New York's Fractivists Keep the Heat on Cuomo

http://www.thenation.com/article/169893/new-yorks-fractivists-keep-heat-cuomo

On a hot and breezy August morning, more than 1,000 protesters gathered in Albany calling on Governor Andrew Cuomo to ban the drilling practice called hydraulic fracturing in New York State. Activists chanted anti-fracking fight songs and carried banners highlighting the dangers of the gas drilling practice. It was in many ways like the handful of rallies that had come before it.

But there was one subtle difference that tracked a trend in the anti-fracking movement. The first hint came with one of the first speakers: Bill McKibben, the environmental writer and activist who started the grassroots group 350.org to press for action on climate change. Last year, McKibben and his group organized a campaign that took the arcane local issue of an oil pipeline running through Nebraska and turned it into a national story, culminating in one of the environmental movement’s largest acts of civil disobedience ever, when an estimated 10,000 activists circled the White House in a human chain last November. In his speech at the August rally, McKibben called this a “gut-check” moment for Cuomo and suggested that banning fracking would make him a leader on the national, even international stage.

The main event in Albany that day was the presentation of a pledge, signed by more than 3,000 New Yorkers and recited in front of the State Capitol, vowing to take whatever nonviolent actions necessary to prevent energy companies from fracking their first wells in the state. “That’s amazing,” McKibben told a rowdy crowd. “Those are people that have said, ‘If I have to, I will go to jail. We are not going to let this happen.’” A moratorium has blocked fracking in New York since 2008, and Cuomo’s administration is expected to announce before the end of this year whether drilling can proceed.