The People's Record

Fracktivists unite against Shale Gas Insight conference

September 21, 2012

Hundreds of self-proclaimed “fracktivists” rallied and marched through Center City on Thursday afternoon, protesting the Shale Gas Insight conference and urging governments at all levels to ban the natural-gas-drilling process known as fracking.

Opponents say the hydraulic fracturing process pollutes local aquifers, causes serious health problems, and will result in net job loss.

For more than two hours, speakers described what they called adverse effects of the process near their homes.

Tammy Manning of Susquehanna County said the gases around her well recently tested at 82 percent methane. She said she was told to leave the water running all the time because if the gas built up, it could cause her house to explode.

A spokesman for Energy in Depth, an industry-funded advocacy group, said that Manning lives in an area with historically high methane levels and that the problems on her property “are likely not attributed to Marcellus Shale development.”

Carol French, a dairy farmer who lives 11/2 miles from a natural-gas drilling site in Bradford County, Pa., said her water often comes out white and turns gelatinous after sitting out for a half-hour. While the drilling company was at work, French said, her daughter became extremely ill, with bloody stool and enlarged organs.

Ray Kemble of Dimock, Pa., the town featured in the Gasland documentary, held up a jug that he said held water from his well that was the color of apple juice. According to government tests, he said, it is contaminated with weapons-grade uranium, arsenic, and other carcinogens.

Natural-gas companies deny that such effects can be tied to their operations. Many cases are being litigated.

As the speakers stepped up to the microphone, Shale Gas Insight attendees watched from above in a bay window of the Convention Center. “I hope they’re scared,” one protester said.

At one point, the several hundred protesters looked up and raised middle fingers to their audience.

A recent focus of the anti-fracking campaign is worker safety. Critics say companies expose workers to dangerous chemicals and force them to operate under unsafe conditions. In May, the New York Times reported that natural-gas companies were pressuring truck drivers to work 20-hour shifts.

Charlotte Bevins said she and her mother rose at 4 a.m. to drive to Philadelphia from West Virginia. Bevins said her brother Charles was supervising a forklift for a natural-gas contractor, at $13 an hour, last year. He was killed when the forklift sank into the mud, pinning him between the forklift and a building.

“After talking to his coworkers, they tell me there’s no safe way to do this,” Bevins said. “They’re always using the cheapest, the quickest thing they can.”

Bevins said her brother, a 23-year-old father of two, was working 15-day stretches with five days off in between.

After the rally, the protesters marched to the PNC Building to chant anti-fracking slogans. The event culminated in a speech in front of Gov. Corbett’s Philadelphia office.

Thursday’s protest was orderly and resulted in no arrests, and attendees were provided with food, water, and restrooms.

The protest was organized under the name Shale Gas Outrage by a coalition of social and environmental groups, including Protecting Our Waters, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Food and Water Watch, and anti-fracking groups from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and elsewhere.

Source

Notes from The People’s Think Tank

September 18, 2012

One of my favorite things about participating in the Occupy Wall Street one year anniversary was sitting among like-minded, world-shaping-focused, regular people, and talking strategy, tactics, problems and ways forward in The People’s Think Tank. Admittedly, I only sat in The People’s Think Tank for about 45 minutes. Below are some of the arguments that were made, which I’ve attempted to synthesize and expound upon:

• One of the things we need to do, according to some at The People’s Think Tank, is engage with our media in a more direct way. We need to understand the source of biases and explain them to people we interact with, arm ourselves with compelling facts about the corporate-owned-media and combat the perception that The New York Times or The Washington Post or MSNBC or CNN is good news with well-documented reasons why they just aren’t. Additionally, we need to ready and willing to share alternative news sources: Alternet, Democracy Now, Truth-out, The Guardian, State-run media outside of corporate influence like Russia Today and Aljazeera, etc. We need to show instances of biased corporate-media coverage and compare it to the alternatives. In the age of information, it is our obligation to promote correct information and to fight corporate bias.

• When talking about these topics we need to be approachable, empathetic, and typical even (if it seems natural to you). There is no necessity to conform to radical clichés, as our goal is to peel back the next layer of possibly winnable anti-capitalists, not to scare them away (according to several at The People’s Think Tank). This doesn’t mean archetypical radical dress isn’t welcome, it just isn’t necessary, and could potentially be less effective for winning new people to our anti-capitalist politics.

• We really can change the world, one person at a time. We each can represent the possibility of a New World, and engage with others to do the same. One way to start great conversations and to raise awareness is to wear a sign. One young woman offered this as a suggestion and said that after getting beaten by the NYPD, she wore a sign that sparked many conversations, saying things like “Ask me about why the NYPD beat me up.” People with similar stories will be curious and willing to talk with you about it. Others suggested facilitating conversations with a series of questions and using those to guide the direction of your conversation with those you hope to win to anti-capitalist politics.

• We cannot start from a place of judgment, we have to find our common ground and win them to our politics over-time. Start with things like baking-fees, student loans, crushing debt, about not having insurance and needing healthcare. People are winnable to our politics coming from this place because (among the working class) these issues are pretty universal and everyone understands that things suck and are starting to suck even more. People are tired of the disparity in the quality of life across class lines, and even as the media relatively successfully dismantled national sympathy for the Occupy Movement, they haven’t made the lives of the working class any better and people are still open to answers. Especially after this election is over, Obama is re-elected, and our standard of living still continues to be deplorable. Democrats are so focused on partisan politics that they are unwilling to engage with systemic problems, but once the election is over, many will become disenfranchised once again, and willing to work for real change. When we focus on unmet needs, we can have a powerful effect on those we speak with.

• On that note, we should also use the Presidential Election to talk to people about media bias, rhetoric, misguided conversation, misrepresented facts, propaganda, etc.

• Another thing that was talked about was being open, avoiding clamming up. Don’t feel like you have to know everything before you begin to have these conversations. You know some things. Be honest about what you think, how you feel, your personal experiences, what you know and what you don’t know. Come from that common human place sincerely, and you’ll be able to handle even the most intentionally combative pigeon-hole traps that some will inevitably try to push you in. Be brave and encourage bravery. It’s a big step to engage with alternative politics and it actually can have some negative consequences in your personal life. It’s important to express the importance of bravely embracing other sets of politics and being patient and understanding with those, while still encouraging them to join this long-term project. Arm yourself with powerful, compelling facts and use them often. Practice using them, become an informational power-house and take your personal education seriously.

• Ask questions like: Why do we work 40 hours a week and not 80? Encourage people to think about how we won the weekend, where it came from, etc. People often walk around with the idea that these things were given to us by the corporations or by the state, because it seemed fair. In fact, there were large-scale fights to win these things, orchestrated by anti-capitalist organizers, and organized communities who demanded these specific demands. Talk about the gains made during The New Deal and combat the common notion that they were given to the American people by Roosevelt. Talk about the large scale socialist and communist organizations at the time who made the demands that were realized by The New Deal.

• The last thing I heard at The People’s Think Tank was a long discussion about People of Color and police brutality. On one side, there were those who encouraged treating the police like they were part of the masses and like they are winnable to our anti-capitalist politics. On the other side, there were those who said we need to focus on police brutality, police terrorism and the way communities of color are systematically harassed by the police. We can then use this conversation, it was suggested, to talk about the role of the police in a larger systemic context. I think it’s important to remember that in no revolution historically have the police revolted and sided with the people. They are always the last line of defense for the ruling class. The military is much more likely to defect than the police (simply because of the awful circumstances that keep military people in place through extreme coercion on a number of levels, whether they want to be or not). That isn’t to say individual police officers are all horrible or awful people or unwinnable to our politics, but they probably aren’t ever going to be both a police officer and an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and racial-justice oriented person. For your own safety and for legal reasons, you should avoid talking to on-duty police officers in non-emergency situations and when at-all possible. 

It was an incredible conversation and an incredible day. I felt so fortunate to be able to be there and hope you can get a sense of the quality of the conversation from the above notes. More on the rest of the day later. Here’s some other pictures posted to our Facebook page, which you should like if you haven’t already. 

- Robert

Occupy Wall Street: One year later and people still don’t “get” it
September 17, 2012 

As American anti-capitalists prepare for the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street today, media outlets are reviving beaten-to-death stories questioning the movement’s tangible influence.

Of course, barely any legislative reforms have come from the protest movement that stirred so much debate last year. Money continues to reign supreme in elections, Wall Street oligarchs are still President Obama’s beloved mistresses, education debt is continuing to skyrocket and corporations are still the kings of policy. But that is what slides by most people trying to grasp the influence of OWS.

A radical movement like this cannot (and must not) work within the system it is trying to replace. Protesters who first camped out at Zuccotti Park and other campsites across the country already know voting for Politician A or Politician B will only enforce the parasitic capitalist system that tramples on the working class. Camaraderie between big banks and politics can’t be broken unless capitalism is replaced with social justice. We cannot expect fair and equal education opportunities without severing the chains that tie students to debt and private interests. We’re not looking to support the “lesser of the two evils”; we want to create an alternative. So of course policy changes can’t be seen as a win for OWS. The movement is beyond electoral politics and complying with those who only strengthen the institutional powers that hold us down. But just because play by the rules gains haven’t been won doesn’t mean OWS has rendered itself useless one year later.

The radicalization and awakening of Americans has been one of the most difficult and most crucial wins for the anti-capitalist struggle. Seeing the web of connections between environmental degradation and corporate greed, student debt and privatization, women’s rights and electoral politics, mainstream media and poverty has most visibly become OWS’s most vital legacy. Once connections are molded between the working class struggle and the ruling class that tried to suppress OWS, they cannot be erased. But occupiers already know this.

Activists aren’t waiting for the mainstream media to catch up because there is work to be done. OWS knows what its demands have been from day one and now that we are enlightened, action must continue and spread. The year wasn’t perfect, but a mere beginning was all people needed.

Groups once solely focused on OWS have now broken down their struggles to combat various branches of capitalist deterioration. Fights against mass incarceration, Monsanto, worker’s rights, immigration, foreclosures, police brutality and poverty have replaced complacency for those occupiers who spent the latter of last year in tents and general assemblies. So we cannot expect the mainstream media or politicians to “get” what we’re doing. OWS is still in its natal stage and is already developing into a whole new creature on the revolutionary trajectory to rattle the ruling class.

Happy one year anniversary to a movement that flooded the streets in nearly 100 countries and shook many out of their blindness.

-Graciela

(Source: thepeoplesrecord.com)

arrested for crossing the street #s17 (Taken with Instagram)

Obama and Romney impersonators answering questions in character at #ows #s17 (Taken with Instagram)

Thoughts about the future of OWS with Captain Ray Lewis

What are you expecting of OWS on September 17?
I’m expecting one hell of a turnout, and that’ll tell me that this movement is still very much alive. That’s because the problems haven’t gone away. They haven’t even dissipated slightly. It’s the same amount of corruption and subsequently I don’t see people going away. 

How do you think the movement can grow in the upcoming months?
What I’m trying to do is get this occupation to grow by getting mainstream Americans to wake up and get involved. That’s one of the reasons for my sign, which advocates everyone to watch “Inside Job,” which is about the financial crisis. Once you watch this documentary, not only will you understand Occupy, you’ll be a full-fledged advocate. 

What kind of resistance do you hope to see with the upcoming election? 
One of my big things is advocating pacifism. I don’t like any kind of violence. I don’t even like civil disobedience, in taking the streets and stopping traffic, even though I participated in that. That’s why I was arrested, but I did that to show solidarity with the young people. But we have to be careful with any action that can be interpreted by mainstream America as that can make us look like trouble makers. 

What can be learned from OWS one year later?
Everyone has learned that there’s a movement afoot. It’s here. It’s going to stay and it’s going to stay until the problems disappear and that won’t be for a while. What people don’t realize is you need to be patient. As you get older you get more patient, but the young people didn’t have the patience and wanted to see changes quicker. You have to realize this is going to be a long tour and you have to stay the course.

Ray Lewis is a retired Philadelphia police captain who was arrested last November during an OWS action in New York City. 

(Source: thepeoplesrecord.com)

#s17 (Taken with Instagram)

In one year, the Occupy Movement has done quite a bit. Let’s do more together. 

September 16, 2012

Nationally, I know enthusiasm for the Occupy Movement is less than what it once was, and for many good reasons. But it has been an undeniably culturally transformative phenomena, that has already changed the world, that coincides with a period of escalated protests, escalated organizing (nationally and internationally), unprecedented international solidarity, and potential for even greater unprecedented international solidarity. It has been a vehicle for changing the world and struggles to continue being that.

What the movement is up against is a corporate-media-machine that will not allow the public to be dazzled by the protests a second time, that has had a year’s practice in talking about the Occupy Movement in the most dismissive and dismantling way possible. But in the age of information, in the age of easy access to direct-sources of photography and video and personal accounts of protests, the corporate-media-machine is also facing an uphill battle in maintaining their credibility while trying to purposefully mischaracterize facts and information.

And the repressive police forces and city-governments around the country are also fundamentally challenged by the swelling crowds of protesters, the jails aren’t built to hold all of us at once (not yet anyway) and although their power often seems massive, it is ultimately finite and challengable by thousands. 

One year ago, when the movement started, we hadn’t started this blog, and the two of us who run this blog could have been described as progressive Democrats at best. Our personal stories are two of thousands whose political consciousness has been projected down the rabbit-hole of ideas and political philosophy over the last year, specifically because of the Occupy Movement. And as we move forward to the one-year anniversary tomorrow, and as we push on this next year, trying to discover and create new ways to interact with technology, in order to help organize and build sustainable long-term communities of political resistance, it’s becoming more and more clear to me that the impact of this movement is still in its infancy. Yesterday, at the pre-one-year-anniversary crowds at Zucotti Park and Washington Square Park (where we stayed for most of the day) I had the opportunity to see and speak with many people who are working on a whole host of ambitious projects, inspired by the movement, targeted at transforming cultural consciousness and building organized bodies of resistance, some of which WILL develop and WILL be impactfull. The left is growing. There are more anarchists and communists and socialists than there were this time last year. All the fractured socialist parties are swelling, anarchist collectives are multiplying, more people know what fracking is. More people embrace democracy and reject its opposite, capitalism. More people believe in the power of direct-action. More people are understanding intersections of oppression. Consciousness is changing and is infecting the minds of many. Even if we haven’t won the greater masses, we’ve won over a new wave of energized and capable leftists who are in the front-lines of doing just that.

And what we’re building is (and has to be) so long-term in its focus, that our impact will be undeniable. Being with hundreds of other dedicated world-changers reminds me of our fundamentally transformative potential, reminds me that a new world really is possible, that we really can defy all odds, and inspire change, and slowly (and sometimes in those special transformative moments, rapidly) add to our numbers, one by one and many by many, change the political consciousness of those all around us. 

If you’re in the New York area (or anywhere else that’s doing one-year anniversary demonstrations), come out to the one year protests, feel the energy, remember what’s so inspiring about this movement and join us once again - this time a little wiser, a little more knowledgeable, a little more experienced and capable than last time. If you’re capable of making it out, you need to make it out - it will recharge you and inspire a re-dedication to transforming the world that’s entirely necessary. We need you to join us, because if not you, then who? You’re the one whose reading this and you’re the reason the world will break through the destructive cycle of capitalism. 

-Robert

MUST WATCH: NYPD arrests veteran for sitting down in Zuccotti Park yesterday.

Sept. 15 was just a training day, & NYPD is already filling their arrest quota for OWS. These arrests are too frequent & target anyone in the police’s grasp.

Hopefully everyone can come out to the first anniversary, gathering at 7 a.m. for the People’s Wall. More info here. See you tomorrow!!