Natural gas... clean enough to drink?

Organization Name:
Southern Tier Advocacy & Mitigation Project, Incorporated
City & State:
Describe your creative piece – what is it and what has it been used for, and why is it innovative?
Natural gas… clean enough to drink? is a project of S.T.A.M.P.’s Green Guerrillas Youth Media Tech Collective, and the theme of our 2010 Guerrilla Griots Human Rights Media Arts Center program booklet. As the back cover of our booklet, this piece represents our efforts to connect the dots between pollution and prisons. The booklets are being distributed through S.T.A.M.P.’s 2010-2011 Green Grease Guzzlers Biodiesel/Veggie Oil Bus Tour: a two-pronged media/demonstration vehicle approach to increase the general public’s access to information on alternative and sustainable transportation; inspire young people to assume leadership roles in reducing the impact of global climate change on the planet; encourage as many people as possible to get informed and involved in the natural gas drilling boom affecting 34 states; and, increase the number of diverse perspectives in the global conversation on environmental responsibility and social justice.
What issue or problem were you working to address with this piece?
“To Drill or Not To Drill” has been the ongoing question for those of us from New York to Tennessee living above the 600-mile stretch that lies above the Marcellus Shale, the largest natural gas deposit in North America. Recent advances in technology have made natural gas exploration more accessible by updating a process called hydraulic fracturing first developed by Halliburton in the 1940s. Community complaints from hydrofracking include exploding wells, ignitable water, livestock deaths, and severe illnesses in people living on/near well sites. We work with other eco-justice activists to expose false solutions to climate justice. This piece is part of our larger organizing efforts to explain why natural gas is not a “green bridge” to clean energy, and raise awareness of the irreversible environmental damage that natural gas drilling will have on our air, soil, and water, threatening animal, human, and plant life for many generations to come.
How has your submission successfully impacted your organization’s ability to solve this issue/problem?
Our submission is part of a larger organizing strategy that has galvanized thousands of activists and everyday people nationwide to challenge the natural gas boom slated to hit New York State in the next year. Our creative piece compliments our organizing strategy of supporting critical environmental and social consciousness on all levels. Our submission has helped us better explain to others that toxicity on the outside has been birthed from a seed of mental toxicity on the inside... meaning that the pollution of prejudice, inequality, oppression, and discrimination is directly proportional to the increased use of policing, incarceration, exploitation, and resource extraction nationwide and abroad. To solve this problem we must work together to make a sustainable future available to all of us by transforming the culture within ourselves and our immediate communities to birth healthier seeds.
Creative Submission - Files