On January 25th, five days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, seven Greenpeace activists climbed a crane and unfurled a massive banner emblazoned with the word “RESIST” in full view of the White House. That brave action sparked newfound audacity in the environmental movement, and that word, resist, became our new rallying cry. We will not allow this administration to destroy our planet for profit.

We will resist when the Denier-in-Chief and his cronies continuously deny the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change and fail to take action to stop it. We will resist if the new regime tries to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which China, India, and Russia have all signed, and jeopardize the greatest chance this planet has ever had for global climate action. We will resist when Trump tries to ram dangerous, polluting pipelines down the throats of the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota, farmers in Nebraska, and everyday people right here in Pennsylvania. We will resist when the goons running the Departments of the Interior, Energy, and Agriculture try to turn our precious public lands into extraction colonies or sell them off for destruction by the highest bidder. We will resist when the EPA under Pruitt begins to value profits over people and land. We will resist when species on the brink of extinction are kept off the Endangered Species List because of political or corporate opposition. We will resist when Congress tries to gut the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Antiquities Act, and a whole host of other environmental laws because they know they’ll have a rubber stamp from the Oval Office. And we will resist right here on the ground in Butler County, when the frackers try to poison our air and water, destroy our landscape, and put people in harm’s way.
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I hope Trump likes a good fight, because he’s in for a long one. The environmental movement is here, we are angry, we are getting stronger, and we are not backing down. We won’t stop fighting.

Sam Hoszwa

Preliminary thoughts on yesterday: In this country, we are told that "we" are represented by the people we select. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The "one man" who was arrested is from Butler County, where a community (50 families) has been getting 20 - 25 gallons of water every Monday at White Oaks Springs Presbyterian Church to replace a tiny percentage of the potable water they used to get from their own wells - wells that the best science that's been done to date points to contamination done at the hands of Rex Energy. The water is not provided by the industry or any arm of the government. The water is provided though the good works of people like you and me. The water bank came about because Rex was exonerated by Don't Expect Protection on the basis of a faulty hydrology report and were going to leave the community with badly tainted water. The "one man" and others have worked with the people in this community to help them be made whole. There have been millions of dollars in impact fees filter into Butler County. Impact fees were to be used to pay for impacts of shale extraction. Not a penny of the money in Butler County has been expended for ANY impact of shale extraction. There have been lobby days, rallies, lawful protests, meetings, hearings, and a court case. NOT A SINGLE FAMILY in the Woodlands has been made whole.

The "one man" who was arrested is from Butler County, where 17 schools are within 1 mile of an active fracking site (some of these are within one mile of several sites - as is the Woodlands, mentioned above). In the past couple years, research from respected institutions have linked proximity to fracking (1 mile) to low birth weight, problem pregnancies, emergency cardiac admissions, migraines, asthma, and a host of other maladies. There have also been studies linking proximity to fracking and water contamination, air contamination, and lower property values. There have been lobby days, rallies, lawful protests, meetings, hearings, and several court cases - including a SLAPP suit - and this is still allowed to go forward.

But why on earth would "one man" decide to "crash" a Trump fundraiser? Isn't this the same as setting a fire or looting?

After close consultation with the "one man," I think I understand.Trump came to Pittsburgh to extol the virtues of shale extraction (and coal, and other fossil fuels). And after that event, he went to a private club where folks were granted some special favors. If they paid $50,000, they got a private audience with Donald Trump. If they raised $25,000, they got to eat lunch with him. And if they raised $2,700, they could "get on the Trump Train."

If the "one man" paid for a special audience with the judge that was about to hear his case, I'm pretty certain that we could all agree that he was trying to curry favors, get a more favorable outcome for his trial. And, I think, we'd all agree that was highly suspect behavior. In fact, I think we'd call it illegal.

The shale industry, the rich and powerful, are able to buy access to politicians - Donald Trump even brags about how he did it - but the average Joe cannot. $50 or 25,0000 dollars is a hell of a lot of money; to people (like the folks in the Woodlands) who have nothing, $2,500 is a hell of a lot of money.

The "one man" thought about doing a Go Fund Me campaign to get access - but that just seemed stupid. Asking people like him, a retired school teacher living on a pension, to kick in money to buy what should be guaranteed seemed sinful to his Catholic heart.

So, the "one man" went to engage in a lawful protest and found, when he got to the Duquesne Club, that the door to the fundraiser was open, that people were coming and going. that there was no one telling him he had to pay to get in. So he went inside.

The fact that this was a Trump event was just a nice coincidence. If this had been one of the high roller Clinton fundraisers, I'm pretty certain the "one man" would have gone in there, too.

The "one man" takes solace in the fact that what he did was not a violent expression of dissent. No one was hurt, though his wrists hurt from the handcuffs. No property was damaged. There were no riots or fires set.

However, "the one" man doesn't condemn riots out of hand. Riots are the cry of the unheard. I love this quote by Dr. King:

"But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?...It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity."

What was happening in the Duquesne Club was an exercise of corruption - money buying influence. That some think that what the "one man" did is akin to riots and setting fires is one of the slaps that the "one man" is willing to absorb because my friends in the Woodlands, my friends in Summit Township, my friends in Mars, my friends in all the shalefields are oppressed and the status quo in unjust and inhumane.
One man's opinion.

Michael Bagdes-Canning

The recent devastating natural gas pipeline explosion in Westmoreland County is another example of why we need to make a swift and just transition away from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy.

Research has shown that the need for a fossil-fuel "bridge" to a clean renewable energy future is a myth.  The technology and methodology exists, right now, to initiate a rapid shift to renewable energy.  Scientists and researchers have laid out the blueprint; what is needed now is for governmental leaders to aggressively implement the plan, and for "we the people" to demand that they do so.
 
Here in western Pennsylvania we have been an integral part of the proud history of the Age of Fossil Fuels. We are and have been a major component of the bedrock upon which modern civilization has been built. Unfortunately, whether or not we wish to acknowledge it, it has been discovered that the "bedrock" is toxic on many levels.  Beneath its shining veneer, our civilization has been built upon and powered by toxic substances, toxic processes, toxic employment and increasingly toxic consequences.  We have come to a place where blind pride in our past achievements and blind insistence on "the way it's always been" for the past 100 years will not see us safely into the future.
 
We can no longer accept the toxic trade-off of water, air and soil contamination and the compromising of our health, our communities and our environment in exchange for energy.  We must be willing to move beyond fossil fuels and the increasingly extreme and costly (in terms of both money and health) methods of extracting them, and turn all our considerable manpower and intellectual resources toward allowing the sun, the wind and the tides to propel us forward into a clean renewable energy future.

Just as Pennsylvania played a major part in the fossil-fuel energy revolution, it can now become a leader in transforming the way we energize our lives in the future.  On Sunday, July 24, a March for a Clean Energy Revolution (cleanenergymarch.org) will be held in Philadelphia on the eve of the Democratic National Convention.  Marchers will demand action from our current and future national leaders on making the swift and just transition to clean energy.  Buses will be leaving for the march from western PA.  Contact Michael Bagdes-Canning (mbagdes@gmail.com) for details on transportation from Butler County to the march.
 
Demanding swift and comprehensive action from our national, state and local leaders regarding clean energy implementation will help us to avert or at least diminish climate catastrophes, and secure a sustainable future for ourselves, our children and generations to come. 

Joseph P. McMurry

"We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.
How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing." 
Wendell Berry, from Compromise, Hell!  

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice but, left to its own devices, that arc would, indeed, be long.

Sometimes, the arc needs a little help. Human history is packed with people helping the arc along by confronting injustice.

Many of us profess to be Christians. Jesus is one of those historic figures who helped bend the arc of justice. One example: In his first appearance at the temple in Nazareth, Jesus quotes the Prophet Isaiah.
 
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."  (Luke 4: 16-19)

How would quoting the Prophet Isaiah help bend the arc of justice? Nazareth and all of Judaea was an occupied land. The power of the day, Rome, and those complicit were benefitting from the enslavement of the poor, the captives, the oppressed. Jesus, speaking out, was calling out the oppressors. He said what others dared not say. He so enraged those that heard him that they tried to kill him, driving him to the edge of a hill where they hoped he would plunge to his death.  (Luke 4: 20-30)
 
American history, too, has those who bend the moral arc toward justice.

The Boston Tea Party was a reaction to the coercive powers of the British East India Company. It was, in essence, the ExxonMobil of its day. In order to see that its profits were robust (because a Dutch company's smuggled tea was undercutting the East India Company), Parliament enacted a series of "intolerable" laws. The colonists reacted to those laws with an act of civil disobedience (and destruction of property) by tossing tea overboard. Today we celebrate those brave "activists."

Rosa Park, too, bent the arc toward justice. The story goes that she was a simple seamstress too tired to move when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery AL bus in 1955. Parks was no simple seamstress and she may have been tired but, more likely, she was sick and tired of being treated shabbily because of the color of her skin. Parks broke the law supporting segregation but, in so doing, addressed a greater injustice.

We here in Butler County are faced with an injustice. Our communities are being industrialized, our air, water and soil are being befouled, our health is being compromised and our government is not acting to protect us.

We (MOB and concerned others) have responded to this by availing ourselves of all of the legal avenues available to us. We have: filed permit appeals; worked toward appropriate zoning; done DEP file reviews; appealed to our local, state, and federal government officials; engaged in marches and rallies; invited in experts and victims to speak of the harms of unconventional drilling and fracking; sued and sought other legal relief, and many, many other tools.
 
We have, however, shied away from asking our members to consider the sorts of tools that accelerate the bend of the arc toward justice.

My personal call to nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience was first activated when I watched on a live stream as my favorite author, Wendell Berry, went to visit the Governor of Kentucky (his home state), and refused to leave his office until the Governor acted to protect Kentucky from the ravages of mountaintop removal coal mining. Berry spent the weekend "camped" in the Governor's office, garnering lots of press and making a powerful point.

In the quote at the beginning of this article, Berry -- an octogenarian, farmer, philosopher, poet, novelist and essayist -- tells us that we must be "radical" if we are to rid ourselves of those who would oppress us.  And how does he define "radical"?  As "being thorough."  "Being thorough" means using all the tools at our disposal to affect change.  It means emulating the likes of Jesus and the Boston Tea Party activists and Rosa Parks and Dr. King and Wendell Berry.  Their actions may make us feel uncomfortable, but history shows us that this is how real change happens and justice is won.  We all know that the system is broken but most of us continue to play the game even though it's rigged. It's going to take some brave people to stand up and say that they are no longer going to play by the rules that are meant to keep us losing. When enough people stand up, the rules will change.

Undoubtedly we will have to stretch well beyond our comfort zones to accelerate the bending of the arc of the moral universe toward justice in Butler County.  But it is not beyond our capability to do so.

-- Michael Bagdes-Canning
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(The opinions expressed in this blog do not reflect any official positions held by MOB or any of its members.)