How did a meeting of some of the best and brightest organizers against fracking inspire us to choose this video to highlight? Well, they were discussing how to stop a pipeline. The oh so ironically named Constitution Pipeline.

When Sean and Yoko discovered that the proposed Constitution Pipeline threatened their family farm they reached out to their neighbors for advice. It’s what most people do when the oil and gas industry comes to town. They reach out to those in their community and band together to fight the threat of fracking.  Of course, Sean and Yoko have a pretty impressive community of artists to reach out to as well as their neighbors and one of the results is this amazing video.

So far communities in New York have been stronger than the industry. Because of the creative outreach efforts of groups like Artist Against Fracking and the relentless work of organizers like those at the CAUD meeting there is no fracking in New York today.

But just because there’s a moratorium on fracking in the state of New York doesn’t mean there’s a moratorium on developing fracking infrastructure here.

The Constitution Pipeline would bring fracked gas through more than 700 New Yorkers’ properties. It would cross 277 streams, ponds and rivers, and over 10 miles of wetland.It would tear a gash through Central New York State, clear-cutting 1000 acres of forest, and ruining over 550 acres of prime farmland.

And building fracking infrastructure like this pipeline will encourage more fracking in Pennsylvania and could be leveraged down the line as a reason to start fracking New York.

We need to stop this pipeline.

The best way to do that is to visit Stop the Pipeline’s website and write a comment to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, on the cumulative impacts caused by fracking and the industrial development that follows in the wake of pipelines. Give them a piece of your mind, but speak from your heart!

Comments to FERC are due by April 7th.

If we want to keep our communities unfractured we must stop the infrastructure that supports fracking and will cut through our state like a scar.

Please leave your comments today, and stop the Constitution Pipeline.

-Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

This Is Our Country: Living with the Wild West Oil Boom from Dakota Resource Council on Vimeo.

“It was the way America is suppose to be. Now come look at it.  And it’s all for oil”

Those words from rancher Donny Nelson keep echoing through my mind.

Mostly, because one way or another, said in many different accents, I’ve heard them before. I’ve heard them from people interviewed in the Gasland films. I’ve heard them from people we’ve met on the road. I’ve heard them from people hosting community screenings.  I’ve heard them from people posting on our Facebook wall.

I’ve heard them from Brenda Jorgenson herself, who is featured in this film. Josh and I were fortunate enough to meet her and her family when we were in DC several weeks ago.

I liked her instantly. She’s got a warm, sweet, mid-western charm, and is also one hell of a fighter.

But when she talks about what is happening to North Dakota, you know she’s lost something she can’t get back.

The America that generations of her family built and the America she worked hard to leave for her children and grandchildren has been destroyed. And for who?

I come back to this question again and again. And I’m going to keep asking it until we truly answer it as a country.

Is Brenda’s North Dakota, her piece of America, being destroyed so I can turn on my lights and have my America here in Brooklyn?

Is John Fenton’s Wyoming, his piece of America, being destroyed so my sister can drive her car and have her America in Florida?

Is it okay to destroy Steve and Shyla Lipsky’s, Jeremiah Gee’s, Louis Meeks’, Bob and Lisa Parr’s, Mike Markham’s, Calvin Tillman’s, Scott Ely’s and countless other families in Denton and Azele, Texas, Dimock, Pennsylvania, Guy, Arkansas and Butler, Pennsylvania’s America?

The list of families and place we are sacrificing for this “new energy boom” is growing everyday. So who is it for?

For me? For you?

Or is it for the profits of oil and gas companies?

I don’t know about you, but given the choice, I choose this America. An America run on renewable energy, not destroyed land and families. I can’t say the oil and gas companies would do the same.

-Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

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