Great News: as of this weekend, there are now over 1,000 people signed up to be a part of the Don’t Frack Ohio Action in June, and close to 200 of them are students!!
People are joining the action for all kinds of reasons: they’re disgusted at the way our democracy has been sold to the fracking industry, worried about feeding our addiction to fossil fuels on a warming planet, or just plain scared of how fracking will destroy our way of life.
Dressed as citizen referees, activists “blew the whistle” on the gas industry’s influence over the Ohio legislature. Students, farmers, and concerned citizens from central Ohio overwhelmed an Agricultural and Natural Resources Committee hearing yesterday, frustrated with the deliberate stonewalling of six bills to slow or halt fracking and injection waste and the repression of the public’s voice on this critical issue.
In what activists deemed to be an effort to quell resistance, the Ohio House pushed back the hearings of the six bills for hours until many activists could no longer stay. Activists believe the delay on hearings of these bills is directly linked with the $2.8 million the Gas Industry has poured into the Ohio Legislature, including $213,000 in campaign contributions allotted to Governor Kasich.
On September 26th, more than 200 people crossed over a police barrier on Parliament Hill, making the Ottawa Tar Sands Action the largest civil disobedience in the Canadian climate movement. As an American student attending a Canadian University I found the day particularly exciting for several reasons, not least of which was the sense of international solidarity in this fight against TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
With individual cities banning fracking across New York state--most recently Syracuse and Albany!--we need to continue pressuring Governor Cuomo more than ever for a statewide ban.
There is something easy you can do RIGHT NOW to help pressure Governor Cuomo to ban fracking, which will take less than a minute of your time: post this video on Governor Cuomo’s Facebook pages.
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