New Yorkers Plan Civil Disobedience Against Fracked Gas Pipeline in the West Village

On Friday November 1st, fracked gas starting flowing through the Spectra Pipeline. In response, New Yorkers are planning an action of civil disobedience tomorrow at the site where the pipeline enters the city in the West Village. Candidates currently running for office are also expected to partiicpate.

This action of civil disobedience against the pipeline comes after more than two years of sustainaed resistance by Sane Energy Project, Occupy the Pipeline, United for Action, the Sierra Club, and many others, which has brough awareness about the pipeline and its threat to the city to the public and even elevated the conversation to the mayoral debates.

On Saturday, the fight to stop the pipeline will be joined by Tim DeChristopher, environmental hero and co-founder of the group Peaceful Uprising, who spent two years in prison under the Obama administration for disrupting the shotgun sale of public land to the oil and gas industry. On Saturday morning at 10 am.m., Tim will be at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Brooklyn to discuss what significant, peaceful environmental action looks like this time of extreme fossil fuel extraction (fracking, tar sands, mountaintop removal, etc). He will be joined by Jessica Roff of Occupy Sandy who was recently featured on Democracy Now. Bryan Cahall, whose song Arise was featured in the Bidder 70 film, will also perform.

Afterwards, New Yorkers along with DeChristopher will gather in the West Village for a rally and civil disobedience, with arrests expected, at the site of the Spectra pipeline. These actions will not be carried out on behalf of any official group, but by concerned individuals and New York City residents acting on their own conscience. It is actions like these that inspire movements.

The fracked gas from the Marcellus shale that the Spectra Pipeline will carry is suspected to be high in radon, which causes cancer. Given that an in-depth, long term study of radon levels in gas delivered to homes has never been done and is not planned, and citizens deserve the minimal protection offered by a law that would require monitoring and public reporting. Furthermore, the pipeline may undoubtebly spur the development of fracking in the Northeast, which would put New York's water supply at risk,and presents an explosion risk for the West Village.

Video by Occupy The Pipeline About the Spectra Pipeline

While the Spectra pipeline is becoming today, there is still time to stop other pipelines before they are built. The Rockaway Pipeline is currently in the process of construction on the Brooklyn/Queens border, which would subject a neighborhood already reeling from Hurricane Sandy to the same risks that the Spectra pipeline poses to the West Village. (For more information, please visit CARPny.org.)

Opponents of these pipelines stand in solidarity with all communities resisting the deadly intrusion of fossil fuel infrastructure, and support the transition to a system based on safe and affordable renewable energy.

Recap:

WHERE AND WHEN (morning): Conversation with Tim DeChristopher

Saturday, Nov. 2nd, 10am-1pm, First Unitarian Church, 116 Pierrepont Street at Monroe Place, Brooklyn.

WHERE AND WHEN (afternoon): Civil Disobedience at the site of the Spectra Pipeline

2:30pm, the Hudson River Greenway at Gansevoort Street, near the Sanitation depot.