For Immediate Release
NC Says No To Drilling: Residents Occupy The General Assembly
Sunday November 27, 2011 – Raleigh, NC
Tonight dozens of rural and urban citizens of North Carolina are assembling outside of the NC legislature around 7 p.m. to voice their disapproval of the Senate’s July override of Governor Perdue’s veto of SB 709 the Energy Jobs Act which fast tracks efforts to bring offshore drilling & horizontal drilling (or “fracking”) to North Carolina. Participants of the local Occupy Wall Street movement will also be present to lend support to the organizing group, Croatan Earth First!
Since last June, Croatan Earth First! has held free movie screenings of the documentary Gasland, organized protests in downtown Raleigh, hosted coalition meetings with other grassroots groups in Sanford and Durham, held teach-ins on fracking at local churches and independent bookstores, and dropped a banner in the House of Representatives reading “Don’t Frack Cackalack!” Earth First! and a coalition of other advocacy groups plan to oppose horizontal drilling with public events and by organizing for future resistance including nonviolent civil disobedience & direct action. One protester with Earth First!, stresses that fracking is not a bridge fuel or feasible alternative to oil: “Fracking for natural gas produces methane, which warms the planet faster than CO2, accelerating the process of climate change,” said Josh Slocumb of Hillsborough.
Activists with the Occupy movement and Earth First! will be holding signs outside the legislature and banners which read “We can’t drink money!” and “No Drill, No Spill! NC Says No To 709,” demanding that the House of Representatives uphold the veto in this session. It has even been rumored that the Raging Grannies may show up and sing a few songs. “Over 2 million residents of our state use well water,” says member Michelle Matheson, “it’s horrendous to experiment with that considering the frequent occurrences of fracking wastewater spills nationwide.” Furthermore, “Since the start of fracking in Pennsylvania, the Susquehanna River has become the most polluted waterway in the nation.” “On the issue of offshore drilling, the horrors of the BP oil spill, and the other countless disasters worldwide, should remind us all this is bad planning for the future of North Carolina and the planet,” says John Ferguson resident of Sanford county.
Green Is The New Red
