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“The gift of the Earth with its fruits belongs to everyone.” — Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, paragraph 71.

by Ted Glick, reposted from www.ecowatch.com

There were many kind people, including some Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) employees, who thanked me or had supportive things to say during the 18 days that I fasted on water only in front of FERC with 11 other sisters and brothers from Sept. 8 – 25. But there are three people whose words I doubt I’ll ever forget.

There was the young black woman whose job was to staff a small booth by the entrance to an underground parking lot just across from the main employee entrance to FERC. She was friendly and over the three weeks that I stood across from her during the work week, holding signs and distributing leaflets to FERC employees going into or leaving work, we often exchanged small talk and smiles. About a week before it ended she commended us on our courage. Then, on the 15th day, she told me, “Some women came by yesterday, asking me, ‘What are they doing here?’ and I told them, ‘They are taking action for all of us.’ Some of us have jobs and have to pay bills and can’t do what you’re doing, but I think what you are doing is important.”

Then there was the Homeland Security Federal Protective Services policeman, a tall, tough-looking, white guy, who came by to talk to me on day 18, asking how I was doing, clearly impacted by our willingness to suffer for what we believed in. After a couple of minutes he said, “I’ve seen lots of groups demonstrating on issues, but yours is the most persistent one I’ve ever seen.”

But the most profound interaction I had was with a woman who might not have known I was fasting. She was an old white woman, on crutches, looking like she was homeless, a beggar on the DC Metro subway. I had seen her earlier in the 18-day ordeal; she had come up to me asking for money. On day 16, the day the Pope was in town meeting with President Obama, on my way home from FERC in the evening to the church where we stayed every night, I saw her again. We were both standing on the Metro platform and I had a mounted, blown-up picture of the Pope holding a sign which said, “No al Fracking.”

She came over to me, our eyes connected and she said, to paraphrase, “You know, I know all about Jesus Christ and everything, but I just want to say that if it’s not about unity, it doesn’t mean crap.” I had listened carefully and what she said rang true, was genuine and deep, and I responded, “Yes, you’re right. That is absolutely true.”

The Beyond Extreme Energy-organized “Fast for No New Permits” was not explicitly about “unity.” It was the latest in a now-over-a-year campaign focused on what we call “the most dangerous federal agency most people have never heard of.” We are doing everything we can think of to throw a nonviolent wrench into the gears of the FERC machinery. This semi-independent agency has just kept grinding out permit after permit for the expansion of fracked gas infrastructure, with virtually no rejections of gas industry proposals, from what we’re able to tell, for many, many years.

The idea of doing a serious fast emerged a few months ago as some of us realized that the Pope was going to be in DC in late September, the Pope who has been outspoken about the need for action on the climate crisis and who, yes, had no problem being photographed a couple years ago with that “No al Fracking” sign.

And so on Sept. 8, the day after Labor Day, 12 of us, from ages 19 to 72, began a diet that consisted of water, salt and potassium. Ten of us continued on that diet until the 25th, the day after the Pope’s speech to the U.S. Congress. One faster had to end it around day 10 because of serious physical difficulties he was encountering; the other did so after about 14 days because of her need to build back some strength before joining a 900-mile walk from Rome to Paris beginning next week in connection with the early December UN Climate Conference.

There were at least 100 other people who fasted around the country, including several who fasted for 18 days also, as I understand it, in Oak Flat, Arizona, protesting federal plans to take land in Tonto National Forest sacred to local Apache nations and give it to multinational copper companies to mine.

In DC we 12 fasters and other supporters set up camp in front of FERC on the sidewalk every work day from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. We passed out many thousands of leaflets and had hundreds of conversations with FERC employees and people passing by. Dutch TV came by and did interviews, as did a dozen or more other press outlets. We found a great deal of support and almost no overt hostility. One of the more interesting conversations we had was with Norman Bay, chair of FERC. I was able to talk with for a few minutes when he was spotted coming out of the FERC building while most of us on this very hot, sunny day were across the street in the shade of a 30-foot high stone wall. Little of direct substance came out of that discussion, though you never know.

On the 17th day, the day the Pope spoke to Congress, we had a breakthrough with the Washington Post when a reporter interviewed me on the mall and posted a blog about it that morning. The next day that blog post became a substantial part of a good and prominent article in the first section of the paper, taking up 2/3rds of a page and with a big picture. It was helpful to see that Post article reporting that our fast was “to protest what he said was the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s support for the use of fossil fuels and pipelines.”

I would expect lots of FERC employees, including Commissioners, as well as DC judges who will be hearing appeals of FERC’s rubber-stamping ways, see that article and smile.

There is no question this was an effective action. But it was more than that. In significant part because it was a fast—what Gandhi called “the most sincere form of prayer”—and connected to the visit of the people’s Pope, it was also, indeed, about unity, about what the wise, old, beggar woman on the Metro platform had said to me on day 16.

Yes, “the gift of the earth with its fruits belongs to everyone.” And yes, “a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach, it musts integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.” (paragraph 49).

And more directly, to amplify the wise woman, “Everything is connected. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.” (paragraph 91).

I lost 30 pounds over those 18 days. It is good to be eating again, slowly returning to normal eating habits. It is good to have energy to work, feel my strength beginning to return, to taste the delicious flavors of fruits and vegetables, the only things I am eating these first two days of my back-to-normal-eating, nine-day plan. It is good to be home after three weeks away. And it is good to know that the memories of those 18 days and the wonderful community of sister and brother fasters and supporters will be with me always, nourishing my commitment to keep taking action for a stable climate and a transformed world until the day I die.

Ted Glick is the National Campaign Coordinator of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Past writings and other information can be found at tedglick.com and he can be followed on Twitter.

A follow up climate justice action to Pope Francis’s visit to Washington, D.C.

Visuals: 50-foot United States of Fracking banner and No New Permits quilt

Audio: Short statements from fasters and clergy; singing; chanting

Facebook event:  https://www.facebook.com/events/397353760461766/

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On Friday, Sept. 25, fasters from Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE), together with their supporters and leaders from several faiths, will break bread in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in D.C to end a dramatic eighteen-day fast undertaken to demand that FERC stop issuing permits for the pipelines, storage facilities and LNG export terminals that use fracked natural gas, and instead heed Pope Francis’s call to care for the Earth.

On Friday copies of the Pope’s encyclical will be presented to the five FERC commissioners; and there will be music, brief statements, and a procession, featuring BXE’s colorful and moving 50-foot anti-fracking banner, “The United Sates of Fracking”, around the FERC headquarters block, to honor the Planet and the People. BXE will also display the new quilt made in collaboration between fasters and residents of far-flung communities fighting fracking infrastructure in their communities.

Steve Norris, of North Carolina, at 72 is one of the oldest fasters. Describing what he has learned during the fast, he said:

“Being here, eating no food for 18 days, has taken me at 72 the oldest faster a fascinating and disorienting rabbit hole, where ‘normal’ appears absurd and even suicidal, and where unrealistic may be our only way out. I think because of our legal structures, because of their narrow fossil fuel focus, and because people disbelieve in viable alternatives, their minds are wedded to the madness of more fossil fuels.”

Sean Glenn, of Connecticut, at 23 is one of the youngest fasters. “I think this fast has just reinforced my belief in the power of people and our ability to overcome our old ways and really embrace new ones with complete curiosity, not knowing what we’re getting into,” she says. “The love that everyone has shown has been really powerful and the respect that we’re receiving for it is what has surprised me.”

WHERE: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), 888 1st St NE, Washington, DC.

WHEN: Friday, Sept. 25, noon to 1:30 p.m.

WHO: The fasters, their supporters, and faith leaders.

WHY: The BXE fasters demand that FERC end its fracking-friendly support for expanding natural gas infrastructure, which has led to a toxic locked-in fossil fuel network at the expense of safe, sound, and clean renewable energy. Fracking wells and gas pipelines contaminate the homes and communities nearby, and also leak methane, which is responsible for about 25% of the man-made global warming we experience today.

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Beyond Extreme Energy is a network of people and organizations dedicated to raising public awareness of the disastrous effects of fracking, natural gas infrastructure, and other kinds of extreme energy extraction; to taking direct action to stop them, and to promoting policies based on clean and safe renewable energy.

by Melinda Tuhus, reposted from www.MelindaTuhus.net

It’s instructive hanging around people who are fasting; one can focus on what’s really basic about life. It saves so much time, not cooking or eating. And you realize how absolutely central food is to any culture, so these folks are denying themselves not only nutrition, but social interactions that come with sharing a meal.

I’m at the Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) fast at FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) for No New Permits for fracked gas infrastructure. A dozen members of BXE began a water-only fast Sept. 8 and will break their fast Sept. 25, the day after the pope speaks to Congress. I am in awe of these people – aged 19 to 72 – who are now two-thirds of the way through it.

Most have good days and bad days – nausea, headaches, dizziness and extreme fatigue, as well as fuzzy thinking, indicating that this is serious business – but they carry on out on the sidewalk in front of FERC in DC. The young people are having more trouble, most likely because their metabolisms are so much faster, so they experience the lack of food more acutely. What’s really surprising is how

It’s a wide sidewalk, and despite a lot of foot traffic, no one has objected to us sitting in folding chairs, placing a big banner and various posters around (one of the Pope holding a sign “No al Fracking”); also a map of the U.S. pinpointing some of the FERC-regulated projects seeking approval or already approved; there are lots. Last weekend when it threatened rain, a security person even suggested putting up a canopy, which has come in very handy to keep the blazing sun off of us all week. That now takes up more than half the sidewalk.

I told my fellow BXEers I wasn’t going to fast (the very idea sent me into a depression) but I would help in other ways. So I’m doing media work and am having mild success. I’m trying to prime the pump of places like CNN and the Washington Post so they’ll be more likely to cover our big closing event on Sept. 25.

I’m also doing other general support, like driving the van (those of you who know me know that this is the least favorite of my duties) and getting flyers printed, facilitating our meetings as others get too tired to focus. What’s astonishing to me is how at different times these folks – who have had nothing but water and electrolytes for almost 300 hours – have the energy to walk back and forth to the Metro, or, like one day this week, the energy to walk across the Arlington Bridge into DC with the NAACP’s Journey for Justice.

Some of them talk about food constantly, but not in a whiny way, just reminiscing about what they love to eat. In fact, I haven’t heard anyone whine at all, or get more than a tiny bit impatient with each other or anyone else, except for one brief interchange, after which the person quickly apologized. Hell, I get grouchy if I miss one meal!

Many people going by have taken our various leaflets, others not, and then usually with a polite gesture or a smile. The worst is when someone totally ignores me, like I’m not there. I find it very hurtful. Made me think of how homeless people must feel most of the time. Some famous person said the opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. My fave comment (recounted to me, not experienced directly) was when someone angrily yelled, “Eat food, asshole!” I’m going to try to never ignore homeless persons again.

We’ve also had some incredibly wonderful conversations with a lot of people. They often thank the fasters for their commitment – even the chairman of the FERC Commission said he respected our commitment when he engaged one of our folks this week.

We don’t know what impact the fast will have on FERC’s policies and practices, but we’re pushing forcefully to make it harder for them to carry on business as usual. I hope anyone reading this or hearing this will join us for our breaking fast ceremony on Friday, September 25, from noon to 1:30 p.m. at FERC, 888 1st St. NE. Spread the word to anyone you know living in the DC area.

A small state with a big heart for resistance, RI once again connects the dots in the struggle against fossil fuel infrastructure.

by Andrew Stewart, reposted from www.rifuture.org

A small group of protestors from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds repeated their opposition to the proposed methane gas power plant in Burrillville. Simultaneous with this event, Governor Raimondo welcomed the Prime Minister of Cape Verde, José Maria Pereira Neves.

Among the protesters was Randall Rose, of Occupy Providence, Dr. Peter Nightingale, of the University of Rhode Island, independent film maker Robert Malin, Green Party activist Greg Geritt. They were offering their protest in solidarity with fasting environmental activists in Washington DC who are staging their action simultaneous with the arrival of Pope Francis. The Catholic leader has made climate change a major focus is his recent encyclical, LAUDATO SI, and is expected to raise the issue during his visit to America and the United Nations this week. The Pope just recently visited Cuba, a country that converted to a sustainable energy power grid and green infrastructure after the fall of the Soviet Union collapsed their petroleum import markets in the early 1990’s.

During her opening remarks, Governor Raimondo emphasized the cultural and economic ties between Rhode Island and Cape Verde. Cape Verde has begun rolling out a sustainable energy program in the past several years, such as opening a solar panel energy park last month that Prime Minister Neves attended. The nation, made up of a chain of islands, stands to sustain extreme damage should the oceans rise significantly due to climate change’s melting of the polar ice caps. A significant portion of the population lives beside the ocean in housing whose foundations would be threatened by erosion. Some of the islands would be completely submerged. Beginning in 2011, the island began an expected nine year program to convert the power grid to renewable resources.

Protestors outside the room hosting the Prime Minister of Cape Verde.

Press Advisory: For more information, text or call Melinda Tuhus, 203.623.2186 (Ted Glick, secondary contact: 973.460.1458.)

Hunger Strike grows at Federal Energy Regulatory Commission demanding No New Permits

Beyond Extreme Energy will hold press conference Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 10:30 a.m. on 15th day of their water-only fast, leading up to Pope’s visit. Outside FERC headquarters, 888 1st St. NE, D.C.  

Two women have traveled across the country to join Beyond Extreme Energy’s 18-day fast at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Their communities have been directly harmed by the permits FERC has issued or has pending regarding fracked gas infrastructure. A dozen members of BXE began their fast September 8 calling on FERC to stop issuing new permits. This is in line with Pope Francis’s call in his recent encyclical for the world’s leaders to immediately address the already devastating impacts of climate change – fueled by the burning of fossil fuels – especially on the poor who have contributed the least to the problem.

Pramilla Malick is the mother of four and a resident of Minisink, New York, where the Millennium Pipeline, owned by parent company NiSource, built a compressor station. She says that FERC approved it over the concerns of residents about methane and other toxic emissions, and the risk of catastrophic explosion.

“FERC enables the egregious excesses of a predatory industry that destroys communities such as mine, where many of my neighbors have been forced to flee because of this FERC permit. Our stories, however, of being fracked-by-FERC forewarn of even deeper looming crises; a climate crisis, democracy crisis, and human crisis all in one. We need bold action by multitudes to change course, so that my children, your children, and all our children are not robbed of their right to a future.”

Francis Eatherington flew to Washington, D.C. from Oregon to join the fast.

“I am here to help FERC understand that the Jordan Cove LNG Export Project on the Oregon coast and the 230-mile long Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline are reckless investments,” she says, “violating the laws of nature — the former being sited in an earthquake zone, the latter through forests prone to frequent forest fires. In fact, a forest fire is currently raging over part of the proposed route. It would also violate private property rights, as FERC is getting ready to issue a foreign company (Veresen, from Canada) the right to condemn the land of over 300 Oregonians to build the pipeline. And I’m one of those landowners. FERC will force me to host infrastructure that will lock us into using global warming fuels for at least the next 30 years.”

One of the long-term fasters, Jimmy Betts of Omaha, Nebraska will also speak.

BXE will end the fast at noon on Friday, September 25, with a ceremony that will include music, brief statements, and a procession to honor the Planet and the People featuring BXE’s colorful and moving 50-foot anti-fracking banner, “The United States of Fracking,” around the FERC headquarters block. Five clergy members representing different faiths will present copies of the Pope’s encyclical to the five FERC commissioners.

Beyond Extreme Energy is an activist network of organizations and individuals that came together in 2014 to raise public awareness of the disastrous impacts of fracking, fracking infrastructure, proposed gas exports and other extreme energy extraction practices; to take direct action to stop them; and to promote an energy present and future of renewables and efficiency.

Break the #NoNewPermits #BXEfast & Deliver the Encyclical to FERC event on September 25, 2015 at NOON

Michael Bagdes-Canning is a long time fracktivist from Butler County, Pennsylvania. The following is taken from an email Michael wrote this afternoon in response to Steve Norris.

Steven, other fasters, all,

When you wrote, “Many people, FERC employees and passersby, walk past and ignore us.”, it was jarring to me. I wake up every morning and I think of you all. Throughout the day, I think of you. Before I go to bed, I think of you. Sometimes I wake in the night thinking of you. I tell others about what you’re up to. I know that you are fasting for me and others like me. I know that you are fasting for all of us – including those that walk by ignoring you, FERC employees, the FERC Commissioners. I am grateful.

The work that you are doing is both profound and humbling. Confronting the Commissioners in their lair is fierce. Confronting them over and over with the damage they are doing is relentless. Confronting them with an empty stomach, day after day, for weeks on end is heroic, fierce, and relentless.

I cannot believe that you are being ignored. If what you were doing was “one and done” – you’d be ignored. What you guys (and I use that term in a generic way, realizing that some of the most amazing BXEers are not guys in the usual sense of the word) have done (and continue to do) is noticed. Eyes may be averted, but people notice. You are bearing witness but you are also also making others witnesses to the ongoing inaction of FERC – your continuing presence is testimony to FERC’s inaction.

People notice. Many, I’m certain, are uncomfortable and look away but looking away doesn’t make you go away. Others may look away because they realize they should be doing something and aren’t – your action shames them. Others may look away out of guilt, they work for FERC or the industry that pulls the strings. Others may be like me, too often, not really see you because their minds are elsewhere but are vaguely aware that you’re there – and then, suddenly, pulled out of their unconsciousness.

Wendell Berry, in an essay entitled The Commerce of Violence, wrote:

You guys are reversing that. You are voluntarily fasting to point out the routine destruction our system imposes “by remote control” on communities everywhere.

I’m reading all of the posts – Debbie’s, Thomas’, Ted’s, yours, others. I’m engaged. You’re not ignored in this small borough in western Pennsylvania. My thoughts, my prayers, my dreams are with you. I’m reading all of the posts – Debbie’s, Thomas’s, Ted’s, yours, others. I’m engaged. You’re not ignored in this small borough in western Pennsylvania. My thoughts, my prayers, my dreams are with you.

Mike

By Ted Glick

It’s the morning of the twelfth day that I haven’t been eating. The only things I’ve been putting into my body are lots of water, salt, potassium and a multi-vitamin.

How do I feel? Weak, very weak, as do most of the others—about 15 as I write—who are also fasting and intend to do so until September 25^th, the day after the people’s pope speaks to Congress. 11 of the 15 are also, like me, on the twelfth day of water-only.

We’re physically weak mainly because of the water-only diet but also because we’ve been conducting this hunger strike on the sidewalk in the hot sun in front of FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, from 7 am to 6 pm every work day. We’ve been leafletting and talking to FERC employees, including, several days ago, Norman Bay, the chairperson. We’ve been leafletting and talking to passers-by and people who come to visit, as have Tim DeChristoper, Medea Benjamin, “No Impact Man” Colin Beavan, local high school students, and more.

We’ve been using white boards to make signs that we change as the days go by. We’ve been putting up quotes from Pope Francis and Gandhi. Every morning part of our routine is to change the number of the days that we’ve been fasting on the signs that say, “Day ___ of 18-Day Hunger Strike for No New Permits for Fossil Fuel Infrastructure.”

We’ve also been traveling around DC. We’ve gone to important local demonstrations, several times to the site of a sister fast being conducted by the Franciscan Action Network, and meetings.

All of these activities are taking a physical toll, adding to the impact of not eating.

Spiritually, however, we’re a very strong group. Every day we gather together outside of FERC in the morning and the afternoon to meet and go over everything that has happened or is happening that day. We always begin by going around our sacred circle with each faster reporting on how they are doing. Sometimes individual fasters have reported problems, some pretty serious, as far as how they are doing. So far we have been able to help everyone in those situations to get over them and continue on, sometimes aided by local nurses who have volunteered their services for free.

At the end of each meeting, we join hands for a minute or more of silent breathing together and communal strengthening, and it always works.

Two-thirds of the way through this ordeal, we’re seeing the end of it. We’re starting to talk about how to come off the fast in a way that doesn’t do damage to your digestive system. I shared yesterday my nine-day plan—one day of transitioning back for every two days of fasting– for how to do so based on my past fasting experiences.

The fast will end this coming Friday, September 25^th, at 12 noon in front of FERC, the day after Pope Francis speaks before Congress. We will end it by breaking and sharing bread together—a very small piece for each of us—and with the many hundreds or more people we hope will join us. We are inviting people who do so who can to bring a healthy loaf of bread to share so that, together, we will break bread together there on First St. NE, affirming life and community and our determination to keep at it until we have won.

We need people to join us on the 25^th not so much to support us but to make a strong statement to FERC, and all those who will learn of our action, about the need for FERC to heed our demand: No New Permits for Fossil Fuel Infrastructure.

Some of the fasters got into the monthly meeting of the FERC Commissioners a few days ago, the meetings BXE has been attending and speaking out at for a year. One of them stayed throughout it, and he reported on how the Commissioners were talking about how electrical power companies need to be making plans to switch to gas as their fuel source going forward. Much of that would be fracked gas. This is consistent with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan projections and the very serious economic problems being experienced by the coal industry.

The Commissioners did not talk about the need for power companies to get serious about switching to wind or solar energy as their power source, even though 1) they are price-competitive with coal and gas, 2) they are actually clean and non-polluting, no water contamination, no poisoning of the air and land, and 3) they don’t leak methane, a greenhouse gas 86 times more powerful than CO2 over a 20 year period.

It has become very clear that a, if not the, central battle to prevent worldwide climate catastrophe is the battle over whether natural gas, increasingly fracked gas, or renewables is going to become the primary electrical power source in the next decade. FERC Commissioners are going all-in on an expansion of fracking infrastructure and exporting the stuff around the world.

This decision must not go unchallenged, and it is not. There is a growing and connecting national movement, centered along the east coast right now, that is taking on FERC, in DC and in the scores and scores, maybe hundreds, of local communities where people are organizing to fight new fracking infrastructure. Many more need to join this fight, and now.

Let’s make September 25^th at FERC in DC, following upon the big Climate Justice rally September 24^th on the mall as the Pope speaks to Congress, the next major manifestation of our determination to prevent FERC from continuing to poison local communities and our threatened climate. In the words of Pope Francis, “There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.”

Wake up FERC!

Ted Glick is the National Campaign Coordinator of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Past writings and others information can be found at http://tedglick.com, and he can be followed on twitter at http://twitter.com/jtglick.

by Ellen Barfield

I’m the Beyond Extreme Energy faster at the Federal Energy “Regulatory” Commission who is NOT taking water only, but juice, because I have to buzz back and forth to Baltimore every night to look after my elderly husband, and also dash to various meetings of other orgs I work with. But on the 9th day, over the HUMP!! of our fast I too am feeling muzzy-headed, spacing out on other responsibilities, dealing with tiredness. But the strong solidarity of our little group, and the kind support from all kinds of folks all over the place, is such a bond, and the gathering energy for the Pope’s visit and all the activities in support of the environment and against climate crisis is so inspiring, that I have no doubt this is what I need to be doing.

The FERC employees are getting to know us and smiling and even some of them talking though they’ve been told not to. BXE folks around the country are fasting during daylight Ramadan-style, or for a day or several, or a few days a week. Frontline community members who resist fracking projects damaging their towns and threatening their families are sharing their stories with us and helping us create quilt squares for a visual representation of the BXE network.  We 12 fasters at FERC check-in twice a day for calendar updates and to see how we’re doing physically and spiritually, and to plan all the documents and events we have coming up. We hold hands in a circle at the end of each meeting, and the strength is amazing.

We advocate FERC shifting from facilitating extreme fossil fuel extraction to green renewables, and the workers  there keeping their jobs and helping move the nation toward zero emissions. The idea of economic conversion, changing existing damaging jobs to good life-affirming jobs with government support for re-training and transition, is something I’ve understood and discussed ever since my first activist work seeking to change the nuclear weapons complex. An editorial cartoon I inspired back then shows a woman burying a bomb which grows up to be a windmill. Fracking towers should also become windmills, and workers in the fracking industry, and the government regulators at the Federal GREEN Energy Regulatory Commission, can do jobs they feel proud of helping us shift our economy and infrastructure. And new jobs installing wind and solar arrays and retrofitting existing buildings for efficiency will build the new economy.

When the Pope speaks to Congress next week, and so many citizens listen and endorse his message, we BXE fasters will be adding our energy to many other faith and environmental leaders and tens of thousands of citizens to push the government beyond its resistance to going green. We have no illusions green change is around the corner, but the Pope’s visit is a terrific opportunity to rally and increase the pressure for that change.

For more information on BXE and the fast, and to support BXE, go to https://beyondextremeenergy.org/september-fast-at-ferc-for-no-new-permits/

Peace, Ellen Barfield

by Mackenzie McDonald Wilkins, reposted from www.popularresistance.org

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Washington, DC –  Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) fasted in solidarity with organizers and hunger strikers working to reopen the Dyett highschool with a green energy curriculum. This was the 9th day of the BXE fast and the 30th day of the Dyett hunger strike. BXE is fasting at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) demanding an end to all new fossil fuel infrastructure permits. FERC’s continued permitting of fossil fuel projects disproportionately impacts poor folks and people of color due to project placement (like many LNG terminals in the Gulf South that need FERC approval) and climate change (like super-storms Katrina & Sandy).The Dyett hunger strikers are demanding that their high school, in a mostly black area of Chicago, be reopened with a green energy curriculum. After years of organizing and numerous days without eating, their school will be reopened, but not with the requested curriculum—thus, their hunger strike continues. The courage of the Dyett hunger strikers, including Cathy Dale and Jeanette Taylor-Ramann who had to end their strike due to health concerns, has inspired BXE fasters to keep going, despite weakness, dizziness, hunger, and other pains.

BXE sent this letter to the Dyett organizers and hunger strikers: