Fracked Gas and a City a Shudder #nonbkpipeline #nogowanusfrackedgasplant

 

A teenager and the Gowanus Canal 

Monica Hunken

organizing a direct action to shut down the north Brooklyn pipeline, providing support and good cheer for the brave activists locked to fracked gas pipeline in Brooklyn, putting bodies on the line. Brooklyn is not a sacrifice zone.

Thailand-anti-government-protests-continue-despite-new-ban.

 

“The trees would have gone for a ball field if the community hadn’t protested,” says Hettie Jones, in her Beat memoir How I Became Hettie Jones, referring to Tompkins Square Park’s trees. “Cooper Square was the border of the new East Village, Tompkins Square its center. By 1962, like everyone else I knew, I had crossed and recrossed the park at all hours, encountered all my old loves there….” Jones continues, Jones, recalling how it all fell apart.

 

We pass our years through the city, dreaming, fantasizing, imagining, growing, moving from adolescence into adulthood here.

 

At barely disfigured we talk about Émile Zola.

What an ending:

Mme Raquin looked about, "unable to have enough of the spectacle, crushing them with her merciless gaze.”

“Fred Herko walked out a window” says the epitaph to Diane di Prima’s memoir.

For Munoz, “Herko represents movement that not only stutters but twitches, vamps, leaps uncontrollably, and ultimately whirls out of control into the void.”

Everyday, we confront that void, wondering how to act.

Phone bank or write letters or go to DC to fight the confirmation hearings or act up in our own neighborhoods.

A group I work with writing letters,

“Swing Left and its volunteers helped write over 16 million Vote Forward letters and yesterday, we mailed them to voters.”

 

The city changes with us, the poor pushed out, as the city makes way for the affluent.

"As the world gets hotter, summers in cities could become deadly." Cool cities, create open space, green space. New study on climate change impacts show the dire need for green space to reduce surface temp..

We wonder what to do, do we act up, go to DC to fight the encroaching darkness.

Running into friends along the way.  "The best thing about DC is seeing old friends," says Karen

Flaherty. We struggle chasing fleeting glimpses of a mirage, through the sound and fury. 

Back home, the activists fight back.  All day, Thursday, I hear about the activists in Williamsburg, joining the activists fighting the pipeline, bringing methane gas through the ground.

#nonorthbklynpipeline #nonorthbrooklynfracking

Say the activists. 

Its raining Friday.

Brian and I chat about it all, conspiring to go to DC again.

In North Brooklyn, Monica Hunken is

 organizing a direct action to shut down the north Brooklyn pipeline, providing support and good cheer for the brave activists locked to fracked gas pipeline in Brooklyn, putting bodies on the line. Brooklyn is not a sacrifice zone. "We see you, We love you!" cheer activists.

 

On Friday, a

Brave activist locks herself to fracked gas pipeline in Brooklyn.

Puts body on the line. Brooklyn is not a sacrifice zone. #nonorthbklynpipeline #nonorthbrooklynfracking

 

Saturday, we ride through Red Hook, another neighborhood, more stories to unpack.

“We often think we know a place. There are secrets found in the soil, peeling the story back, we see more and more secrets, to find what lies below, stories about brownfields and contaminants, Lenape trails and islands connected with landfill.

 

Close the Gowanus fracked gas plant, declare activists.

Its due to close in five years.

Let it end, live up to the promise of the Climate and Community Protection Act.

 

“Red Hook is still recovering from Sandy,” says Karen.

“We can’t keep putting these pressures on low income communities.” She tells us about the trees they cut down.  “We experience heat island here.  The heat is deadly. We’re down the hill from the Gowanus. We need to look out for each other. How are we gonna breathe?”  The city cut down 450 trees here. To take down trees in the face of climate change is wrong.  People are gonna die.  Its getting hotter.  We have to worry about tidal flooding.”

 

Food and Water Watch reminds:

 

Stop the Gowanus Fracked Gas Plant in NYC!

 

New York has committed to achieving 100% renewable electricity by 2040. Despite this, fracked gas power plant proposals are popping up in the highly dense neighborhoods, including one by Sunset Park in Brooklyn.

The Gowanus proposal aims to repower a massive 640 MW fracked gas plant, posing huge risks to the air and water of the local community -- and worsening our climate crisis by burning dirty fossil fuels around the clock.

On its own, the Gowanus fracked gas project would make it virtually impossible to hit the climate goals New York just enacted into law. But in the midst of the coronavirus, it's a death sentence for at-risk individuals.

The city is a shudder. 

We are here. 

Pushing back.