Spring Forward

As the end of our Horizontal Hydrofracking Moratorium nears, there will be quite a few opportunities to stand up for what's up in the next couple of months.




April 11th. To come lobby against Hydrofracking in Albany, just email me (ayalashannon@gmail.com) and I'll forward it to the right person to see if there's still room on the bus from NYC. The bus leaves at 6:30 a.m. from Brooklyn.


April 20th. Rising Tide North America coined it the Day of Action to End Extraction. We will be in concert with direct actions around the country and maybe the world.

First, from 12:30 to 2:30 there will be an anti-Fracking rally in Washington Square Park. It seems there will be a march from this event to the next->

Later, at 3p.m. we will raise awareness of both hydrofracking and the proposed Spectra natural gas pipeline or NJ-NY Expansion Project.

The pipeline would connect in Staten Island and Jersey City but feed energy into Manhattan at 14th Street. It would be a major project going under the Hudson River and folks in Jersey City have organized against it. See NoGasPipeline.org. It is potentially very dangerous as a similar pipeline exploded in San Bruno last year. The explosion could affect Chelsea and the West Village, but we are also in solidarity with Jersey City. United for Action and Sane Energy Project are also organizations that have been working on opposing it. We've flyered in Chelsea and signed up as interveners with FERC. This event will continue to raise awareness in the neighborhood, while commemorating the Gulf Oil Spill and Fukushima.
(facebook event)


May 2nd March through Albany to save NY's water and water everywhere.


Editors Note: I think that as we come towards June, we should keep in mind that a lot of landowners upstate don't appreciate our efforts, and that we should always be hoping to get them on our side, as well as the workers in these companies. Although the frackers haven't been able to horizontally drill too much in New York State, they have managed to inspire major, hostile divisions in small towns in the past few years. A ban on fracking isn't going to heal that. And if we don't get a ban, it's in the hands of these folks.

PS: We are in concert, (http://www.extractionaction.net/)

Young Farmer Testifies Next to CEO

"The big guys know they're in trouble," said Stephen McDonnell, CEO of Applegate Farms, which employs 1000 farmworkers in South America. He spoke next to a young farmer and a Food writer on a panel hosted by Baruch College's Journalism department called, "Can Healthy Food Feed America," last night.

Applegate may relatively not be one of the "big guys," and what brought the man to the table may have been his interest in the Food Movement, especially the rise in buying from farmers markets, and eating more fruits and vegetables instead of meat even though his company is basically a meat business, however, they do not use artificial hormones on their animals.

The young farmer, on the other hand, in his mid twenties perhaps, works on a farm that breaks even, and is owned by a wealthy couple that launched the farm out of an interest in Sustainable Agriculture. He's one of a movement of young people that are taking up the challenge of being a Sustainable farmer.

The question: "Can healthy food feed America," of course wasn't totally, holistically examined in the short period of time, but the subject of various routes of changing the Food System and how students can be involved came up. Of course, David Orr, the young farmer provided the example of being the change, becoming the Local, Sustainable farmer.

Despite how much a movement actually grows of people purchasing Local, Organic and Humane Food, there will still be a crisis of local farmers falling off the map in Upstate New York. "New York State farmers ... only make half as much per acre as farmers in other parts of the country," says NYC Council Member Quin according to Gotham Gazzette (an article written by a student). The article also goes into depth about Ethical Food also coming into low income neighborhoods. But despite these awesome activist actions, these allocations of Healthy, Sustainable Food don't necessarily increase the production of this food. The Broken Food System, to a large degree, has brought us the Hydrofracking controversy, since farmland is most targeted by the Natural Gas Industry. Therefore, we need more young farmers and large systematic change that transfers subsidies from Industrial Ag to Sustainable Ag. And since a historic Food Safety Bill was just passed, there may be some hope in actually targeting the next Farm Bill or other Food Policies.

It came up in the discussion that one activist role that students in particular could take is through the Real Food Challenge, and attending the Northeast Food and Justice Summit of February 2011 in Boston, in which hundreds of students will attend. The RFC is a campaign launched by students in 2005 that unites students that want to transfer their own school's food money to Sustainable Food.