 | ||||
| photo by Hendrik Voss |
This weekend a news item on NPR noted that thousands of
people formed a human chain around Japan’s Parliament complex to demand that
their government abandon nuclear power.
But you’d be hard-pressed to find media coverage about the
5,000 people who came from across the country and around the world to demand
that Congress stop hydrofracking. Granted, 5,000 people is a “drop in the
bucket” according to Washington DC standards. Still – with all the mainstream
press taking photos and interviewing folks, you’d think at least one story
might have surfaced in the local news.
Washington Post? Nada – unless you count the hundred-word or
so blurb from AP about the protest “going to happen”. The NY Times? Not one
peep; the gray lady was probably getting her hair dyed.
 |
| photo by Hendrik Voss |
People drove, bussed, flew, bicycled and hitchhiked to DC a
couple days early to lobby their elected officials (hey! The Oil & Gas
folks do it all the time…. But with more cash changing hands). Saturday was
devoted to a rally on the west lawn of the US Capitol, with Bill McKibben, Josh
Fox, Dish TX mayor Calvin Tillman, and just regular folks living in gasland
states sharing the microphone. When that was finished, people marched through
the streets of DC - a parade four blocks long of men, women, teachers, artists, carpenters, grandparents, children... all chanting for clean
water and a ban on fracking. Read more here.
