Click here to spread the love on social media by joining our Thunderclap, and see below for how to send your Valentine message to the FERC commissioners at their homes via snail mail. We’re doing this for the whole month of February, so keep the messages flowing!
If you’d like to send additional Valentines to where the commissioners live when they’re staying in Washington, DC, I’m sure they’d appreciate it. Their Washington, DC addresses are below.
Cheryl LaFleur
1255 25th St NW Apt. 221
Washington, DC 20037
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Colette D Honorable
6549 Washington Blvd
Arlington, VA 22205
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Tony Clark
42476 Legacy Park Dr
Ashburn, VA 20148
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Norman Bay
1631 1/2 19th St NW Apt C
Washington, DC 20009
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Grab your paste, markers, fancy doily hearts and construction paper, and pour your hearts out.
Here’s what to do in 6 steps.
1.) Create your Valentine Messages for the FERC commissioners. The more personalized, the better. You can make your own, or you can click the download above to get one that’s already made.
2.) Take pictures of your Valentine Messages. They can be pictures of the messages alone, or selfies of you holding the messages–whichever you prefer.
3.) Send your messages to the home addresses of the four FERC commissioners. Each commissioner has two addresses–one outside DC, and one inside DC. Send your messages to as many of the addresses as you’d like. The more, the better. These addresses can be found at the bottom of the above instructions flyer and in the text above.
4.) If you use Twitter, tweet your pictures at the FERC commissioners. Information on how to do this is found in the instructions flyer above.
5.) If you use Facebook, share your pictures there as well. Again, more information can be found in the instructions flyer above.
6.) Let us know you sent your messages by e-mailing your pictures to actions@BeyondExtremeEnergy.org. Please include your name and where you’re from. Please send only those things which you’re comfortable having shared online.
Much gratitude for the folks who worked together to make this project happen.
Trespassing charges have been dropped against BXE’s Greg Yost, left, and Steve Norris, right, for their sit-in that temporarily closed an Exxon gas station in Asheville, NC, in November 2015. Shina Maphet, center, had pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served. They were drawing attention to news that Exxon knew about climate change for decades but created doubt about the science to protect the company’s business model. Article and video about the protest here. Articles about #ExxonKnew here, here and here.
Very possibly as early as tomorrow, chain-saw-armed tree cutters hired by Williams Partners, a powerful pipeline-building corporation for the gas and oil industry, will try to cut down sugar maple trees on the property of Maryann Zeffer, Cathy and Megan Holleran and their family. For 65 years they have lived on this land, and for the last ten or so they have been producing delicious, pure, Pennsylvania maple syrup from those trees.
This destruction won’t happen without a big fight. Nine days ago as I write, after FERC gave approval to Williams’ request to start tree cutting in Pennsylvania even though Williams does not have all of the necessary approvals to build their Pennsylvania-to-New York Constitution pipeline, an encampment was set up on the Zeffer/Holleran land. Every day since, people have been there.
The press has been there, too. TV stations in Binghamton, N.Y., and Scranton, Pa., have done stories on this epic David vs. Goliath battle, though this one is more like strong women Davidas vs. Goliath.
I spent a very cold but inspiring day yesterday with Maryann, Cathy and Megan and about 30 other people there for some part of the day, including fracktivist heroine Vera Scoggins, who I had never met before. One of the rewarding things about a life of for-the-people activism and organizing is the wonderful people you are always meeting and getting to know.
Maryann Zeffer, niece Megan Holleran and sister Cathy Holleran on Day 8 of action to protect their land from Williams’ chainsaws.
Yesterday it looked like Williams’ tree cutters might not be getting to the Zeffer/Holleran land for a while. They had started just the day before, a number of miles away. However, just today, another crew started cutting a little more than a mile away, and the locals sent out an alert calling upon as many people as possible to show up today if possible but tomorrow for sure. They expect the confrontation to take place within 48 hours at most.
People who can get to the site should do so right away. You don’t need to be prepared to risk arrest to do so; the more people there to watch and observe and take pictures and spread the word the better.
You do need a car. Here’s the information you need, from the “Stop the Constitution Pipeline in Pa” site on Facebook:
The Holleran property is located at 2131 Three Lakes Road, New Milford, PA, but use these coordinates to find where people are gathered to stop the tree cutting: 41.8272387, -75.7585062
You can contact the following two people:
Megan Holleran 570-709-3268
Alex Lotorto (after 5 p.m.) 570-269-9589
The courageous stand of these women and their family needs to be emulated and supported throughout the country, wherever the fracking industry is trying to build new pipelines and infrastructure. Their fight is literally our fight; as Rev. Yearwood often says, this is our “lunch counter moment.” Just as young black people and older black people stood up against the racists in the Deep South in the early 60’s, galvanizing a process of social change in this country that continues to have impacts today, so must we take up this fight right now on behalf of the people and the planet.
Yesterday, in a very spontaneous moment, Cathy, Megan and Maryann began singing the John Lennon song, Power to the People. The feeling to do so came out of the power I’m sure they were feeling as a result of what their refusal to bend to the will of Williams Partners has already brought them—new friends, solidarity, community, hope. Power to the people, indeed, not the frackers, polluters and corporatists who think they will rule over us forever. We cannot let them, and the time is right now to make that very clear.
Every third Thursday, the morning bustle of Washington, DC’s Union Station plays host to a monthly prelude. Small tables are haphazardly pulled together and the 8am ritual commences. Gathered in a circle and passing around food and coffee, we plan our next round of unwelcome Truth Injections. The objective–to crack a little known but terribly powerful entity near the heart of the Fracked Gas Empire. This entity is frightening, but it houses no monsters. Instead, it houses something far more grotesque–a form of unacknowledged violence persisting under a bureaucratic veneer. Some call it the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). I call it the worst kind of nightmare.
Captive to the fracked gas industry and rubber-stamping virtually every project that comes before it, FERC inspires goosebumps in the night. Every permit for fossil fuel infrastructure that FERC issues is an act of violence perpetrated against the people and the planet, poisoning local communities, and polluting the global climate.
The circle of those standing up to say no grows.
Last month, five people took turns standing up and speaking out at the public meeting FERC commissioners are required to convene every third Thursday.
In January, those people were Ashley Tuhro from Wichita, Kansas, Carol Cutler from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Betsy Conover from Pennsylvania, Tim Spiese from Pennsylvania, and Drew Hudson from South Carolina.
RT America reported on what happened. Hear from Kendall Hale, Tim Spiese, and Ashley Tuhro.
Tim was first to stand up in the meeting room. Here’s what he had to say about FERC: “They segment everything, so they look at one pipeline and think ‘no problem, it’s not going to harm anything.’ But if they were to do what they’re supposed to do and look at all the pipelines, consider the fracking, the damages that fracking does, consider the impact economically to the country, environmentally to the country and the world, and consider that whole ball of wax, it’s a no brainer.”
Thanks to Ashley, we have some footage from inside FERC. Take a look. Here, Carol is taken from the room for calling on the commissioners to put people over profits.
After the meeting, Carol was met outside by Lee Camp (host of Redacted Tonight) and Eleanor Goldfield (host of Act Out), who both attended the meeting to witness and document the actions.
Of the day’s FERC meeting, Eleanor wrote “The meeting began with a circle-jerk style ceremony including a congratulatory plaque awarded to some guy for doing something completely unrelated to the day’s proceedings. Then, the members of the Commission, including Chairman Norman C. Bay, took turns congratulating each other on being awesome, informing the room that they like football, just got a twitter account and isn’t the work we do just so awesome!? It sounded like the sort of banal conversation you might hear made fun of in an episode of The Office, but these people were supposedly here to discuss the FUCKING ENERGY CONCERNS OF OUR NATION!” Read more here.
Betsy was taken out in a similar fashion.
The below exchange happened between Betsy and outgoing FERC Commissioner Tony Clark before she was made to leave.
Read more about this exchange and the action as a whole from DC Media Group.
Drew Hudson of South Carolina had powerful words as well: “Last month 195 nations, including the government that this commission is supposed to work for, agreed that climate change is an imminent threat, and that global warming must be capped at 1.5-2 degrees celsius. To do this we must keep 80% of fossil fuels in the ground. By continuing to approve fracked gas infrastructure, you are perpetuating what Bill McKibben calls “Zombie fossil fuels” that will stay in operation for more than 40 years and doom our climate – causing the loss of many lives and livelihoods as a result of climate chaos. I urge this commission to stop approving the problem, stop fracked gas infrastructure and work with impacted communities to rapidly invest in a just energy democracy for all.”
The last people out of the room were Ashley Tuhro and her two kids, who came all the way from Witchita, Kansas, where fracking is causing earthquakes.
Once a person speaks out at FERC, they’re not permitted to return to the meeting room itself. Presumably due to sunshine laws, however, they are permitted into an overflow room adjacent to the main meeting room. In January, a group of folks gathered in the overflow room to sound the alarm on a sleeping FERC.
Afterwards, a successful crew gathered outside for chants.
Throughout the whole morning, others stood outside FERC handing FERC employees an open letter, pictured below. It was about the effort Delaware Riverkeeper Network is leading to get US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to request a GAO investigation of the agency. For more information and to add your name and organization to the letter, click here.
Please join us for one of the upcoming actions at FERC in Washington, DC. They’re held the third Thursday of every month. If you’d like to receive updates, sign up here.
Beyond Extreme Energy 
