K.J. Rodgers
Crownsville, Maryland
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Fractivists continue to use catchy buzzwords like grassroots, but in reality, they’re just trying to hide major funding and push ideology over truth.
Many fads, phrases, slogans and colloquialisms characterize our language and society. They tend to pop up and quickly die off, only to return a year or two later in sadistic phases that remind us somethings are better left in the past, just like Crystal Pepsi and bell-bottoms.
The one that bothers me the most is “grassroots.” The phrase is so often attributed to ignorant activism, that when I hear anyone using it, they immediately lose credibility with me. Grassroots is a buzzword synonymous with gorilla marketing and usually about as credible as finding a flyer under your windshield wiper when you return to your car. The term just will not die, because like bell-bottoms, a few strange groups cling to it and believe it is cool.
A true grassroots cause reflects some desire to change that arises by itself, organically. It is not an orchestrated political campaign massively funded by billionaires as has been the case with so many fractivist activities. Outside funding discredits the term grassroots and those who use it. Consider the Hands Across Our Land campaign, for example. It is sponsored by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, an organization that prides itself on phony “grassroots” campaigns.
Hands Across Our Land is but a front, boycotting anything and everything from pipelines, to LNG plants to fracking. Led by Sharon Ponton, the campaign is designed to get a bunch of folks together to hold hands in a human chain. The idea is to symbolize the connection of communities to the environment or something. The group’s mission includes inciting civil disobedience.
“We support renewable energy instead of energy requiring fracking, permanent contamination of water sources and the devastation of the land. We stand for #NoPipelineAnywhere. We support grassroots efforts for change through education, rallies and civil disobedience. It takes a village. We are the village. Be the change.” (Emphasis added)
The group’s three major demands show how completely unrealistic and counter-productive it’s efforts are:
- Oppose gas and oil projects that hurt our citizens and our economy by using state authority to deny Clean Water Act permits for proposed fracked-gas pipelines.
- Stop reckless coal ash disposal that pollute rivers and drinking water by rejecting utility company plans to dump millions of gallons of coal ash wastewater containing toxic heavy metals into our rivers.
- Reduce climate-changing pollution from power plants by implementing strict federal and state clean power rules.
Has it occurred to these people that switching from coal to natural gas addresses their supposed concerns? Do they realize clean power plan targets are only achievable by using natural gas? Well, of course, they do, but they don’t care. Their agenda is anti-growth and power-seeking, not environmental. It’s a highly coordinated effort.
As an example, one of the most recent events promoted on their website was an event held right here in Maryland by the “We Are Cove Point” group. The latter is determined to delay/stop the Cove Point LNG Export facility. As recently as this month, they were still fighting by sending an 84 page letter to Governor Hogan to ask for a quantitative risk assessment. It was sponsored by other well-funded but supposedly “grassroots” organizations such as Earth Justice, 350.org and the River/Waterkeepers.
These groups are all connected. They all share resources and feed into the each other’s “grassroots” (really astroturf) campaigns. It is a fairly slick operation. Outsiders can’t be faulted for imagining, from their presentations, that they are small groups of local citizens, attracting new members who want to be part of something big. The only thing big is the is the funding they get from mega-foundations, their networks and their egomaniacal ideologies. Renewable energy is simply a straw man for their ideology. If they truly wanted a solution to coal ash and climate-changing pollution (clean energy, that is) then they would choose fracking.
