When "Sierra Club" means "Silence the Critic"

Yesterday (1.14.15) was an interesting day.

It began with an email mailer announcing the joint Clean Water Action/Pennsylvanians Against Fracking rally at Governor Elect Tom Wolf's January 20th inauguration. This included an image of their frack-celebrity invitee, Josh Fox and their demand that fracking be "halted" in Pennsylvania.

I posted the following response on my Faceboook page:

So this morning I get donation soliciting email from Clean Water Action and--same post--Pennsylvanians Against Fracking. In it, they promote their "action" for Tom (the Gas) Wolf's inauguration--but they just can't bring themselves to use ANY language that actually takes the only position worth taking: BAN fracking. 

Instead, they resort to weasel words: HALT fracking.I guess they don't get the difference in meaning between the two words--and they hope YOU don't either. 

BAN: stop permanently, in all forms, without exception. 

HALT: stop FOR NOW.

While CWA and PAF may be finally getting it that the moratorium is DEAD, they continue to try to resurrect what amounts to the same thing in the language of "halt." 

Don't be fooled. 

This is the same "have your cake" (pretend to actually care about the air and water) and eat it too (promote the agenda of your PARTY).

And, of course, it's a lot  more than that. It's about creating the illusion of a resistance with no real stomach for it; it's about prioritizing your organization's access to government agencies  far ahead of actually putting an end to the harm.

Don't get me wrong--I don't doubt for a minute that lots of well-meaning good folks will participate in this rally thinking they'll generate the proverbial groundswell of resistance that will turn the tide on the industrial/government/private security firm complex that gets the gas our of the ground and to the export depots. 

But I am more and more convinced that these media events actually do people--and especially people who live in the shale fields--more harm than good.

As I argued with respect to the rise of agencies like the Marcellus Shale Operator's Crime Committee (MSOCC):

The Marcellus Shale Operators Crime Committee is just one among many in a growing network of government, quasi-governmental (such as FERC--the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), and private (or privatized) concerns who act on behalf of maintaining carbon despotism. Any exercise of free speech that threatens to disrupt or expose this status quo as anything other than good old American free enterprise is a potential "terrorist" according to the lazy logic of MSOCC. 

 
 The irony is that we are welcome--even encouraged to be "activists" "exercising" our first amendment rights by holding up protest signs on capitol steps, or signing petitions, or writing letters. Indeed, that kind of activism works to the advantage of the corporatized state because it 

exhausts all of our energy in actions that have no effect on the drilling and transport "activities" of the gas companies.  

keeps us away from the public roads commandeered by the likes of EXCO.
keeps us in plain site of the state police and the private security firms who feed them information. 

 
gives the state police and their counterparts in the private security firms an opportunity to intimidate us--just by being at our ineffectual "activist" events. 

Provides the state police a way to distinguish the "activists" from the "radicals," and thereby use the harassment of the "radicals" to control the "activists."

And--most importantly--allows the corporatized state to use "the movement" as advertising for free speech thereby assuring everyone else that things are awesome in America.   

But should we actually demand that gas industry "activities" be banned, the fury of a state already set to bulldoze us will crank into motion while the Officer Hutsons of the world smugly evince an "I told you so." It's irrelevant whether we do or don't commit any crimes--much less violent ones. 

It's thus richly ironic that organizations like Pennsylvanians Against Fracking and Clean Water Action (not to mention Food and Water Watch) do even more of MSOCC's dirty work for them by engaging in exactly the sort of self-censorship that MSOCC would happily impose.

All apparently that's required to get the PAF folks to run away squealing like toddlers from a bumble bee hive is the mere mention of the dreaded word "BAN" and MSOCC's work is done. 

Whisper the word "radical" and you may have to get out the smelling salts.  

That's because PAF, et. al. value the appearance of respectability well beyond ending the nightmare that is fracking--and MSOCC surely knows this. 

That MSOCC has to orchestrate their own set of appearances in order to justify their existence--calling the "activists"  "radicals," surveilling us, subjecting to denials of FOIA requests--is all just part of the game.

But the objective of the game is to get the gas out of the ground with as few obstacles as possible--and as long as we keep playing this game--all the rules of which are rigged to make sure we lose--we lose. 

We all lose.

It's no accident that even if you "like" the PAF Facebook page you can't post on it. That's how they control their carefully crafted "respectable" message and insure that they neither have to face their critics nor be identified with the radicals they're more than happy to disown in order maintain their "we're standing up for you" greenie appearance.

What we need to remember is that this is all appearance--not substance.

Yet on the all appearance/no substance scale, PAF has been outdone by their organizational patriarchs at the Sierra Club.

And that's where my day took an unexpected--and pretty damn hilarious--turn.

Below is the entire thread of comments originally posted at the Sierra Club Hydrofracking Facebook page. They paint a picture of an organization utterly dictatorial in its mission to preserve its image as an environmental group--more and more desperate as this image becomes tarnished via the exposure of the fact that, just like the little greenies who model themselves after Father Sierra Club, they're leaders are far more interested (indeed, hell bent) to maintain their donor base (their existence) and their political access than they are in doing anything about, well, anything. 

What's significant about these comments is several-fold:

1. Even from the first critical comment, David Meiser--Sierra Club, Bucks County, Pennsylvania--takes himself to have the authority to alter, delete, censor--or in my case BAN--comments he deems unflattering to the Sierra Club. This suggests an organization so brittle with respect to its membership support that it cannot brook criticism--and therefore must deploy SC-Soldier/Snipers like Meiser to pick-off the critics. 

2. In response to a Sierra Club member's expressed displeasure at the SC decision not to support the PAF rally at Governor Wolf's inauguration because it might alienate the governor, Meiser drapes himself in the flag insisting that a democratic vote was taken about whether to support the rally--and members declined "by a large margin." 

3. This is a richly ironic decision since (a) SC is the model after which PAF clearly aspires, (b) PAF wasn't about to engage in any action that alienates the governor, and (c) PAF had already indicated clearly in its weak "halt" language that SC members had nothing to worry their conservative white nervous nelly donors. 

4.  The same Sierra Club member also expresses significant displeasure that SC leadership directs its membership to not wear any Sierra Club items if they're planning on being a part of the PAF rally. Meiser then tries to downplay this--but ineffectively--claiming that "all that was said was that individuals cannot speak for the PA chapter." I don't claim to know where the truth is here--but we can certainly say this much: (a) if this is what "listening to the membership" means in the Sierra Club, I'd reconsider paying those dues, and (b) if this is represented correctly, it only adds to the picture of an organization dictatorial in its relationship to its membership. And if that is the case, why should we take seriously Meiser's claim that there was a democratic vote not to support the PAF rally? Doesn't it make more sense to assume voting members fall in line with what they know is expected of this environmental patriarch?

5. While it's possible to get the gist of what's at stake in this contentious dialogue--you can't read all of it because although I had the foresight to save it, I was BANNED by Mr. Meiser from the Facebook page. 

Honestly, it's hard to imagine an environmental organization more helpful to the Marcellus Shale Operator's Crime Committee. With adversaries like the Sierra Club, it's no wonder that agents like Michael Hutson of the Pennsylvania State Police Joint FBI Ecoterrorism Task Force have to go somewhere else to find speech to criminalize. SC-leader Michael Brune's "The Sierra Club Opposes Fracking. Period" means about as much as "The Sierra Club Loves Oatmeal" given the (old boy's) club's refusal to actually stand by their words. 

Then again, here's a guy who thinks that chaining himself to the fence around the White House for a ten minute photo-op in his Khakis and sport coat count as an act of civil disobedience.

Lastly, Meiser insists that the Sierra Club is following in the steps of conservationist John Muir in refusing to participate in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience.

But this is false on two scores:

First, as I pointed out to Meiser (much I suspect to his embarrassment since it was right after this that he hit the BAN button), this is not Sierra Club policy. Here's Michael Brune himself, 1.22.13:

If you could do it nonstop, it would take you six days to walk from Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond to President Barack Obama's White House. For the Sierra Club, that journey has taken much longer. For 120 years, we have remained committed to using every "lawful means" to achieve our objectives. Now, for the first time in our history, we are prepared to go further.

Next month, the Sierra Club will officially participate in an act of peaceful civil resistance. We'll be following in the hallowed footsteps of Thoreau, who first articulated the principles of civil disobedience 44 years before John Muir founded the Sierra Club.
Some of you might wonder what took us so long. Others might wonder whether John Muir is sitting up in his grave. In fact, John Muir had both a deep appreciation for Thoreau and a powerful sense of right and wrong. And it's the issue of right versus wrong that has brought the Sierra Club to this unprecedented decision.

For civil disobedience to be justified, something must be so wrong that it compels the strongest defensible protest. Such a protest, if rendered thoughtfully and peacefully, is in fact a profound act of patriotism. For Thoreau, the wrongs were slavery and the invasion of Mexico. For Martin Luther King, Jr., it was the brutal, institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow South. For us, it is the possibility that the United States might surrender any hope of stabilizing our planet's climate.

   
Second, John Muir was not obviously opposed to civil disobedience, and although this claim requires more development, I think no one can come away having read Muir and not believe that while he was certainly no partisan of violence, he absolutely did believe his precious Sierras were worth defending with our bodies as well as our minds.

See:

http://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/favorite_quotations.aspx). 


So there you have it--another "environmental" organization who, although they sport the color green, are really just another white guy's fiefdom trying to retain its relevance in a world it allows to burn just as blithely as does the gas industry and its government subordinates.

This harms people. 

Why on earth would you give your money to these guys?

Here's the Facebook dialogue--or what I could salvage of it before Meiser banned me--unedited and uncensored--so you can make your own judgment.

Interesting, isn't it, that Sierra Clubbers have no trouble BANNING when its speech they don't like--but they can't even whisper that word when it requires they have the courage to forego their lunch invites to the Gas Wolf's table.

  

‪Paul Robert Roden Does Wolf's acceptance of $273,000 in political campaign contributions from the gas industry have anything to do with his wanting to "have his cake and eat it too?" It is "unfortunate" that he doesn't see the light from the science that Governor Cuomo did in New York. So now Wolf will have to feel the heat of us.
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David Meiser Edited post so it isn't so dictatorial

           

            I am THINKING OF BANNING ‪Wendy Lynne Lee! she is not a member and offers no real assistance and I see no reason she should be allowed to keep posting her inflamatory remarks. Her vitriol is unproductive and does nothing to further the cause. ...See More
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Wendy Lynne Lee And Mr. Meiser shows how devoted he is to free speech!
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee Here's the facts: From Sierra Club member, ‪Melody Susan: "Yesterday, PA Chapter of Sierra Club Executive Committee (15 people) voted not to support this rally, hoping to curry favor with Gov. Wolf by doing so, This action was taken despite the fact tha...See More
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‪David Meiser Free speech is one thing but as you contribute NOTHING to the club and only use this for your vitriol I see no reason to use our time or effort on allowing you to post!
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee My response: "And--just like the SC--PAF, et al., use these weasel words to get donations and sign-ons--so they LOOK like they're out there doing the hard work of ending fracking--but petitions, sign-ons, a protest here and there--these things haven't even slowed the industry down--let alone stopped it. AND these strategies just give MSOCC/State Police ways to surveil us.
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee That the SC thinks it can dictate to members what they can and cannot where at an event--WOW!!!!! Well--then again, aren't they a corporation just like the gas companies?
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee HAHAHAHAHA! That, my friend, is nothing but code for "Damn! I see you're telling the truth about Sierra Club hypocrisy, and we can't afford that!"
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‪David Meiser As I said I am awaiting others input for reasons NOT to do this, that is the democratic thing to do.
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee HAHAHA, Mr. ‪David Meiser--you have already put your foot in quite the unattractive pile of censorship poo.
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‪David Meiser So far the only comments I see are yours 
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‪Melody Susan I favor Democracy and free speech. This all began when Jenny Lsk's posts about the rally were removed from 2 Sierra Club facebook sites (Allegheny's and Central PA's). What do you think of the PA Chapter action, David?
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‪David Meiser ‪Melody Susan I did not see those posts or have admin privileges to those sites. But that is not the point of this posting the request I made was to give input on why ‪Wendy Lynne Lee should be allowed to continue to be a member of the hydrofracking team fb page.
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‪Gary Thornbloom I agree with the language Wendi has added to the Brune post - it makes a pointed, but valid point. If Brune's message means anything, Sierra Club belongs on the street with the protest against fracking, period.
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‪David Meiser ‪Gary Thornbloom aren't you a PA chapter executive committee member? or the Chair of one of the PA groups?
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‪Gary Thornbloom I am an alternate delegate for the Moshannon Group, and I was the Moshannon Group Chair but not for the past year. I am co-chair for the Public Lands Committee of the PA Chapter.
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‪Melody Susan Wendy's actually been pretty toned down on this page, David. You should read her posts on PAF's. When anyone is censored, it causes others to be stifled, which is not good at a time when more people should be speaking out. Many of us think that Wend...See More
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Wendy Lynne Lee ‪Wendy Lynne Lee has been a brutal public critic of the gas industry for YEARS--so there is no WHEN about it. All that's needed there is a quick Google search. it is NOT the case that I am currently under investigation by the Pennsylvania State Police/ ...See More
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee The PAF FB Page is a complete sham. Whether or not you "like " it, you can't post on it--and that is how they control their messaging--by systemic censorship all the while pretending to be democratic.
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee Just for your leisure reading: ‪http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/.../the...



THE WRENCH: The Corporatization of American Democracy: Slickwater...
THEWRENCHPHILOSLEFT.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY WENDY LYNNE LEE













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‪Wendy Lynne Lee ‪http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/.../when-sunrise...



THE WRENCH: When Sunrise for the Global Gas Markets is Sunset for...
THEWRENCHPHILOSLEFT.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY WENDY LYNNE LEE













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‪Wendy Lynne Lee ‪http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/.../the-hilcorp...



THE WRENCH: The Hilcorp Frack-Gas Stampede to the Utica is Ready to...
THEWRENCHPHILOSLEFT.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY WENDY LYNNE LEE













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‪Wendy Lynne Lee ‪http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/.../sustainable...



THE WRENCH: Sustainable Shale Development: The “Middle Ground”...
THEWRENCHPHILOSLEFT.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY WENDY LYNNE LEE













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‪Wendy Lynne Lee Every one of these essays spells out exactly why the only position to take is not "we oppose," not "moratorium," and not "halt." NONE of these has the resonance or the courage of the word BAN. And until we as a movement get clear about that fact, we will not be a MOVEMENT.
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‪David Meiser ‪Melody Susan this is what I have gathered, there was a vote as to support the event by the executive committee. That motion failed, by a large margin.

           

            These people who voted were elected by PA Sierra Club members to oversee the chapter. ...See More
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Wendy Lynne Lee Thank you for laying this out, ‪David Meiser. However democratic the vote, it speaks volumes about the SC--that it values its political access over preventing the very real harms perpetrated by the gas companies on Pennsylvanians. People have a right to know this so that they next time they see that MIchael Brune Poster about how the SC opposes fracking they can decide to take their money somewhere else.
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‪Melody Susan In true Democratic style, a poll of members should have been taken before PA Chapter took a stand on the rally especially since this issue has ever-increasing public support. It appears to me that PA Chapter has no clear understanding of the purpose of...See More
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee ‪Melody Susan--this is EASY. The Sierra Club just isn't about environmental issues if taking a position on them endangers their political access. And the PA chapter has no excuse whatsoever for not understanding the reason for the rally--even if PAF is ...See More
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Wendy Lynne Lee And of course you should be appalled at the SC's heavy handed and arrogant claim to the authority to tell their members what they can wear. What you should not be is surprised.
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‪David Meiser It is my understanding that all was said was that individuals can not state they speak for the PA chapter.

           

            The rest was not truthful regarding displaying of anything on their person regarding club banners buttons or such.) ...See More
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‪Melody Susan letter purportedly from Wendy Taylor:

            All -- There is a lot of buzz about a ban-fracking rally planned for January 20 in Harrisburg, when Tom Wolf will be inaugurated as governor. The Chapter Executive Committee had a long discussion on whether to su...See More
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‪David Meiser Membership breakdown is the Philly region has the most members but has the least active participants, I don't know why people in and around Philly are not involved but I know personally that philly about philly.

           

            The next largest area is Pittsburg ar...See More



Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter
The Club promotes conservation by influencing public policy through grassroots activism, public education,...
PENNSYLVANIA.SIERRACLUB.ORG













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‪David Meiser That I did not see! and they (the PA Chapter) can not say to members They can't carry signs, wear buttons or clothes that use the Sierra Club logo!

           

            The only thing the chapter should say is that they are not speaking as the sierra club (that has to be cleared by the national board of directors!)
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Wendy Lynne Lee REALLY? The SC has a POLICY of NEVER participating in civil disobedience? WOW! They chose their political expediency as a matter of policy--so they can't REALLY oppose anything!
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‪David Meiser Wendy I believe that was from John Muir and the club has kept the tradition since the 1800s
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee Of course--the ironies just grow richer by the minute since PAF was NEVER going to participate in any act of civil disobedience. So SC didn't even understand THAT.
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee HAHAHA! "If you could do it nonstop, it would take you six days to walk from Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond to President Barack Obama's White House. For the Sierra Club, that journey has taken much longer. For 120 years, we have remained committed t...See More
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‪David Meiser I cannot state what was stated at the PA chapter meeting as I was not there. and so far I have not heard anything from others.

           

            I did communicate this to the club's Board of directors regarding the what was sent as well as the current club president David Scott regarding the over reach on the wording of the above letter.
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           Wendy Lynne Lee You know whose words those are? MICHAEL BRUNES!
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How to Silence Dissent and Criminalize Citizenship

EXCO Marquardt Drilling Pad Unit 1H, 1382 Rines Road
Davidson Township, Sullivan County, PA
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee, 6.16.13

Some Back-Story

This fracking monstrosity sits at the top of a flattened out mountain top a stone's throw from Sonestown, Pennsylvania at the end of a graveled public road. 

But you can't go there anymore. 

EXCO Resources has commandeered the road for the sake of "public safety" just like Seneca Resources at Loyalsock, PGE at Tiadaghton, Crestwood at Watkin's Glen, Anadarko and Halliburton, Kinder Morgan and Williams, Dominion and Encana, just like so many other natural gas extraction or pipeline companies who have a stake in maintaining the free flow of natural gas from under your property, your state forest, your game lands, or your neighbors to their global export depot. It's no wonder that the carbon companies would flock to what journalist Adam Federman profiles as the Marcellus Shale Operators Crime Committee (MSOCC). There's billions at stake and not that much time left to cash in on the gas bonanza.

See: http://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/state-police-documents-show-intelligence-sharing-network-between-law-enforcement-and-marcellus-shale-drillers/Content?oid=1782447.

As Federman spells it out:

[MSOCC is] a little-known intelligence-sharing network that brings together law enforcement, including the FBI, Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security, the oil and gas industry, and private security firms. Established in late 2011 or early 2012, the Marcellus Shale Operators' Crime Committee (MSOCC) is a group of "professionals with a law-enforcement background who are interested in developing working relationships and networking on intelligence issues," according to an email sent to group members by James Hansel, regional security manager for Anadarko Petroleum.

In some sense, of course MSOCC has existed for a long time--in the revolving door shenanigans of government appointments, in campaign donations, in the relationships between gas company lobbyists and elected representatives, in the direction given to police concerning whose interests are to be protected. Informally MSOCC dines at the table of political luncheons, industry conventions, lobbyist visits, and inaugurations in order to insure the smooth flow of influence and paychecks--and paybacks. At bottom, MSOCC is simply the incorporated reality of a long history of the corporate infiltration of government agencies made up to look like it's got a legitimate reason for being. It does--just not one consistent with civil liberty, democratic principle, the rights of communities to self-determination, ecological integrity, or, god forbid, the future of a habitable planet.

The "development of working relationships" is polite code for maintaining the long-standing four-way marriage of the gas companies, law enforcement, private security firms, and government whose honeymoon night--consecrated under the full moon of increasing public displeasure--was destined to give birth to something like an MSOCC. Indeed, the MSOCCs of the world are evidence that the global movement to end industrialized extraction is gaining ground--not losing it.

MSOCC exists to provide legitimating and cosmetic cover to "relationships" that are not merely nefarious, but essentially fascist in the strict sense of that word--the privatization and corporatization of government agencies in the interest of appropriating public resources for private profit ventures. 

EXCO Marquardt Pad, Lycoming County, PA
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

MSOCC exists to legitimate decisions which facilitate the unimpeded extraction and transport of natural gas--decisions that, because they necessitate the surveillance, harassment, intimidation, unwarranted arrest, and other oppressive tactics to suffocate expression of that public displeasure, plainly violate the Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, freedom of movement, and the right to privacy. In short, MSOCC exists to silence dissent and criminalize citizenship.

Stop the Tennesee Pipeline, 2.23.13, Hilary Acton--
who wasn't afraid of anything
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

MSOCC is merely the most cynically veneered attempt to date to "justify" invading our communities, despoiling our ecologies and endangering our health for the sake of a profit margin--a marginal margin at best. And as these margins grow ever narrower, the gas industry stake in keeping people--especially people with cameras--away from what they benignly call their "activities" grows exponentially larger, their objectives more urgent--they're willingness to spend millions on whatever gets the gas to port ever more  likely.

MSOCC's mission is to smooth out the inconvenient bumps in the road--"bumps" that are also called "people."

What MSOCC needs are "incidents" that provide the glue to its "relationships," that sanction a marriage that's not really a marriage but rather the incorporation--quite literally--of the state and its capacity to use violence in the name of public safety as a vital arm of the industry. Perhaps we could call this a marriage of expediency: the industry makes billions, private security firms make millions, a few police officers get fancy titles (like membership in an ecoterrorism task force), and governors get re-elected--all for the mere price of transforming the state into a third world extraction colony.

SHUT FERC DOWN, 11.7.14
PhotoWendy Lynne Lee

What the gas companies know--what we all know--is that their "activities" are so dangerous to the health of people, nonhuman animals, and communities that the Marcellus rich state of New York has banned at least the one of this monster's many hydra heads--High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (HVHF).

What they also know is that the gas is running out, that the clock is ticking down on the thin profit margin between the resource and the reserve--what's in the ground and what you can get out without more gigantic drill bits, toxic chemical cocktails, and earthquake-hazardous technologies.

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

While I have long argued that the relationship between state and federal law enforcement, industry interests, and private security agencies poses a grave danger to the exercise of essential civil liberties, particularly first amendment rights, it was not until I read Federman's piece about MSOCC that some of the pieces about a very strange Valentine's Day 2014 visit from Officer Michael Hutson, the Pennsylvania State Police/FBI Joint Ecoterrorism Task Force, began to fall into place. From the original 2.14.14 piece:

I was brushing my teeth, and getting kidney meds into my cat, Switch, when I heard my three dogs going nuts downstairs. 

I jostled down the stairs, wiping toothpaste off my face to attend to the rapping, and the doggies.
There was a man at the door. 

I thought it was a Jehovah Witness, so I was wondering whether to make coffee. 

I arrived at the door, signaled to the fellow--who I could now see was holding out a badge--that I needed to get my dogs outside. 'Barky, not bitey," I believe I said. 

The man's name is Mike Hutson, Pennsylvania State Police, Intelligence Unit, Williamsport Office.
He was investigating reports of "vandalism" at unspecified compressor station locations, and he had with him a copy of the excellent Jeremy Alderson's No Frack Almanac. 

He wanted to know about the pictures--the ones I have included here.

He wanted to know about the activists in the anti-fracking movement--and whether or not "they" commit acts of vandalism and/or violence. 

He wanted me to give him names of "bad apples."
I know of no such "apples." 

So, I scoffed. 

Such a notion--as I made very clear to Mr. Hutson--is preposterous.

http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/2014/02/when-gas-industry-uses-state-police-to.html

Federman recounts the incident this way:

That same Pennsylvania state trooper visited the home of anti-fracking activist Wendy Lee, a Bloomsburg University philosophy professor, to question her about photos she took of a natural-gas compressor station in Lycoming County. Remarkably, the trooper earlier had crossed state lines and traveled to New York to visit Jeremy Alderson, publisher of the No Frack Almanac, at his home outside Ithaca, N.Y., to accuse him of trespassing to obtain photos of the same compressor station.

"Remarkably" is understatement. Alderson was with me on the day that informed the pretext of Officer Hutson's visit. Indeed, I had been thrilled at the opportunity to show a New Yorker what was happening to us in Pennsylvania, and had taken Alderson on a toxic tour of a number of sites that day in the Summer of 2013--sites where I take school buses full of young college students, sites I have photographed lots. 

Frack trash, Barto Compressor, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania
Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

Hence I say "pretext" because during Officer Hutson's "visit" to my home it also became clear that his main objective was to fish for opportunities to return with the warrant he did not have to search for what I have no idea--but I do know three things:

First, part of what's preposterous is that tax dollars were spent to send Officer Hutson over state lines to harass a fellow activist on the pretext of trespass or vandalism. Oddly too, Hutson's visit to Alderson occurred months before his made his way to my home. 

Second, "vandalism" and "trespass" are not merely insufficient warrant to dispatch a Pennsylvania state trooper to New York, they are no reason whatever to come to someone's home without a warrant. 

Third, the sheer effort to fish for evidence where there is none beyond the protected exercise of first amendment rights suggests other motives--motives MSOCC needs to legitimate its existence. 

It seemed as clear to me then as it does now that Officer Hutson was on a mission to manufacture some minimally credible account of activists-violating-the-law; I gather too that finding little usable material for vandalism and trespass is what led him to query me about "pipe bombs" and "bad apples." He knows I have no connection whatever to pipe bombs (indeed, my stock joke is that I'd make a cake as well--but the pipe bomb might taste better). But Hutson's mission is to make the stuff of criminal charges so that MSOCC has a reason for being; fishing is what he's paid to do. 

How to Silence Dissent

And it's fishing that takes us to to the next part of my story: how to silence dissent.

After receiving a "no FBI record" response from my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to that agency, I turned my attention to the Pennsylvania State Police, and requested not only all records pertaining to myself--but specific records of Officer Hutson's visit. Here's in toto what came back:

In short, my FOIA request was denied in virtue of an allegedly ongoing criminal investigation.

It is unclear whether I am an object or merely somehow connected to that investigation--and that, of course, is calculated to encourage paranoia, and paranoia has a tidy silencing effect. But what is clear is the following--and it makes a complete mockery of this FOIA denial:

(1) I have committed no crime whatsoever.

 (2) unless a crime has been committed by someone else of which I know nothing there is no criminal investigation to be pursued. 

(3) Officer Hutson has had a year to reappear with a warrant. He hasn't. There is nothing with which to secure one.  Evidence of this fact is that I have been wholly public not only with my photos of industry destruction (numbering more than 3000), but with what is rightly described as the harassment and intimidation by Officer Hutson. It's not like I've stopped taking pictures. No crime; no warrant; no return "visit"; no "result of a criminal investigation." Hutson hasn't returned because he's got nothin'.

(4) what should we construe "covert" to mean other--given Federman's account--than that whatever investigation this is, it's designed to provide MSOCC material with which to legitimate the exchange of information between agencies that protect the gas industry? What else can "covert" mean in this case other than "you don't get to know that we're watching you exercise your Constitutionally protected rights"? Of course such an investigation must remain covert--if the public really understood what the state was doing, they just might be out with pitchforks.

 (5) MSOCC's public face relies on our willingness to (a) see causal connections where none have been established, (b) be easily fear-mongered, and (c) assume that because a claim hails from a Joint State Police/FBI Ecoterrorism Task Force officer, it must be true. If you Google "Marcellus Shale Operators Crime Committee" what you get is Officer Hutson's 2013 Powerpoint--an MSOCC product intended for state police consumption--detailing the alleged threat of ecoterrorism in Pennsylvania. 

But what Hutson's presentation is in fact is a series of slides starting with fear-mongering definitions of domestic and/or ecoterrorism, followed by pictures of protesters engaged in protected nonviolent speech and/or acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. This is then followed by pictures of alleged pipe bombs or other explosives. The reader is invited to see a causal progression--but this isn't because there is one. 

The links "connecting" definitions to protests to pipe bombs are made out of nothing but the order of Officer Hutson's slide show--and very likely his need to demonstrate the need for an MSOCC. No evidence connects the protesters to the pipe bombs (and it is staggeringly irresponsible to imply this), and unless it's exercising first amendment rights that constitutes an ecoterrorist act, nothing connects the opening definitions to the protesters. I could just as well make a PowerPoint that "showed" the "causal" links between definitions of green beans, people holding up "We Love Green Bean" signs, and the growing of a giant stalk. The only difference is that my ludicrous presentation doesn't fear-monger. 

http://freepress.org/sites/default/files/associated/11_Terrorism.pdf.

Put crudely but accurately: MSOCC exists to make shit up about citizens who have the guts to exercise their protected first amendment rights through nonviolent public protest, organizing direct action, taking pictures, and exposing an industry whose climate change causing "activities" endanger us all. They use the authority of the state to legitimate their existence and to carry out their dirty work, and they flatter officers like Michael Hutson into making up PowerPoints that put words and faces to a made-up threat in order to justify the suppression of free speech.

MSOCC's objective is to intimidate us into silence by fear-mongering us into believing that while we have free speech rights--

Protest against Crestwood (Inergy)
Watkin's Glen, Winter 2013
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

we shouldn't actually use them, that while we have a right to travel public roads, we ought to obey private security guards when they tell us we can't, that while it's perfectly legal to take photographs from those public roads, we better not--or else, and that when we engage in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, we better be prepared to pay a very high price.

How to achieve this tall order?

By creating an organization-MSOCC--whose operatives are supplied by the state police with information the industry can use to insure their operations continue uninterupted. 

By taking full advantage of the threat of violence sanctioned by the state--the state police (especially an officer whose title includes "FBI" and "Ecoterrorism Task Force")--to surveil, harass, intimidate, and threaten citizen activists into silence. 

By reinforcing that silence by denying a FOIA request with the claim that there's an ongoing criminal investigation of which you could (but they're not going to tell you) be the prime suspect.  

By implying in that denial that someone like Officer Hutson could be coming back...with a warrant....to haul you off to jail. 

None of this requires a conspiracy; what it needs is actually worse because it's so insidious--the systemic penetration of the state by corporate interests, a penetration made facile by the fact that American law has always privileged the wealthy, has always valued property over justice. Given this history, it's not surprising that organizations which undermine even the most fleeting exercise of democratic ideals--like free speech--are not only made possible--but are necessitated by the state. 

Pennsylvania needs MSOCC just as much as MSOCC needs the policing and surveillance agencies of the state. Without such an organization, how can the state "justify" its actions to protect an industry from the people? Without something like an MSOCC, how will Governor Elect Wolf "justify" quashing dissent? 

And just like his predecessor Governor Wolf must quash dissent without appearing to impose what amounts to martial law. 

Why? 

Because dissent slows the production Wolf needs in order to justify the extraction tax whose revenue he needs to fund the public education he also needs to make good on his major campaign promise--that Wolf in turn needs to run for re-election.

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

Who needs martial law when you can achieve just as much without the fuss by making people believe it's a crime to expose corporate excess and government corruption? Why take to the streets if freedom turns out to be twenty catsup options at Wally-World? So long as it's more important not to look like a "radical" than it is to challenge grotesque injustice, Governor Wolf won't need anything other than what Corbett and Rendell before him have nicely worked out to keep us all in our places--safely away from the gas industry. 

The ease with which the state police can deny a FOIA request is just one such example. 

That people really do believe this abject nonsense is another. Despite many in the anti-fracking movement's "progressive" insistence that they stand for the right to protest, they're among the first to choose their organization's donors over taking an uncompromising stance for a ban, and they're the first to insist that they're not "the radicals."

The funny thing is that the communication Federman details between Don Peters, an operative for Global Security Corporation (http://www.globalsecuritycorporation.com/), and an analyst of the Pennsylvania state police, Douglas Jackson, makes it seem like the protesters they're jointly surveilling might really be dangerous. But Peters and Jackson--just like Officer Hutson--certainly know otherwise. Fact is, what MSOCC needs is precisely this:

(a) protesters who are in no way likely to resort to violence. That way, when they don't, it looks like MSOCC operatives must have had the intended quashing effect. 

(b) protesters that can be made to look like they'd resort to violence (see discussion of Hutson's PowerPoint below) so that MSOCC can justify its existence.

SHUT FERC DOWN, 11. 7.14
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

And that's called "making shit up."

That, however, MSOCC exists at all in a country purportedly founded on the exercise of civil liberty says loads about what the state and its policing agents think they're entitled to do when it comes to the gas industry--and it's not "protect and serve" unless what you mean is "protect and serve" the corporations who effectively buy, own and operate the state.

How to Criminalize Citizenship

The Marcellus Shale Operators Crime Committee is just one among many in a growing network of government, quasi-governmental (such as FERC--the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), and private (or privatized) concerns who act on behalf of maintaining carbon despotism. Any exercise of free speech that threatens to disrupt or expose this status quo as anything other than good old American free enterprise is a potential "terrorist" according to the lazy logic of MSOCC. 

The irony is that we are welcome--even encouraged to be "activists" "exercising" our first amendment rights by holding up protest signs on capitol steps, or signing petitions, or writing letters. Indeed, that kind of activism works to the advantage of the corporatized state because it

exhausts all of our energy in actions that have no effect on the drilling and transport "activities" of the gas companies. 

keeps us away from the public roads commandeered by the likes of EXCO. 

keeps us in plain site of the state police and the private security firms who feed them information. 

gives the state police and their counterparts in the private security firms an opportunity to intimidate us--just by being at our ineffectual "activist" events.

Provides the state police a way to distinguish the "activists" from the "radicals," and thereby use the harassment of the "radicals" to control the "activists."

 And--most importantly--allows the corporatized state to use "the movement" as advertising for free speech thereby assuring everyone else that things are awesome in America. 

But should we actually demand that gas industry "activities" be banned, the fury of a state already set to bulldoze us will crank into motion while the Officer Hutsons of the world smugly evince an "I told you so." It's irrelevant whether we do or don't commit any crimes--much less violent ones. 

SHUT FERC DOWN, 11.7.14.
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

The state has fairly little to worry about until we achieve a critical mass not only of people--but of conviction and the courage to take a stand--and then we must have the guts to refuse to move when they tell us to. Things will begin to change the moment we recognize that a state who acts on behalf of the monied interests of corporations who pollute our air and water all the way to altering the climate is not going to protect its most valuable assets--citizens--much less the conditions of life.

The most compelling sign that we are at least inching our way towards that critical mass is--crazy but true--the existence of MSOCC and its analogues in other states (and nations). Put simply, the gas companies are greedy bastards, and they're not going to spend money on things like surveillance and "developing relationships" with policing agencies just to keep a few "radicals" off their precious drill rigs.

EXCO Marquardt Drill Pad, Lycoming County, PA
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

But when more than 100 protesters blockade entrance to the Washington DC FERC offices during the week long Beyond Extreme Energy action;

SHUT FERC DOWN, 11.7.14
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

When Rising Tide North America in conjunction with a number of indigenous tribal councils  can organize a blockade a month in the Northwest to stop mega-load equipment transports used in tar sands extraction; 

When Gas Free Seneca and Save Our Seneca prevent Crestwood from moving forward to build a gas storage facility on a lake that serves 100,000 people with drinking water in Watkin's Glen, NY;

Go Home Crestwood, Watkin's Glen, NY 10.24.14
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

When 400,000 people converge on New York City for the largest environmentally oriented march in history to protest governmental inaction on climate change;

The March on Climate Change,  9.21.14
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

When three dozen Stop the Pipeline protesters--eight of whom risked arrest--stop Williams Partners' pipeline testing for two hours in Conestoga Township, Lancaster County, PA;

When brave folks like Alma Hasse are willing to spend a week in an Idaho jail on hunger strike without being charged for nonviolently exercising their right to free speech at a public meeting;

When more than 100 townships in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have drafted community rights ordinances to defend their collective right to self-determination against the industrialization of their neighborhoods;

STOP THE PIPELINE COLUMBIA COUNTY
Bloomsburg Firehall, Bloomsburg, PA 11.21. 14
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

And even--though far smaller in consequence--when folks like me are denied a Freedom of Information Act request via spurious excuses like an ongoing investigation where no crime has been committed--in order to stop me from taking pictures of the devastation;

That's how we know we're gaining ground.  The carbon despots are worried that we're figuring out how to be citizens--and not merely consumers. 

They wouldn't go to the trouble of all this oppression, its attendant bad press, its messy necessity that they retain armies of nasty corporate lawyers were they not worried that their profit ventures were endangered by, well, citizenship taken seriously.

Citizenship must therefore be effectively criminalized in order to maintain the delusion that consumption is all we really wanted.

When the government becomes willing to use the police to protect corporate interests over the rights of the people, the people must become more than activists; we must become insurgents.

PGE pipeline and drilling operations,
Tiadaghton State Forest, PA 6.22.14
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

Either that, or 20 catsup options really was all we were worth.

But is it what our kids are worth?

Insulted?

Good. 

Stand up. 

A world that looks like this is one we have to fight for.

Photo Wendy Lynne Lee