To Montrose (PA). After Westchester (NY).

by Lisa Barr

As you read this my day will have been well underway.  I’m leaving to watch a meeting between two Irishmen with very little seemingly in common, class wise.  The aristicrat and the ‘woodchuck’ if you will.

Yes.  

I used the classist ‘W’ phrase designated for Upstate New York men.  

I can explain.  

But first, (because later that evening I must be in Montrose), allow me to say something even more crude:

I barfed my way through what should have been an iPhone livecast of the stupid Montrose Borough Council meeting on March 5th.  There was no livecast.  The problem was not just lack of cellphone signal (which makes things easier for the elite to exploit the rural areas, no?).  I had a virus. 

You didn’t miss much. I strode out of the meeting to the borough’s immaculate bathroom six times. I didn’t miss much, either.

Because, the Montrose Borough was still stuck on stupid.  

They were in executive session as I arrived and first busied myself with their plumbing--on the other side of the drywall from their ‘executive session’ room, no less!   Upon departing their (brand new?) loo, I heard laughter as they met with the lawyer provided by the borough’s insurance carrier. 

There are other reasons we can assume they did not take the stipulation seriously.   And that is an understatement.  Perhaps the insurance company lawyer babysitting them that night had not yet seen the incriminating emails that show its policy holders’ (elected officials!) discriminatory intent: 

*Labeling as ‘thugs’ the very people most notably documented as damaged by gas drillers--GASLAND sources-turned anti-drilling activists Craig and Julie Sautner of Dimock, PA --(and their daughter?);

*Salivating at the prospect of arresting the Sautners or the people truing to provide clean water to the Dimock ‘boomtown’ victims.  All that would be needed for arrest, per the borough council email plot, was a public questioning of Montrose Borough’s arbitrary decision to block water sales (SALES) to good samaritans helping those needing water in Dimock;

*Name-calling Susquehanna President Judge Kenneth Seaman as a sort of jailer “Kenny’s jail” in a manner which no doubt wrongfully implies the judge supported their plot;

The most galling thing about this is the arrogance.  

It’s reminiscent of a “Sopranos” episode on the cable network that made its mark in New Orleans’ arson-plagued post-1984 World’s Fair period.  HBO gained financial muscle by sending its cameras into a shady suburban Metairie hotel to livecast commercial boxing matches.  Somehow, that activity seems less criminal than the gas ‘plays’ threatening to swallow vast portions of the Northeast dominated by petty potentates like those who run the Montrose Borough.   

How fitting Montrose has the thuggery down so well they have to misappropriate the word ‘thug’ to define the good guys.  Smart.  No doubt that’s how former Louisiana farmland was turned industrial back in the day.  Backroom deal here.  Virtual and actual assassination there.  Only the assassinations in the frack-threatened areas up North now are done more slowly--cancers take more time than do bullets.  Careful where you decide to buy your house! 

Montrose has a ban on drilling.  Yet they sell millions of gallons of ‘their’ water for the polluting mob activity know as fracking--a practice exempted from usual industrial regulation rules the industry by definition can never hope to meet.   Their high school has its own police force--which subcontracts its policing authority when ‘necessary’ to gas industry ‘security’.  Two years ago, at a public event, their ‘security’ wrenched a gallon of contaminated Dimock water out of Julie Sautner’s hands.  They chased me around (I was on crutches) and tried saying I could not photograph their equipment on  display at a public event (they said the public school grounds were private because the industry had rented them--in order to invite the public to eat Halliburton, Chesapeake, and Cabot burgers and weenies.    

And it is there that we must gather later tonight to hear Pennsylvania (Department of Environmental Protection) DEP officials explain what they don’t know about why a compressor station exploded, caught fire and exploded a 2nd time 2 weeks ago.  The plan is for these compressor stations to dot the Upstate New York landscape to ship gas (obtained by destroying the region’s mile-deep bedrock) for liquification, and then export to shore up the fracker’s pyramid scheme.  

They need more dough, more time to buy auctions masquerading as elections to render as gas junkies enough vehicles and home heating systems. Then they can really squeeze the cancer-free survivors of the currently frack-threatened areas.

Think of Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Mario’s son imperiously claimed to require a million anti-dsGEIS signatures to stop this madness right smack in the aptly named Empire State.  Think of the Exxon campaign dollars he received.  Is Cuomo any different than the brutish Montrose PA borough leaders?   We’ll discuss young Andy and his friends later.  Back to Montrose.

One of the attorneys writing Montrose borough’s incriminating emails is an elected official who publicly grandstands against the winter dust storms caused by all the fracking traffic through town. Mop the streets, he demands.  And the public employees attending the post-stipulation meeting I tried covering in my bathroom-dependent-state said, “Yes sir!  How often?” 

In his life as a lawyer Sean Granahan represents a hospital boat that plies the Hudson River.  In his life as a Montrose Borough official, he assaults journalists--   journalists whose corporate bosses don’t bother going to court for them.  So, I did.  With my sister representing me.  Judge Kenneth Seamans recognized my standing as both a journalist and media educator.  He ordered Montrose borough to rewrite their code of conduct and their (insurance company supplied) lawyer and mine to draft a negotaited stipulation.  Much has been made about its ‘closed door’ nature by media who should know it’s a public document.  So, for the sake of those who hang upon the phrase ‘closed door’--here is a ‘how-to-petition-for-local-press-rights’ primer. 

You’re welcome.  

We go back to court May 31st.  In the meantime, Montrose borough has cancelled two public meetings for lack of ‘sufficient’ public business.  

Right.

Now--regarding the other email-crazed attorney--borough solicitor Marion O’Malley--she wrote the rules of conduct--and some of the emails!  She seemed in tears when our first court hearing began--leaving the judge’s chambers her late father used to dominate in the manner of a town drunkard wielding aristocratic power by virtue of his robe. Montrose, PA has always been an insanely snobbish, xenophobic backwater.  Truly anti-semitic signs were displayed in shop windows in the 80s and 90s about ZOG (zionist organized government).  Out-of-town attorneys not resembling Ken and Barbie dolls were called ‘Jew Lawyers’ and pridefully refused to disabuse their attackers’ assumptions.  Never a truly nice place, its people nonetheless know how to perform ‘nice’ behavior.  

Like all bigots of good standing, the Montrosians know how to perform manners.  Unlike the first, pre-court hearing night I arrived to cover the rules change, the cops grinned at me.  It was stomach flu season. I was green-faced and said I needed a bathroom.  “Right around the corner ma’am--here I’ll open the door for you.”  And he did.  In I walked, past a crowd awaiting the Montrose borough to leave executive session and do their public duties.

People survive in Montrose, as they do all over ‘the land of the free’ by getting in line.  When they get out of line it is consequence time.  It is no wonder that the Israeli-based stalking firm hired by PA “Homeland Security” to smear, among others, GASLAND premiere attendees at the theatre down the street from the courthouse apparently the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR) could feel at home in Montrose.  An embarrassed Governor Rendell made Tom Ridge fire the firm.

Given borough council behavior, perhaps the smear firm’s greatest offense was redundancy?  And, how different is the behavior of rural Montrose power-drunkards than  those of Albany?  Or those in Westchester who issue belated anti-fracking sentiments?

Think of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr..  

No longer the brother in law of New York’s governor, he still serves on the advisory committee for possible 2016 Cuomo run for the White House.  Decades ago, “Robert” made a missing page from a crucial EPA report on an Upstate New York weapons manufacturer reappear for Sidney-area activist Patrick McElligott.  McElligott’s much-documented family claim on an historic piece of Upstate New York is in jeopardy.  A word from a Kennedy could, once again, keep the fight for equity alive Upstate.

McElligott believes pressure from ‘Robert’ could pressure ‘Andrew’ to do something significant: “Perhaps the single most important thing the pro-environment anti- hydro-fracking side could get is an extended moratorium for another five years for health studies not yet done.”

That is a big order.  And Kennedy has been reluctant to enter the fray.   But McElligott has been patiently persistent--as only a twenty year psychiatric social worker can be.  Consider that profession.  It’s like being a lay minister:  time-intensive, patience-trying.   Now consider McElligott’s earlier claims to Upstate NY fame:

*preventing a bloody retaliation after racist thugs from a nearby high school beat and left for dead a Sidney area all-state athlete (and a relative);

*insisting upon ethnologically proper reburial of Native American remains while working as top assistant for Onondaga Chief Paul Waterman;

*starting the Sidney Center Historical Society, and

*writing a book detailing his family’s nearly 100 year history with a local railroad and earlier forced removal from Kerry lands to County Limerick.

Consider also that Robert Kennedy will be sitting down with a strategic fighter.  McElligott’s international claim to fame came earlier.  As a boxer.  A British writer for Boxing Illustrated predicted in 1973 that Patrick, then in high school, would be a world class champion in the 1980s.  A defensive boxer, he later won hundreds of fights, losing less than you can count on both hands.  That patience will be on display as his allies join him, watching him try convincing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to find a stronger voice than the one the grey lady put in print for him a couple of weeks back.  

“He has a voice, as a Kennedy,” begins McElligott.  And a strong sound must emerge to satisfy his upstate friend.  Even on disability McElligott undertook a hunger strike against a state Republican madman.  That won him a speaking opportunity when the fashionable, foundation-funded, actor-flanked anti-fracking crowd protested Albany’s silence regarding fracking.  

Right now there is a schism in the anti-fracking movement.  It does no one any good to not admit this.  The well-funded ones are not supporting the actions of the grassroots activists.  They are expecting the grassroots to follow them.  This is not how any movement succeeds.  It is how co-optation occurs.  It is how a movement dies.  It is how Al Gore’s campaign bit the dust--selecting his Yalie daughter to run his campaign? Over all those less-than-Barbie-esque committee women?   Refusing to meet with Ralph Nader’s campaign?  

I thought of this as I heard the young woman chosen to lead a new anti-fracking initiative scream (literally) in panic, child-like and LIVE on a recent statewide political broadcast (at 38:39, 38;45, and 39:12 ).  And I thought of this as I listened to the grassroots represented by Patrick McElligott calmly (at 39:55 ) state their claim about the need for nonviolent civil disobedience to be deployed to stop fracking.  

We know that Robert Kennedy once had the good sense not to side with those who would exploit the rural, less-capitalized areas of the state.  His assistant cautioned Patrick not to engage in a hunger strike outside Kennedy’s office door at Pace.  That was months ago.  After the big environmental groups formed a ‘network’ they could coordinate.  But, Patrick McElligott was active before the kids ‘in charge’ knew where Sidney was.  And he is persistent.  So, the big meeting happens tomorrow.  The question that remains is: will Kennedy play aristocrat to McElligott’s ‘woodchuck’--or can we expect more egalitarian treatment than the grassroots has become accustomed to receiving? 

Will Robert Kennedy Jr. pressure his former brother-in-law into extending the NY State moratorium?  It is an important question.  

And then it’s back to Montrose for me.  And we’ll how respectful the PA DEC is to complaints about exploding compressor stations.

I’ll try to stay out of the bathroom.

The past 30 years has seen a constant eroding of dignity for less well-connected people, and those with voices critical of the status quo.  And it’s been by design.  The 1981 deregulation order that ended 5,000 radio news jobs across the country eliminated  a place for minorities, women of substance, poise, and, yes, hard work and preparation to take their place in matters of civic importance.  As journalists.  Where we learned how to operate equipment.  And to not panic near a live microphone.

It got local, state, and national power holders, such as those in Montrose, Albany, and, yes, Westchester out of the habit of answering to less well-heeled people--

‘woodchucks’ included.  For those in the newsroom, it was the equivalent of prize-fighter training.  Getting up every at 4 a.m.  to navigate equipment, confront officials, and prepare the local news, and/or going out to make some sense of public meetings was great training in poise.  

I hate to end on a crude note--but it’s how I began.  As I knelt before the porcelain god at the Montrose borough, I marvelled at how long it had been since I’d last done that.  It was at an AIR conference (Association of Independents in Radio) in Washington D.C. in 1993.  I was having a gall bladder attack and bothering my roommate, the late Phyllis Joffe of Connecticut Public Television and Radio.  We had earlier lamented that stylized production techniques were winning the day over straight radio news when it came to getting NPR funding of any magnitude.  Ira Glass (yes, the one recently in the news for fact-checking issues) had recently driven her crazy while in a fellowship program at NPR.  

We both decided to become journalism academics.  We got our PhD’s--as women wanting to teach in college journalism are told to do.  We then watched men without that expensive credential surpass our own careers, sometimes even judge our careers.  (I was once called out for playing what I believe was Glass’s best work--a piece about how men can survive the growing America gulag.  A fellow ‘professor’ who had never take one graduate level mass communication class told me it was pornographic. I told him it had aired in Chicago! “So?” came the reply.) Phyllis died before either of us achieved tenure anywhere.

Today, trying to produce a documentary on fracking, I am realizing that I lack not only a body resembling a barbie doll, but connections.  Who will fund me?  If I have to rely upon PBS (“let’s get both sides”) or HBO (“Josh has it covered”) then I will never get it edited.  After all, I don’t have Debra Winger looking at my ‘dailies’--I have a sister who’s a lawyer looking at my ‘reporters’ notes’---that’s a big difference.

Was that why I was sick?

After the meeting, recovering for days later, I wondered if it was the flu or my own disgust at the state of public life that had brought me to my knees in Montrose.  

Without any clear answer, I am bound tomorrow, first for Westchester, and then for Montrose, seeking any sort of equitable dealings between aristocrats and ‘woodchucks’ in New York and Pennsylvania, and, possibly, among fellow journalists and ‘fractivists’.

Wednesday, April 4th

Plan on car-pooling to this event, as we have no reliable news yet about buses.  For coordinating transportation information, please call Bonnie @ 585-200-0628 or email her @ bonniecannaan@hotmail.com, or contact Lisa Cooper @ Green Earth in Oneonta during the week--and before Monday night, April 2nd.

Waiting For Redemption. Somewhere. With an iPhone.

Waiting For Redemption.

Somewhere.

With An iPhone.

Lisa Barr

Please tune in to a livestream from Montrose, PA, tonight.   It’s important.

In the future, other journalists who want to actually cover that god-awful place should be able to do so in peace.  I really wasn’t interested so much in what they are doing.  I was, however, enraged to see them manhandle a citizen journalist’s equipment and send her to the back of the room with her inconspicuous, small tripod.  And her person.  Members of the audience had falsely claimed that she blocked their view of their insipid borough council members as a pretext to harass her.  

               And it worked.

For a time.  

Then my sister, a Pennsylvania attorney, filed an injunction against their enforcement of a draconian list of rules for public hearings consistent with the fact that goons openly spied upon and tried intimidating people attending the premier of Josh Fox’s GASLAND at the theatre down the street from the courthouse nearly 2 years earlier.  I could sense the repression there on President’s Day (Monday, February 20).

It was dark.  

There were no fewer than 5 cops seemingly waiting to arrest me had I walked in, rolling (not on drugs, but on an iPhone 4GS), to videotape a ‘government gone mad’ story thread I’ve documented since December:  local government indifference to the Dimock residents on Carter Road whose water was damaged by gas wells.  The people were profiled first by Josh Fox in Gasland but they make the rounds enough , and are abused so frequently as to offer unique angles that need explaining by many, many, citizen journalists.  And we need more people to tell the story of how plutocracy peters out in this twilight of our ‘democracy’; in this last exploitation of the Iroquois Confederacy’s colonized land, and, yes, in this last gasp of our planet lest we stop this carbon-fueled insanity.  

I could not afford, on many levels, to have another criminal charge lodged against me.  

So I stayed outside.  

I looked in the front window and saw cameras on tripods in the back of the room.

I’ve already been delayed by about one month in producing my documentary trailer so as to try fundraising to sustain me while I market the documentary, enter it in contests.  I also was delayed in fundraising for my anti-frack CSA.  I was delayed in sprouting my organic seeds, and in doing the necessary paperwork for organic certification this season.  That’s because I was attacked while covering a meeting regarding a moratorium on fracking on January 25th and then charged by NY State Police who seemed to feel that whomever ‘got to them first’ was the victim.  

Let that sink in, please.

So, on President’s Day, in Montrose, PA,  I stood outside the meeting, or sat in my car with my dog while cops smirked.  Or lurked behind another car while I interviewed a man outside.  Or came up to my window and knocked on it.  

           “What’s your name?” asked a sergeant who should have been on patrol but had attended the meeting “In case they need me,” he said, grinning.

             “What does it matter what my name is?  You’re denying me my First Amendment rights--that’s all you need to know,”  I said.  And I know he knew who I was.

Well, he said, “If we can be of further assistance, let us know.  You’re welcome to come inside the (police) station around the back and get warm.”

Fake niceness.  The American Way.

So, of course, I missed the story--got zero video of the citizens and indy journalists being harassed inside.

But, once there, I discovered there was a good story--as there always is in the town hall meetings woefully neglected the past 35 years of deregulated radio news (as goes radio--so goes the rest of the newsrooms). 

I wanted to know not only whether Montrose Borough officials would stop the sale of water to Craig Sauntner for delivery to the 11 Dimock families not receiving water from the EPA.  Only 4 families--including the Sauntners--are getting EPA water.  I wanted to hear Borough officials cut off sales to all but the gas companies.  I wanted to videotape the ‘give and take’--you know, the trappings of ‘democracy’.  

                 I couldn’t do that.  

                Forgive the alliteration, but, the Valentine’s Day  media massacre in Montrose means that journalists must:

*Use a tripod;

*Stand ONLY in the back of the room;

* Not move for a better (or a different)angle; 

*Leave their equipment on the tripod and let it roll without adjustment;

*Not ask any questions (seriously!);

*Not videotape any “private” conversations during the public hearing;

Yes.  

WTF?  

You get it.

The next day, Tuesday, February 21, my sister was granted a Monday, February 27th  hearing for injunctive relief on my behalf that will feature the testimony of other regional journalists. 

I suspect there is a concerted effort led by a pro-drilling outfit to promote such assholery against the fifth estate.    And I’d like to get a posse of people together to FOIA all regional public officials, big fish and small, regarding any contacts they’ve had with industry.  

We’ll need help.  

And a sense of humor. 

My life the past 30 days is a good example of how big a sense of humor we’ll need. 

On January 25, I was assaulted by a member of a group that  doesn’t want to be covered as it tries to interrupt reasoned discussion regarding how to safeguard our commons from fracking.  As it tries to intimidate members of local town boards recently elected/re-elected largely to oppose plans to frack Upstate New York and further defile Northeastern Pennsylvania.

They’re planning to build a huge network of pipelines to carry shale gas for liquification--and to send ‘natural’ gas to places they had never ever piped it before.  And it reeks of shady deals that may not qualify technically for the title of ‘corruption’ but don’t seem to be done in a very forthright manner. 

           I’m not alone in being targeted by this gangland mentality that sends videocamera-wielding grandmothers like Vera Scroggins to the back of the meeting room bus, that sends sent bigger-city television news crews like WBRE-TV from Wilkes Barre reeling across parking lots--all at the hands of elected officials, with possible strategizing help from the gas industry?   

            Time, and the FOIA, will tell.  

            But the clock’s ticking madly on this giant pyramid scheme masquerading as ‘energy policy’ and the drill and pipeline supporters (some of them elected officials!) are facing massive unpopularity in these parts.  They’re getting desperate enough to verbally and physically assault journalists.  So, I’m wondering:  Why didn’t WBRE-TV’s attorneys sue on behalf of their pummeled news crew?  Why is the station’s response a website that allows trolls to suggest that pointing a camera toward a newsmaker is putting it ‘in his face‘ and that assaulted journalists “(bring) this on themselves,”?  Journalist Joe Holden wins my support with this online retort (if he actually wrote it):

                           “...Samantha S. - I've been doing this for a long time. No one is allowed to place his/her hands on  

              another. And I'll be [censored] if I'm going to take this kind of [censored] from elected officials no less. And 

              just because my photographer didn't catch me getting body-checked, another affiliate's camera will show it. 

             Oh, and about us telling both sides of the story, perhaps you could encourage your councilmen to return 

             phone calls. We've been trying to get their side for a week now. Absolutely pathetic...?

            I had’t met Joe Holden before our injunction hearing February 27th.  I wanted to hear the Scranton television reporter tell the judge his story.  I secretly hoped he would cuss in what I considered a  lovely “I’m a JOURNALIST, dammit!” phrase:     

                                         “AND I’LL BE [CENSORED] IF I’M GOING TO 

                                           TAKE THIS KIND OF [CENSORED] FROM 

                                            ELECTED OFFICIALS NO LESS.”

                                                              Joe Holden, WBRE-TV

            Turns out it was just Catholic school cussing (‘crap’ and ‘damn’) that the website had bracketed in [Censored] --but it was something.  Contrast Holden’s foul, seasoned outrage with the really likable documentary journalist Josh Fox’s lack of outrage as he was calmly arrested in the House Science, Space and Technology Committee by Harris-the-politician a week after my problem with Harris-the-car-dealer-who-advertises-a-lot-in-my-local-newspaper--the one that ignores my journalist and my academic credentials.  When the local paper labeled me merely an ‘anti-drilling advocate’ the other day, I almost forgot my manners and forgot that they call themselves a newspaper.  Yet, I relented and sent the press release and the case filing to them (Redemption and all that. More on that later in this article--you won’t have to wait through Lent).

            Anyway.

            I wish Fox had been louder, more combative, even more angry when he was arrested.  He was, after all, in the relatively more civilized, highly capitalized, lawyer-populated environs of Washington, D.C..  Still, I liked his statement about whom, ideally, should be considered a journalist:

                          “...Anyone can wake up in the morning, declare themselves a journalist  

              and enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.  In the era of instant media, (Y)ou(T)ube and     

              social networks, this becomes even more relevant and exciting; anyone with an i(P)hone can rock 

              the world.  It was citizen journalists who first posted police pepper spraying peaceful protestors 

              in New York and California and it was citizen distribution that virally spread those horrific 

              videos of police brutality until the whole world was infected with the truth of what is happening 

              in the USA today.  It was citizen journalists who first documented water catching on fire at the 

              kitchen sink as a result of gas fracking.  It was citizen journalists who woke up one morning and 

              decided to show the water contamination and air pollution due to gas drilling in Texas, Wyoming, 

              Pennsylvania and in states across the nation....”

“...This year we have seen severe repression of journalism in America.  Hundreds of 

              journalists have been arrested this year simply trying to do their jobs.  Whether they were 

             covering oil and gas issues or issues of economic inequality during the OCCUPY demonstrations....” 

“..."Recently, Reporters Without Borders released its 2011–2012 (G)lobal Press Freedom 

             Index.  Due to journalist arrests and press suppression at Occupy Wall Street-inspired protests, the 

             United States has dropped significantly in the rankings of press freedom, from 27 to 47." Truthout  

             reports....” 

I like Fox’s ‘Be The Media’ ethos--it seems a response to Michael Moore’s call at the end of “Capitalism:A Love Story” for others to try filling his agit-prop documentarian shoes.   I also like that Josh speaks about OCCUPY as an ally of the anti-fracking movement--something not all of the ‘new-to-giving-a-shit-about-anything-but-my-property’ anti-frack movement needs to hear.  

             My experience covering opposition movements, and teaching journalism students to consider doing the same, or analyzing journalism the past 35 years means that I can still remember when a certain swagger was expected in the face of a bullying source:

                  * like Harris, who confronts our town supervisor by repeatedly interrupting our meetings as if he’s the local emperor, and then tells others to ‘be quiet’  even while accusing me of trying to ‘shut him up’ (as if I could?);

                  *like the Montrose Borough council majority;

                  *like EID Marcellus, who I called out  (as is my right as a citizen, my dear colleagues at The Daily Star-- 

           even if I am a journalist) at the Town of Oneonta public hearing February 13th,

           and

                   *like Kimberly More, the woman who tried denying me a peek at a public document, and then misrepresented those moments in order to file what I consider a false claim against me--as she and my assailant had promised to do;

                   *like the anti-moratorium/pro-fracking crowd Harris and More sat among that challenged my very right to videotape the meeting and then made menacing gestures to me after the gavel holder told them they were wrong to challenge my presence videotaping the meeting.  

                 I had remembered Harris as the man from the prior meeting when he had shoved me back as both of us had raised our hands to get the attention of the town supervisor convening that meeting.  Since Harris has blabbed on line that I had asked “How’s your brother?”  I can explain that I was not referring to his brother Cal, but to a brother “Jeff”  I had heard he had beaten up at a Toyota dealership.  I later learned he has no brother named “Jeff” but that a cousin of his named Geoff had purchased that business.  But all three people told me the same story:  Steve Harris had charged across town, angered at losing a sale to his brother (Cal, apparently) and had beaten him up (2 people said with a desk) such that there was blood everywhere, and then stood back and let the punch drunk brother get in a few blows so that mutual charges were filed.   I later learned that Cal had received a restraining order against Steve Harris--and that Steve’s wife later provided testimony that sent Cal Harris to jail on murder charges.  (I mention this, because Harris went ballistic after I posted the first produced video of that meeting on ShaleShock media pages.  His rabid ranting about me remains up on that site.) 

             You never know who you’ll bump into at the local town meeting on fracking.

             Regardless--Steve Harris was blocking my path as I tried completing meeting coverage.  And grinning.  So,  I breezed by with a ‘you-don’t-bug-me-you’re-a-pimple-on-a-gnat’s-ass’ comment.   

                   A few moments later he DID get an iPhone within inches of my face and ask me ‘How’s your SISTER?‘--and I momentarily wondered:  “How did this guy know I have a sister?”  Still,  NOTHING I said to him could be seen to have merited his attack. 

             What happened to the right to be about to write, or about to edit, something ‘disagreeable’ to the dirty carbon industry?   Harris called me that night, “one weird lady, you know that?”  

            I embrace that label.

           As a television journalist, I used to travel in a pack.  A surly pack, if need be.  With a videographer who would have knocked my well-heeled assailant squarely on his ass.  Righteously.  With the support of newsroom management.  

               It’s the principle.

              And it’s more dangerous now for independent ‘one-man-band journalists’ like myself.   I watched the increased danger as the attrition to newsroom staff levels began in the 1980s.  By the time I switched from the gutted radio journalism (5,000 local jobs lost nationwide thanks to Reagan’s deregulation of the FCC) of the 1980s to the still functioning (sort of) television journalism in 1982, the larger markets had already lost the three person crews (videocamera, sound/grip, and reporter).  We were, by the time I was hired in New Orleans in 1984, already down to two-person crews (reporter as sound/grip and videographer).  That meant one less person to watch the periphery or ‘blind side’ of the camera person. 

  AFTRA (representing journalists and producers and assignment desk and advertising production staff ) and IBEW (videographers and editors) at WVUE had suffered hard times.  That was largely due to the failure of all U.S. unions to go out on general strike in support of the recently routed PATCO union.  Remember the beleaguered Air Traffic Controllers Ronald Reagan fired?  Had the nation’s unions gone out in solidarity with PATCO, Reagan’s actions might have been reversed.  Our unions might have been emboldened.

Every savvy union person I’ve spoken to since then say the failure to stand up to Reagan’s threat was the beginning of the end for unions via ‘globalization’ and I think that’s correct.  In fact, the only reason great WVUE (New Orleans ABC affiliate) videographers like the late John “Fritz” Fritzinger, Buddy Risotto, and retired videographers Barry Miller and Lloyd Edwards had any sort of an agreement covering them the year before I joined the newsroom in 1984 is that they were affiliated with the Teamsters.  The year prior to the 1983 IBEW/WVUE union negotiations, someone had blown up “Channel 8’s”  transmitting equipment near its tower at the edge of New Orleans.  That was an expensive piece of equipment destroyed before I moved to New Orleans.

  Blown to shitteree.  

Now. 

Let’s sit down and talk.

Journalism was never tiddly winks. If done properly.  But, the newsrooms of the late 1950s-to-present had become much less proletariat-leaning in nature--if it ever had been.  Fawning after celebrities of a business or show-business nature, unfortunately, became the name of the game--particularly after the (first of many?) Red Scare.   Even when the 99% should have known which side management was on, they often did not seem to make the right connections.  For instance, I remember vehement disagreements with WVUE’s Chief Videographer, the late Ronald Monetelepre.  

But even hardliners like him would not have tolerated a wealthy car dealer yanking the latest technological morph of the videocamera out of my hand.   Ron would have given the guy a verbal blistering (perhaps with a shove or two) the next day at his dealership.   “You leave our guys/girls alone!” he would have bellowed--as only a Pacific-Island-invading-Marine could have.   And Monetelepre would have done it even though I’d gotten the best of him in various ideological discussions en route to news coverage.  “Ask him he how got on those islands,” my late father grinned through the phone line from New Orleans to Michigan.  I was telling my dad that Montelepre had doubted anyone in my gene pool was a VFW Post Commander, let alone a navy veteran of the Siragao Straits battle.  Dad said to ask Ron, “Were you wearing your Jesus shoes?”   I did.  Ron Montelepre bellowed.  I laughed.

He did not laugh.  

Still, I am pretty certain Montelepre would have gone after Harris-the-car-dealer, because Montelepre went after former Mayor Earnest ‘Dutch’ Morial.   In 1985, a 60-something white guy chastising New Orleans’ ‘First Black Mayor’ on behalf of a black male videographer and a white female reporter should have given Ron pause.  Thankfully, it did not.  

Ron went after Dutch.  He did so the same day that the mayor’s driver had seemed to intentionally veer (with Dutch encouraging him in the back seat) at Lloyd Edwards, who was videotaping Morial running away from my questions about a campaign fund kerfuffle.  Acting as Edwards’ grip, I threw down my notepad and bag, reached into his waistband by his spine (the videographers taught reporters to do this--I wasn’t being fresh), grabbed a hunk of his belt and jeans and sort of yanked him out of the car’s path.  “You won’t pull that bullshit again!”  Montelepre yelled at Dutch’s press aide.  Lloyd and I were satisfied.  

I wonder how poor Joe Holden of WBRE-TV feels--nobody from WBRE-TV seems to be bellowing in Montrose on his behalf. 

So, here’s your chance, WBRE. 

Get your corporate counsel to join our lawsuit against the Montrose Borough’s stupid rules.   Josh Fox had foundation-funded indy media people on his side.  He had national journalism groups on his side.  We don’t have that kind of pull.  And we don’t have much time.  We have dirty houses that have suffered because we’re always skipping out to cover a meeting or a particularly heinous situation.

We rural citizen journalists are right smack in the middle of what seems to be a military style invasion sanctioned, apparently, by Republican and Democratic party governors and presidents.  Obama’s state of the union was such a disappointment.  But, not long after that, a call went out from Toxics Targeting and later was embraced by the fragmented ‘fractivist’ community which has been largely ignored, along with other really important news stories still waiting to be disseminated broadly:

*There seems to be a plan to turn the entire Northeastern portion of the U.S. into a sacrifice zone for the dying carbon-based energy companies;

*The plans put forth to create oases from the devastation really won’t protect anyone from radiation that tends to move north.

*The Southern Tier doesn’t need to be ‘test-fracked’ as per the plan being entertained by the Cuomo administration.  These wells seem designed to obtain financing in order to connect to a series of pipelines that are coming as per the ‘liquify it and send it elsewhere’ ‘finance’ scheme. 

*There’s a rumored third pipeline coming to the area, the ‘El Paso’ line.

*The cost of declaring eminent domain and giving people a fair price to vacate and relocate if this plan is ‘so good’ for the U.S. has never been calculated--or has it?

*Patrick McElligott’s vow to fast regarding ‘bigger’ targets than Senator Libous include Governor Cuomo, and his former brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy, who sits on the Cuomo 2016 exploratory presidential committee.

These are all stories sort of being covered by smaller upstate New York newspapers and citizen journalists before the ‘bigger’ ones latch onto them.  Sometimes they get it, in their own timid way.  Michael Moore has wisely pointed out that advertising as a model for  Vera Scroggins, for instance, shoots a lot of meetings for Shale Shock Media collective.  And she’s usually polite.  That was her in the earlier video explaining, in polite, grandmotherly voice that she had a right to videotape in the front row in Montrose because she was polite and quiet. I would argue she had a right to the front row because she was breathing.  And I would argue she would have the right to be anywhere but blocking an exit even if she were NOT breathing.   Dead people continue to vote in Chicago, don’t they?  (Well, probably, but the Chicago Tribune newsroom looks like this for the past 2 years now).  

This is an important case.  Not just because it’s me and my sis.  It’s an important case because of what Chicago Mayor Rahm (Tiny Dancer) Emmanuel has declared the right to decide which pieces of recording equipment can be on the streets of the Windy City during the G-20 protests in May.  

But we are under no obligation to be polite about this.

Our politicians need to understand this--even those who were elected in rural New York to stop fracking.  One such politician told me that he sees no conflict of interest in a fellow politician’s presence on our local town board.  Even the local newspaper, heavily dependent as it is on this man’s advertising sees the conflict of interest.  I don’t think this politician is ‘dirty’ as some anti-frackers have suggested.  I think it’s just really hard to stand up for principles without a vigorous media--and we’ve lacked the moral compass a properly staffed news media provides for about three decades now. 

There is plenty of blame to go around.  I wish the unions had gone on general strike despite Ronald Reagan’s belicose threats after the throttling of the PATCO union trying to protect the beleaguered Air Traffic Controllers.  And right now, I wish what passes for an anti-fracking movement would give a whole-hearted, full throated support of the OCCUPY movement and start planning to go to D.C. and demand a sane energy and transportation policy.

And it’s not going to happen the way things are going.  We’ve got a President who says this formerly illegal procedure is not only legal, but capable of being done ‘safely‘--said it in his big showbiz night:  The State of The Union no less.  We’ve got citizen activists banning from list-serves those who try defending OCCUPY Well Street as legitimate members of the anti-fracking community.   The movement’s leaders are settling for small potato victories like our little win in Montrose.  No one seems to want to say that those in power are planning on destroying over half of the country with this madness.  All of our smart and ethical politicians seem to in a daze.

  What we need is, frankly, a revolution.

Anyone who had been to Cuba would realize this.

Cindy Sheehan knows this.  She’s not only been to Cuba, she’s been to Venezuela.  And for her newly released “Revolution: A Love Story,”  she translates President Hugo Chavez‘ response to this question:   "Why do you think the Empire makes such a concerted effort to demonize you?":  

"I think for different reasons. But I've gotten to the conclusion there is one particular strong reason, a big reason. They are afraid, the Empire is afraid.  The Empire is afraid that the people of the United States might find out about the truth, they are afraid that something like that could erupt in their own territory -- a Bolivarian movement; or a Lincoln movement -- a movement of citizens, conscious citizens to transform the system. . . . So, why do they demonize us? They know -- those who direct the Empire -- they know the truth. But they fear the truth. They fear the contagious effect. They fear a revolution in the United States. They fear an awakening of the people in the United States. And so that's why they do everything they can. And they achieve it, relatively, that a lot of sectors in the United States see us as devils. No one wants to copy the devil."

I wish I could visit Venezuela.  But I’m bound for Montrose on Monday with my iPhone to stream all the stupid comments from the Borough meeting starting at 6:45 p.m. or so on Monday.  I’d like to meet with Hugo Chavez, or Fidel Castro for that matter.  But, first, I need to see Vera Scroggins sitting with dignity behind her little camera on its tripod in the front row.  

               That may be all the revolution I see in this lifetime.

Capitalism's Titanic Iceburg: We've Seen This Movie Before

            (A version of this appears in the weekend version of Counterpunch online at:          
                  http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/10/capitalisms-fracking-iceberg/ )

  I’ve always hated Superbowl Sunday: 

*the eating as anesthesia for the painful post- holiday spending spree; 

*the guilt-free mindless enjoyment of a gladiator match;

  *the circus-like way it distracts a dying empire’s masses from taking real action concerning the very real screwing they endure (apologies George Carlin). 

It reminds me of the big foundation-funded movements against (insert your pick of: war, fracking, anti-choice assaninity).  Lots of sound.  Lots of fury.  Lots of egos attacking everyone else’s efforts.  Lots of losses.  

So, it seemed fitting that Titanic was the entertainment offering for house-bound people trying to avoid the past weekend’s ritualized numbing.  Particularly since frack-threatened areas are busily rearranging the deck chairs while sending out push messages to contact this bribed legislator, that compromised official.   

Snobs go home.  James Cameron’s screenplay appealed to tweens and then some because it speaks the language of teetering capitalism’s truth:

“...RUTH: Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they're not too

crowded--

ROSE: Oh, Mother shut up!

                      (Ruth freezes, mouth open)

ROSE: Don't you understand?  The water is freezing and there aren't enough

boats... not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die.

CAL: Not the better half.

              PUSH IN ON ROSE'S FACE as it hits her like a thunderbolt....”

I’ve seen this movie before.  

New Orleans.  

1984. 

For the ABC affiliate, I produced a mini-documentary series on oil-company engendered coastal erosion.  That year the New Orleans Sierra Club rewarded me with a tin cup award (shared with Ron Ridenour of the Indy weekly Gambit) for telling a story that the other corporate media had been too timid to tell.  I actually received a phone call from Garland Robinette telling me how brave I was.  That was like getting a call from New Orleans television royalty.  So, of course I spat at him, “You grew up here.  Why didn’t you do this?”  He stayed on the phone.   I like Garland.

Aside from garnering the negative attention of the oil thugs, and playing at the Worlds Fair on a kiosk at the Fish and Wildlife service area, nobody paid much attention.  Certainly not the policy makers.  Big Easy people who counted were busily planning all the arsons that would bring ATF crews down multiple times and fuel a new real estate boom around the former fair site.  While news crews focused on the crying, swearing old fire chief as each old warehouse burned, plans were afoot to recreate a new version of the warehouse district.  

Who knew the New Orleans media would stay as lazy and fearful as ever?  The dirty energy magnates did.  The nation’s newsrooms, funded as they were by advertising revenues instead of performance, winnowed out virtually any vestige of journalism.  So the cannibals looked northward after destroying the 50 + miles of marshland that could have absorbed 50 feet of flood surge.  All those ruined refineries.  All those jobs lost.  Guess they’ll have to rebuild Southeast Texas/Southwest Louisiana someplace north.  Hmmm.  No wonder they’re planting visions of plastics factories in farmland relatively unscathed by the last time industry romped this continent unbridled by unions and regulations.  No wonder they finance their malfeasance with an  ‘energy plan’ too good to be true.  

I’ve seen this movie before. 

Already, tony environmentalists in Ithaca are saying that if they can’t defeat fracking, it will mean that everyone has to pay an extra bill--for ‘safe’ water.   Water bills are a very political matter.  As Tulane University Political Science Professor Oliver Houk once explained, “If you live Uptown (wealthy area) you get Kentwood (bottled water).  If you live Downtown (poor area) you get cancer.”  Already it is looking as if Cooperstown (the same village that sold their lake water for use in fracking Pennsylvania a few years back) is not above cutting deals to protect its well-heeled residents.  

Why establish a land trust and then let anti-moratorium contributors disrupt meetings about such things?   Read how the man who snatched my video camera from me (thus preventing me from completing my post-meeting cutaways and interviews)blames me for ‘provoking’ his admitted crime.  Scroll down from the video on Shale Shock Media--and read his comments.  After admitting that he snatched a video camera out of a journalist's hands, he then brags about how his ridiculous wealth makes it all okay.  And watch a better version of that video that counts how the anti-moratorium thugs tried to bully their way in that meeting.  Most of those people don’t even live in my town.  But that didn’t keep the guy from filing what I consider retaliatory charges of harassment against me.  Let’s hope I won’t be singing any Anne Feeney songs anytime soon (love ya Anne!). 

Cooperstown (or Ithaca?) as New Orleans to the rest of the Southern Tier’s Chalmette, dawlin’?

It’s enough to make a less well-heeled Otsego County resident say, hmmm, well if they frack here, I say FRACK COOPERSTOWN FIRST!  (It’s not like the residents defended Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins’ rights anyway.)  

I’m joking.  Because people driven insane like to laugh.  And because there is a quiet mutiny underway among the grassroots environmentalists.  I saw hints of it during two activist excursions I videotaped this winter in Albany, and a White House protest I covered this Fall that culminated in the Tar Sands pipeline ‘victory’ when Obama delayed approval.

  Key members of the anti-fracking grassroots are not feeling listened to, respected, cherished for anything but numbers needed for the cover shots of top-down orchestrated actions.  

*The Albany OCCUPY people who felt they were disrespected by the more well-heeled arrivals on the busses as they stood in the ‘free speech zone’ for the prom queens to parade past the tame chants about fracking en route to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State (wide auction).   

*The failure to include other agricultural products (besides Ithaca area bread from area grains) in the attempted delivery of goods threatened by fracking to a foodbank of Emperor Exxon Frack Cuomo’s choosing.  

*The hard-fought place on the ‘lobbying day’ dias for fasting activist Patrick McElligott.  

*The failure to invite to the same dias "Frack Man" Abram Loeb, who was very instrumental in fighting the first ploy to turn central NY into a wasteland via the ‘Don’t WASTE NY’ campaign 3 decades ago.

*350.org’s Bill McKibbens’ entreaty to Sierra Club types not to give the stink eye to OCCUPY DC (McPherson Square only--Freedom Plaza was noticably absent).  

*The strange looks from people wondering why I’m fundraising to start a CSA to promote the problems with fracking with each delivery I make to fracked or frack-threatened areas.  How dare I ‘compete’ for funding when there are plenty of disgruntled former NYPIRG workers hanging out the collection cups for their own anti-fracking groups?

I’ve seen this movie before.

After being fragged out of NOLA’s ABC affiliate for reorganizing the AFTRA chapter, I became PR Director at New Orleans City Park.  “Who’s your mama?” is not a friendly inquiry, I learned.  It’s a push back into your caste.   I could do the organizing for the fundraising, but it would be an oil executive’s wife who took the credit for saving the antique wooden carousel there.  I don’t mind obscurity so long as my goals are met.  But grassroots activists aren’t having their goals met.  And they’re watching the big enviros blow the chance they’ve sought for decades to make the conversion Cuba did off dirty energy.  

Cuba’s seen this movie, too.  

Only they learned its lesson.   Because, unlike former U.S. elected leaders,  Fidel Castro doesn’t kowtow to the dictums of the Powell memoranda that shackled free thought in U.S. higher learning.  

That is why Fidel (can I call him Fidel?)  bravely summarize the work of leading scholars at Duke and Cornell Universities honestly, directly, on January 4th in Granma:  

           "...These results bring into question the energy industry's reasoning that shale gas could replace coal in electricity generation 

                 and lower greenhouse gas emissions, to help mitigate climate change.  

               It is too premature and too risky a venture.

                 In April 2010 the U.S. Department of State set up the Global Shale Gas Initiative (GSGI) to help countries identify and 

                 develop their unconventional gas resources safely and economically, with a view to furthering U.S. economic and commercial 

                 interests, including those of U.S. multinational corporations.  I have inevitably been extensive; I didn’t have any other option. I 

                 am composing these lines for the Cubadebate website and Telesur, one of the most serious and honest broadcasters in our 

                 suffering world....”

Fidel’s pronouncement on hydrofracking was part of  a brilliant article entitled “Marching Toward the Abyss.”  He wrote it New Year’s Eve.  I can imagine that each New Year’s eve for him is an amazing moment.  This time, he realized this was the 50th anniversary year of the October Missile Crisis of 1962.   In two long sentences, he evoked the dignity of the revolutionary people of not just Cuba, but the grassroots people in various movements including OCCUPY.  Castro placing his article in contemporary context by honoring the grassroots players in a manner U.S. leaders of all sort should emulate: 

                               “My words would have no sense if their objective was to impute some of the blame on the American people, or those of     

                   any other country allied to the United States in this unprecedented adventure; they, like other peoples of the world, would be the            inevitable victims of the tragedy. Recent events in Europe and at other points demonstrate the mass indignation of those for  

                   whom unemployment, scarcity, income reduction, debts, discrimination, lies and politicking are leading to protests and brutal

                   repression by the guardians of the established order....”

Imagine if the big enviros would stop hemming and hawing about OCCUPY-like actions--stop qualifying their RIGHT to be part of any action?  It might happen.  Outside an election year.  If you ever get a chance to join the Cuba Caravan of Pastors for Peace, you’ll hear some variation of this phrase:  U.S. citizens will need to change the way they think before we can ever see human needs truly met.  

What a script that would be!

It hasn’t yet been written.  

But can’t you see it already?

If we’re really going to become a democratic country, we need to change the way we think.   The well-funded national environmental movement must change the way it thinks about such events.  Those planning functions and inviting us to gather round, listen, carry bread, signs, and help lead chants have to start expanding the discussion.  Don’t get me wrong, there were great strides made by all parts of the anti-fracking movement.  But, in the words of the late Dr. Mickie Edwardson, a U.F.  a graduate media professor relaying the results of her first test: “I love you all.  You need to do better.’ 

And the big enviros could do no better right now than to listen to seasoned, battle-scarred activists like Patrick McElligott and his friend Abram Loeb.  Patrick has some history with fighting big money interests who want to despoil New York ecology and culture.  Some fights he won.  Some he lost.  Both have developed a comedic sense for the absurd that is sorely missing from the earnestly organized pleading with politicians.   Patrick McElligott is used to having his cause ignored by the likes of the Cuomos--but not Robert F. Kennedy, Jr..                               

            In the 1980s, Governor Mario Cuomo’s administration might have sent NY State Police to block a local gravel company from stealing despoiling  an Indian mound in his home town of Sidney.  Agents associated with Clark Stone Products, a key player in the local Marcellus fracking play now, did this in the middle of a court trial over the legality of shredding ancient remains for spreading to cap a superfund site.  Obscene, right?  It gets worse.  The superfund site was created by Amphenol (nee Bendix--corporations are people, after all) , a weapons manufacturer.                                                                                                                                                        

          Back then, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was instrumental in getting a deleted page of a key report to McElligott.   Now, Kennedy seems to have signed off on letting the less capitalized areas of New York state be ‘test-fracked’.  It’s as if we haven’t learned what happened in the fracked areas Josh Fox’s GASLAND exposed--or read any newspaper attempting to cover the sell-out and devastation since in Bradford County, PA and elsewhere. 

           Let’s hope we won’t have to wait for a new movie before our Cuba-esque awakening.