Welcome Open Ears!
For those new to Amp Up, this is a network for all youth or student organizations and activists working to save our planet and/or bring justice to the world. We organized a summit On March 27th for the Environment and mostly it was environmental studies majors and representatives of groups that work for a sustainable campus, or a campus garden, or Earth Day organizers, those types of benign organizations and some students that were politically active. The main goal was simply to create a network, starting with the Environment, as it's probably the biggest rallying cry amongst all campuses.
Speaking just for the Environmental Movement, not all campus groups are politically active and the political green movement itself is divided amongst standpoints. 350.org's National Day of Action was one time when all sorts of political green groups could stand up together, because it was only a symbol they were speaking for. Though, this network is not only to politicize green groups and to unify the political green movement, but it is for all sorts of progressive students, to share skills, information, stories, and to network folks from different movements, organizations, schools, parts of New York City, parts of the World.
Fracking June
This weekend Julia, Betta and I are going up to Ithaca to converge with other defenders of the Marcellus Shale! New York State's water could be poisoned by Hydrofracking, a new method of drilling for Natural Gas, which is targeted at the Marcellus Shale, a rock layer in the Northeast. Read my short article on it, http://shannonayala.blogspot.com/2010/05/fracking-with-new-york-watershed.html or my longer one, http://shannonayala.blogspot.com/2010/05/shale-sweetspot.html.
In an Amp Up meeting today we decided to create a 4 week campaign, Fracking June. We'll have much more action planned when we return from Ithaca but we might as well start writing letters. Hand Written letters. We'll write up a sample letter and addresses.
One idea was creating a video petition and other demonstrations of people saying, "I Love New York City Water." Another is a demonstration of flaming cups.
LET'S SAVE NEW YORK'S WATER AND STOP HYDROFRACKING EVERYWHERE!
-Shannon
