Session Type(s): Panel
Training Tag(s): Environment
Starts: Thursday, Jun. 7 3:00 PM (Eastern)
Ends: Thursday, Jun. 7 4:15 PM (Eastern)
At the same time that President Obama is pushing an energy plan built on natural gas, there is a national movement to ban fracking building around the United States and abroad. Find out how New York was able to get a moratorium on fracking and build a grassroots movement that has amplified the ban message in a climate where national mainstream groups are pushing for regulation. Learn how groups are engaging citizens through film, media and online and offline organizing to build a powerful movement that is calling for a ban on fracking.
Storified by Netroots Nation · Thu, Jun 07 2012 16:25:42
Sarah Alexander is the Education & Outreach Director at Food & Water Watch. She directs all of their online advocacy campaigns, as well as special events and outreach to new communities. Sarah has worked on issues related to food sovereignty, genetic engineering, and local food security. Her background is in community organizing, strategic campaigning and legislative campaigns, having previously worked with Green Corps, the White Earth Land Recovery Project, and the American Community Gardening Association.
David Braun co-founded Americans Against Fracking and New Yorkers Against Fracking, as well as helped strategize and implement the historic campaign which banned fracking in the state of New York. In 2014, he relocated to California to fight fracking and other toxic oil and gas practices in his home state. Braun has since founded Rootskeeper a non-profit project that educates and trains grassroots activists, and fights the worst practices of the oil industry, mainly in California. Rootskeeper is a steering committee member of Californians Against Fracking, a coalition of over 200 organizations, and also a proud member of the California Environmental Justice Coalition, with strong ties to many grassroots anti- fracking and environmental justice organizations. With Rootskeeper, Braun launched a number of statewide awareness campaigns including Protect California Food, Faith Against Fracking and Oil Money Out, People Power In, all aimed at educating the general public on the deleterious effects of toxic oil and gas extraction methods on our food chain and public health, as well as the industry’s influence on our democracy, respectfully. He produced and directed the short documentary film Faith Against Fracking, which has screened in film festivals and places of worship around the country as an organizing tool.
Founded “What the Frack?! Arapahoe” and helped organize an alliance of groups to address oil and gas extraction issues in Colorado, for the purpose of sharing news & information, and coordination of efforts. Board member of Be the Change, Colorado. My M.A. is in cognitive developmental psychology and my passion is developing and teaching compelling multisensory curricula for critical thinking and learning. Currently a research coordinator & office manager for a health diagnostic facility.
Kristine Vaughan, an Occupier, Fractivist and Associate Producer for the upcoming documentary, FORWARD 13: Waking up from the American Dream, hails from Canton, OH the recently dubbed “Utica Capital.” Kristine’s grassroots efforts to ban fracking have focused on organizing canvassing campaigns in both Massillon, OH and Meyers Lake Village as well as managing an Earth Day call-in event. She has spoken out against fracking at City Council meetings and Fracking Forums held by the Oil & Gas Industry and has managed to inspire anti-fracking activism in her nine-year-old daughter. Kristine is a practicing School Psychologist with Post-Graduate Certification in School Neuropsychology and she makes a mean chocolate chip cookie.