Download PDF Version Revolt Magazine, Volume 1 Issue No.4

Art &
Politics:Fracking
Drawingtheline
BY LINDA DIGUSTA
Alice Zinnes is a force of nature. An environmental
activist in the movement to halt the use of the
controversial natural gas extraction process
called hydraulic fracturing (often referred to as
“fracking”), for the past few years she has worked
at least 30 hours each week on activities related
to her cause. Her dedication would be remarkable
even if she had not already devoted herself to
another demanding calling – art.
A lifelong environmentalist -- “At least since second
grade when a NYC drought was so upsetting to me
that I would turn off the running water while my
mom washed the dishes.” -- in high school Zinnes
headed the Ecology Club, which started a recycling
program in the community. She applied to college
intending to major in environmental science, but
while in school, she fell in love with painting.
Now an artist and teacher at Pratt Institute, Alice
became aware of hydraulic fracturing when drilling
was proposed near her Pennsylvania home in the
Upper Delaware River Basin. “At first,” she said,
“I couldn't believe they would frack the Delaware
River, since it supplies drinking water to 16 million
people.”
Viewing Josh Fox’s documentary “Gasland” raised
her awareness, and her involvement deepened
when she organized an art benefit for Damascus
Citizens for Sustainability, the grassroots
organization that Gasland is dedicated to and
one of the first on the East Coast to publicize the
dangers of fracking. She recalls, “I then created
what I thought would be a small email list for
residents of the Upper Delaware, as a way to
quickly disseminate information, but through
word-of-mouth, this list pretty quickly went viral,
connecting people from upstate NY to Louisiana, to
Texas and Ohio.”
“As I became relied upon by others, I simply
accepted my new responsibilities,” said Zinnes,
who sends multiple emails almost daily to the
group. “Some of these people I actually see, while
others live all over the country... I've been surprised
at the powerful community we have become. I feel
we are like soldiers in a platoon: loyal, supportive,
understanding, and dependent on each other for
our very survival.”
REVOLT
Magazine Number 4, 2013
Behind every issue confronting us as citizens,
there are people working hard to raise awareness
and support for their causes. In the case of the
groundswell against the practice of hydraulic
fracturing, the vanguard includes names we
all already know, like Yoko Ono, Mark Ruffalo,
and “Gasland” filmmaker Fox, who garnered an
Academy Award nomination for best documentary
feature.
Also on the front lines are those most directly
impacted by the drilling, working constantly to
get the word out in the hope that others will learn
more and take a stand when they realize that
fracking, in the long run, affects everyone. “Getting
involved is an ongoing journey with numerous
conversations, reading about environmental and
health issues, studying reports about geology
and financial aspects, and getting to know an
impressive, knowledgeable community of people
who are working to protect rights for a clean
planet,” said another anti-fracking artist/organizer,
Ruth Hardinger. “The first event I organized was a
talk upstate in January 2010. Wes Gillingham from
Catskill Mountainkeeper drove through a blizzard to
speak about the impacts of fracking.”
To bring awareness to a wider audience and
mobilize more artists, Zinnes, Hardinger, and artist
Peggy Cyphers curated the 2010-2011 exhibition
“Fracking: Art & Activism Against the Drill” at Exit
Art in Manhattan. Working with the Exit Art staff,
they put together a group exhibition featuring work
addressing the issue by 60 artists. The program
also included a talk with a panel of leading figures
in the movement, attended by over 300 people in
spite of another blizzard. Many attendees of the
event went on to become important players in the
“fractivist” movement.
“Fracking became an important issue for me about
7 years ago, when I was traveling in Peru, and
learned about mineral rights and the government's
claim to any resources immediately below the
surface of the earth,” said Christy Rupp, an artist
who participated in both the show and the panel.
“Even if it was just a few inches under a farmer's
field, if oil or gas or rare earth metals were
discovered, the rights to extract are owned by the
government.”
Noticing a parallel threat to communities here,
Rupp, as she describes below, explored the issue
further:
“Wishing to connect the dots, I started to learn
more about the 30 year ongoing oil spill in the
Ecuadorean Amazon, in which since the 70's
Texaco, and then Chevron were dumping formation
water the (waste product from oil drilling) directly
into shallow surface ponds, which then would leach
out … entering people's farmland, their homes,
their wells. The government of Ecuador's response
was to cater to the oil companies lethal habits,
giving them more lucrative drilling contracts in the
Amazon region, and using the waste to spread
on roads to keep down the dust created by the
heavy traffic needed to support drilling. People
in that region suffer birth defects, cancers and
miscarriages at a rate far higher than normal. The
government wants to either ignore the problem or
just condemn the area and force people to leave,
the problem can't be cleaned up with money.”
After visiting areas of West Virginia devastated by
coal mining, Rupp is hoping to bring the message
home before it is too late. “Fracking,” she explains,
“Like Tar Sands, oil drilling and coal, takes the
land people have used historically for sustenance
and sacrifices entire regions.” As she sees it, the
practice generates massive profits for a very few
individuals at the expense of many, and “We are
witness to a land grab, or a transferring of wealth,
similar to the banking crisis, the looting of the Post
Office, or the desire to privatize social security.”
Peggy Cyphers, another life-long activist, is also
intent on drawing the line on hydraulic fracturing,
at least where she lives. “The anti-fracking
movement has been taking on big money and
big business, and many networks of grassroots
activists are fighting back…My sister Jane Cyphers
and her husband Joe Levine are founding members
of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability and got
me involved,” she said. “The best part of New
York State is that we have the watershed, so the
discussion is huge and in a way it keeps us safe.
Not so for Pennsylvania and Ohio, that's a done
deal as every landowner is selling out.”
A ceramic artist and creator of the aptly named
Earthgirl Pottery, Jill Wiener is a Calicoon, NY
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