We have received this open letter to the Big Green environmental NGO, Food & Water Watch. It takes F&WW to task for taking credit (and money) for the activism organized by local people and groups.
“If the judge won’t allow us to ban fracking, then we shouldn’t listen to the judge.” Six Year old Sasha Willmeng speaking at a public hearing.
From the Colorado Community Rights Network
March 18, 2015
Over the preceding years in Colorado the issue of oil and gas development and the community efforts opposing the inherently dangerous process have driven a state and national discussion. The nature of the discussion has traditionally contested the possibility of “safe” fracking, or the idea that oil and gas development can be conducted with a degree of responsibility. These talking points, which were originally argued by politicians of both parties and major national environmental groups like the Sierra Club, contended that better regulations of the oil and gas industry could provide adequate protections for our public health and environmental safety. These talking points were refuted by many in the scientific community, local people aiming to protect their municipalities, and by your organization, which has publicly called for a ban on the practice of fracking. We commend you on seeing through the false idea of safe fracking, and for promoting the elimination of the industrial practice altogether.
While we appreciate this position of Food and Water Watch, there are at the same time increasing areas of concern regarding your role in addressing the issue of oil and gas development, and how you identify the leading actors in the movement against fracking.
Colorado Governor Hickenlooper confronted by angry Coloradans after he threatened to sue any community that banned fracking.
We feel that these concerns need to be publically stated as the failings in Colorado’s state government and its general neglect and hostility toward our local communities now requires an independent, honest, and clear discussion, while new strategies need to be created and employed.
It is the position of the Colorado Community Rights Network that the issue of fracking cannot be separated from the larger problem of the legal system that is exploited by the oil and industry to force fracking onto communities. This system of legal privilege has meant oil and gas industry lawsuits against Front Range communities recently delaying or banning fracking in places like Longmont, Broomfield, Fort Collins, and Lafayette. While these lawsuits may be new to many, they are not new to Greeley, Colorado, which had their ban on oil and gas activity overturned by the Colorado Supreme Court as long ago as 1992. We notice that in your literature and public statements, the full body of legal privileges owned and regularly employed by the oil and gas industry go without mention, which leaves a vacancy in the public understanding of the true depth of the problem, and which allows actions based on a superficial analysis. And as the same legal privileges have been used against communities attempting to protect themselves from a spectrum of inherently dangerous corporate activities, the omission has the effect of isolating the people and issues that could normally come together in a united front against fracking, mining, injection wells, GMO’s and other dangerous industrial projects.
Of an equal or greater concern is our experience with the long-standing pattern of fund raising emails distributed by your organization. In these emails, Food and Water Watch has regularly taken credit for the numerous bans and moratoria accomplished by communities through heroic local effort. While Food and Water Watch may have assisted
Residents of Lafayette, CO, celebrating election victory of ballot initiative banning fracking in their community. They are the ones who did this, not F&WW or any other Big Green group.
some of these communities at times, it is not the work of FWW that created these tangible local successes, but the work of volunteer community members fighting for their families, neighborhoods, and environment. We have read these fundraising emails for many years, and called increasing attention to what we consider misrepresentation of your organization as the engine behind local efforts fighting oil and gas development. This pattern is not limited to Colorado, and has misappropriated measures that have passed in California, New Mexico, Ohio, and Texas, possibly among others. We contend that the credit and resources needed to build and defend our communities from the oil and gas industry must go to the local organizations doing the real work, and that Food and Water Watch promotions neglecting these genuine grassroots groups are both opportunistic and unethical.
There is an additional point on the description of the efforts against fracking that needs to be made. To the extent that Food and Water Watch claims itself as the force behind local efforts, this false claim will be gladly exploited by the oil and gas industry, that is only too happy to misrepresent the real local nature of the movement against fracking. Energy front groups like Energy In Depth have already begun to take Food and Water Watch at face value, and are helping to eclipse the communities behind the banner of national professional environmentalism.
We can do better than this.
It is the position of the Colorado Community Rights Network that the effort to ban fracking formally recognize that which we have already known to be true:
1. That fracking can in no way be made safe, and the practice has to be permanently banned.
2. That the authority for decision making in protecting the public health, welfare, and safety, and the advancement of the rights of individuals, communities, and nature, has to recognize the superiority of communities above corporations, and that where the law does not recognize this, it is therefore illegitimate and needs to be changed.
3. That the fight against fracking continue to be led and recognized as a grassroots movement, built by the volunteer efforts of common people in frontline communities. As such, these communities must be given direct credit for their efforts, so that the defense of their local laws and actions can be fully assisted and reinforced.
As our communities across Colorado continue to learn through our collective experiences with politicians, industries, and the corporate legal system that unites them all, the fight against fracking necessitates a civil rights movement. Like any movement, there will be differences in both analysis and strategy. And while these differences can be honored, we believe the above points of unity should be self evident, and offer them in an effort to build mutual aid as a means to end fracking, and the system that forces it upon us. As the movement progresses in its understanding and its reach, it is imperative that the elements joining it act both honestly and openly.
Sincerely,
The Colorado Community Rights Network
Drinking fracked water: It will only be stopped by mobilization from below.
Oaklandsocialist comments: The problem with the Big Green environmental organizations is that they are so closely tied in with Corporate America. Food and Water Watch, for instance, is linked with Richard N. Goldman, Republican business man and husband of Rhoda Haas Goldman, member of the Haas family and heiress to the Levi-Strauss fortune. They are also linked to Roy Hampton Park, former co-founder of Hines-Park Food and former top executive at Proctor and Gamble as well as founder and owner of the communications conglomerate Park Communications. Park was listed as the 40th richest person in the US by Forbes.