Energy Industry Crackdown, Global Protest Frackdown

Yes­ter­day, while Shell announced suing Green­peace Inter­na­tion­al in an attempt to have the orga­ni­za­tion banned from protest with­in 500 meters of any Shell prop­er­ty in the Nether­lands,  New York activist Susan Walk­er was sen­tenced to 15 days in jail after she refused to pay a fine for block­ing the entrance to Iner­gy gas facil­i­ty in New York ear­li­er this month. 

But judges and jails aren’t enough to stop a world-wide move­ment against the ener­gy empire, and today marks the “Glob­al Frack­down” with more than 100 protests against gas frack­ing sched­uled to take place around the world. So get out there in the streets and raise some hell…

Shell sues Greenpeace to block environmental protests in the Arctic

The suit against Green­peace Int’l argued at Amsterdam’s Dis­trict Court Fri­day showed Shell aggres­sive­ly tak­ing the offen­sive to pro­tect its $4.5 bil­lion invest­ment in drilling for oil in the icy Arc­tic waters off the coast of Alas­ka. A ver­dict is not expect­ed for two weeks.

A protest at a Shell gas sta­tion in the Nether­lands — with stuffed polar bear. (AFP/ANP, Mar­cel Antonisse)

Green­peace has protest­ed Arc­tic drilling with oth­er stunts around the world, but the trig­ger for Friday’s law­suit was a Dutch demon­stra­tion on Sept. 14, in which Green­peace pro­test­ers blocked more than 70 Shell gas sta­tions in the Nether­lands for sev­er­al hours, drap­ing ban­ners and clamp­ing gas pump han­dles togeth­er with bike locks.

Fif­teen peo­ple were arrest­ed. Shell has not put for­ward any esti­mate of how much dam­age it suf­fered.

“Because Green­peace Inter­na­tion­al doesn’t oper­ate alone, but is the spi­der in the web of nation­al and local orga­ni­za­tions, our request includes that Green­peace inform its satel­lite orga­ni­za­tions that it no longer sup­ports protests that are sole­ly direct­ed at caus­ing Shell eco­nom­ic dam­age or that bring human lives and the envi­ron­ment in dan­ger,” Shell’s com­plaint said.

Protest backs jailed environmental activist in Inergy Blockade

Joseph Camp­bell, pres­i­dent of Gas Free Seneca, speaks Fri­day out­side the Chemu­ng Coun­ty Jail. He said local res­i­dents turned to civ­il dis­obe­di­ence because their peti­tions, let­ters and attend­ing hear­ings failed to get their voic­es heard on Iner­gy Midstream’s pro­posed stor­age facil­i­ty.

Near­ly 30 peo­ple slammed the ener­gy indus­try out­side the Chemu­ng Coun­ty Jail on Fri­day but praised the Dundee woman held inside for refus­ing to pay a fine for tres­pass­ing at a pro­posed gas stor­age facil­i­ty.

They demon­strat­ed in sup­port of Susan Walk­er, 53, who plead­ed guilty to tres­pass­ing Wednes­day night before Read­ing Town Jus­tice Ray­mond H. Berry and got 15 days in jail after she refused to pay the $275 fine.

“We’re in agree­ment with Susan’s words when she spoke in the cour­t­house, ‘If I were a cor­po­ra­tion, I would not be going to jail,’” said one of four speak­ers, San­dra Ste­in­graber, an Itha­ca Col­lege schol­ar in res­i­dence who co-found­ed the coali­tion New York­ers Against Frack­ing.

Fracking Protests Planned Around The World By GlobalFrackdown Campaign

More than 100 protests against the nat­ur­al gas drilling process known as frack­ing are sched­uled to take place around the world on Sat­ur­day, build­ing on pub­lic con­cerns but also using an over­ly sim­pli­fied mes­sage to spur out­rage.

The Glob­al­Frack­down web­site and cam­paign was devel­oped by Food & Water Watch, a Wash­ing­ton, D.C. non­prof­it that was once part of Ralph Nader’s Pub­lic Cit­i­zen group. The cam­paign claims that frack­ing “has already dam­aged com­mu­ni­ties and ruined lives. It pol­lutes water and makes peo­ple sick.”