5,000 March Against Fracking in DC

More than 5,000 peo­ple from all over the nation, and var­i­ous parts of the world includ­ing Aus­tralia, unit­ed [Sat­ur­day, July 28] on the West lawn of the U.S. Capi­tol demand­ing Con­gress take imme­di­ate action to stop frack­ing.

More than 5,000 peo­ple from all over the nation, and var­i­ous parts of the world includ­ing Aus­tralia, unit­ed [Sat­ur­day, July 28] on the West lawn of the U.S. Capi­tol demand­ing Con­gress take imme­di­ate action to stop frack­ing. After the ral­ly that began at 2 p.m., ral­ly par­tic­i­pants marched for more than one hour, stop­ping at the head­quar­ters of the America’s Nat­ur­al Gas Alliance and Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute.

Peo­ple impact­ed by frack­ing in their com­mu­ni­ties joined forces with 136 local and nation­al orga­ni­za­tions to call on Con­gress to Stop the Frack Attack and pro­tect Amer­i­cans from the dan­ger­ous impacts of frack­ing.

Ral­ly speak­ers includ­ed, Bill McK­ibben, co-founder of 350.org; Josh Fox, pro­duc­er of Gasland; Calvin Till­man, for­mer may­or of Dish, Texas; Alli­son Chin, board pres­i­dent of the Sier­ra Club, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from swing states affect­ed by frack­ing.

“As the increas­ing­ly bizarre weath­er across the plan­et and melt­ing ice on Green­land makes clear, at this point we’ve got no choice but to keep fos­sil fuels under­ground. Frack­ing to find more is the worst pos­si­ble idea,” said McK­ibben.

“The amaz­ing thing about this prob­lem is that there’s a solu­tion… We know that  we can run the world on renew­able ener­gy. We know that we can run the world on the wind. And today, we have a reminder that we can run the world on the sun,” said Fox. [Ed. note: While we sup­port actions to stop frack­ing, see our arti­cle cri­tiquing this per­spec­tive on so-called clean alter­na­tives]

Today’s ral­ly was part of the first nation­al event to stop the frack attack. The ral­ly is the cul­mi­na­tion of three days of train­ing to fur­ther esca­late the move­ment to stop abuse by the fos­sil fuel indus­try. Large groups from swing states includ­ing Ohio, Col­orado, Penn­syl­va­nia and North Car­oli­na attend­ed the train­ing and ral­ly to make sure that frack­ing is a key part of the upcom­ing elec­tion.

“Just weeks ago in North Car­oli­na, our leg­is­la­ture ripped up decades of ground­wa­ter pro­tec­tions for rur­al drink­ing water, in order to allow frack­ing and invite in dirty indus­try cam­paign dol­lars. So we add our voic­es to the nation­al move­ment call­ing on Con­gress to pro­tect our homes, our drink­ing water and our health by repeal­ing the 2005 oil and gas exemp­tions,” said Hope Tay­lor, a farmer near Durham and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Clean Water for NC.

Ral­ly par­tic­i­pants have three key demands: an end to dirty and dan­ger­ous frack­ing, clo­sure of the sev­en legal loop­holes that let frack­ers in the oil and gas indus­try ignore the Safe Drink­ing Water Act, Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and full enforce­ment of exist­ing laws to pro­tect fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties from the effects of frack­ing.

“It is time for us to come togeth­er as a peo­ple and let the law mak­ers that work for us know that we are tired of being run over by the out-of-con­trol oil and gas indus­try,” said Till­man.

While at the head­quar­ters of America’s Nat­ur­al Gas Alliance, ral­ly orga­niz­ers deliv­ered six jugs of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed water in haz­mat suits and then head­ed to the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute where a 20-foot-high mock oil rig was smashed to the ground.

This event was a launch­ing point for the move­ment, and will be fol­lowed by events in Albany, NY on Aug. 25, Philadel­phia on Sept. 20 and Sept. 21, and sub­se­quent events in oth­er states and regions affect­ed by frack­ing.