster.
I lost Jassie & met a guy I already met in the woods once. He was organizing against Fracking in Baltimore. He said there would be a week of action in early November in Baltimore.
People from App spoke at the plenary. In the hall were huge Beehive Collective posters, buttons, a paper called Tennessee Mountain Defender, which I took.
I went to MTR 101. Someone sang old Strip Mining protest songs and Sam & I passed a ball of thread around in a big circle connecting words like water, slurry, banks, hillbilly, and prisons.
At lunch I met 2 guys, Ed and Russel. They were at Connecticut schools. They had met at Power Shift. Russel wore a bike helmet and had a deep voice. Ed had red hair and a goatee. They said they worked with some prestigous school where the students were pushing for 450ppm. They thought it was funny how out of the loop they were.
Suddenly I was doing dishes in a small yard with ten people exchanging stories.
I went to a workshop on Economic Diversification. There were 70 people. In Coal Country in Appalachia, there is a Mono-Economy of Coal work. They had every person state their name and what their grandfather's occupation was. Maybe more than half said Coal Mining. Some people not from Appalachia said lawyer, doctor, the rail road, farmer, auto-factories. Many said military service. I was last. I said, "Some sort of textile designer and the other worked in factories and started a business in New York." I thought it was going to be awkward but I almost went off telling a whole story.
One guy explained how Industrial Agriculture put people more or less in the Coal Mines. We broke into groups to discuss diversificatin ideas. There were maybe 5 but I only remember Renewable Energy and Sustainable Agriculture, which I was in. You have soil issues, mainly near MTR sites. It's not like in the city where easily you start group projects. Everyone is spread out. Yea so, I'm not sure we made too much progress. So need radical demands to bring Just Transition.
After dinner there was a concert with Reverand Billy & others but I went to a small discussion for those risking arrest. There were only 50 people. First I talked to this guy Ned who everyone knows for hanging a Green Jobs Now! banner in some official building, which he was arrested for. I also talked to a guy who I met at a 350.org workshop at the US Social Forum. He was like 5 years older than me, named Terry. He worked with the Tar Sands hero in Utah.
Then they told us what the plan was. We were going to remain stationary on the sidewalk in front of the White House, which is illegal, and refuse to move until they arrested us. Two older people from appalachia told us that they really admired the CD of the Civil Rights Movement, and wanted to show the people back at home something really dignified. This woman with strait, gray hair and a lot of energy, our expert on CD, explained that we could do Jail Solidarity, which is where everyone refuses to give their name or pay the fine. This jams up their system and keeps the drama going longer, possibly bringing more attention to us. This woman from Appalachia told us that there is a long history of Coal Country Civil Disobedience. It started with a woman called the Widow Combs, who with her two sons, sat in front of a bulldozer, launching the Strip Mining Resistance Movement. The woman said she had been waiting for this great day to come, and to not think of ourselves as outsiders.
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