Tiny Town Heroes Pay Our Support Forward

I have this Community Rights collaborator in Texas. It’s a pretty serious collaboration. For instance, two years ago, while holding a We The People 2.0 (The first documentary ever on Community Rights movement) showing at the St. Marys Catholic church in Minong, Wisconsin, she showed up on a whim. I’ve helped organize a few of these events, and promotion to assure good attendance from local community members for an event like this can be a challenge. My collaborator came from Texas! She’s fond of saying, “Everything moves in the face of commitment.” She’s serious about that.  

Recently she contacted me with an idea. She said let’s send postcards of support to the people of Grant Township, Pennsylvania, and ask others to do the same. A few days later we were promoting the “Send One Ask One” postcard campaign to friends and family on and off the internet. The idea is to send a postcard of your own and ask another to do the same, the person you asked will then do the same, until we send 100 postcards or more! 

You might ask with all the injustices and ugliness in the world, why have we chosen to support Grant Township? I want to pull an Edward Abbey here, and simply ask, “why not?” But I’ll be a bit more specific with our intentions. Our intention is to support a democratic majority in Grant Township that are clearly and coherently exercising their inalienable Right to Local Community Self-Government to protect themselves and their water. We feel the mindset and strategy the people of Grant are putting into action is what thousands of municipalities across the nation must do if we are to survive as a species in this form of democracy and for America to remain the land of the free.  

The people of Grant are faced with a corporate harm that may poison their water table for generations. To say it another way, it’ll turn their township into a toxic waste dump. Pennsylvania Gas and Electric (PGE) wants to inject waste water from the fracking process into an abandoned well for a decade or more. We think the mindset and strategy the people of Grant are putting into action are what thousands of municipalities across the nation must do if we are to survive in this form of democracy and for America to remain the land of the free.   

After this proposal was introduced to the people of Grant, their local governing body exercised their inalienable Right to Local, Community Self-Government and said “no.” The corporate state came crashing down hard on them. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) filed a lawsuit against them saying they were “illegally preventing DEP from carrying out its responsibility as a state agency.” (Source) Pennsylvania Gas and Electric (PGE) filed a lawsuit against them with “U.S. District Court Judge Susan Baxter ordering Grant Township to pay $103,000 of the legal expenses connected with a lawsuit that a major oil and gas drilling company filed against the municipality.” (Source) It would bankrupt the municipality. The Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association (PIOGA) used the tactic of filing a suit to get a judge to order the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to cover the attorney fees that PGE and PIOGA would accrue while representing the corporation in their attempt to inject toxic and radioactive frack waste into the well. Back in January 2018 Magistrate Judge Susan Paradise Baxter ruled in the oil and gas industry’s favor by holding two CELDF attorneys representing Grant Township liable for $52,000. That’s ten percent of PGE’s fees. (Source) They want to bankrupt CELDF. (Source).  

My collaborator and I have sent our own cards and asked others to do the same. We’ve taken pictures of them and posted them on the internet in the hopes of inspiring others to send their own postcards. Our goal is for 100 people or more to send postcards of support. Imagine this. Every postcard, someone from Grant told me recently, is read out loud at the monthly township meetings. What a privilege to be part of keeping these courageous people’s spririts up! The people of Grant are surely the David facing down a Goliath of the corporate state. It could be said their backs are against the wall. Unfazed and unbeaten they are living into the vision our revolutionary forebears fought and died for: The right to alter or abolish our government when it becomes destructive to our health, safety, and welfare. 

Sending a postcard is helping move something forward that shouldn’t be…but is…monumental: The constitutionally recognized right for a community to say “no” to having their homelands turned into a toxic waste dump or a resource colony. If Grant Township wins we all win in this struggle. We move one step closer to genuine self-determination and self-preservation in the places we live, where it matters the most.  It may move more slowly than we desire, but ultimately everything moves in the face of commitment.  Be part of the better world little Grant Township is showing us is possible. Ask me at hubyseven@gmail.com for how you can easily participate in the “Send One Ask One” postcard campaign.