Last week, Josh and I stopped in on an Otsego County Coalition Against Unsafe Drilling(CAUD) meeting near Cooperstown, New York, and it inspired us to bring back Artist Against Fracking’s incredible video “Don’t Frack My Mother” as our Video of the Week.

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