NOTES FROM THE ROAD

I spent a few days of downtime between trips to Lima, OH and Sun Prairie, WI this weekend stopping in at the Ohio Fraction (Frack Action) Camp in Youngstown, OH.  (http://ohiofracktion.com/summer-action-camp/).  The turnout for the event seemed pretty low and the groups involved seemed pretty insular but overall it was a valuable trip.  

There were about 40 people there, mostly from Ohio.  The majority of folks were the younger radical ‘usual suspect’ crowd, but there were some older folks who had gotten involved in the fight against fracking because of their experience with injection wells.  

In the short time I spend at the Fraction Camp I noticed a handful of themes:

1. There are a lot of parallels between anti-fracking work in Southwest PA and in Ohio.  Both regions have larger regional groups.  We have Marcellus Protest, they have Frack Action Ohio.  Both regions have smaller, local community or county based groups.  And both regions have radical organizing bases that seem to float between the local community groups and the broader network.  We have Shadbush and Marcellus EF, Ohio has Ohio Fraction. 

2. The issues look a lot different in Ohio and in Pennsylvania.  The big issue in Ohio isn’t actually fracking; it’s injection wells–the downstream disposal of franking fluids in existing wells.  As they frack Pennsylvania they take the frack fluid over to Ohio.  So while our landscape is becoming increasingly perforated, our neighbors in Ohio haven’t seen much of the first hand impacts of fracking projects.  

3. We’re only divided by a state line, but we hardly ever talk.  In Pittsburgh we’re less than 50 miles from the Ohio border but we seem to know more about what’s going on in State College and even hundreds of miles away in Northeastern, PA than we know about what’s happening just 50 miles to our west.  I hadn’t heard about virtually any of the organizations that are working in Ohio and until this weekend I hadn’t met any of the organizers.  It seemed like most of the folks working in Ohio weren’t familiar with what was going on in Pennsylvania either.  There are certainly a lot of corollaries in our work and there’s lots of room for collaboration but it doesn’t seem that we’ve really broken through with interstate organizing.  

The 'Camp’ itself was an interesting experience.  I saw some folks there who I’ve gotten to know through various regional environmental justice and direct action networks, but I didn’t know the vast majority of people.  The agenda was loose and seemed to fluctuate quite a bit and a lot of what was going on seemed pretty disjointed. Devon, from the Shadbush Collective, and I facilitated a workshop on Building Urban-Rural Solidarity.  

The workshops started about a half hour late because the 'morning circle’ started late and ran over.  We weren’t assigned a room so we just picked one of the rooms in the church where the conference was being hosted.  At first no one came, but eventually people trickled in (I have a feeling that conference organizers pressured people into coming to our workshop because they had asked us to come all the way from Pittsburgh to present).

When we finally started we had a really interesting and valuable discussion.  Unfortunately it was disrupted several times as conference organizers and other workshop facilitators jumped in to solicit people to do chores or attend other workshops.  Because of the disruptions we didn’t get to make it all the way through our agenda, but overall we had a successful and (I believe) valuable session.  

While there were certainly some frustrating aspects of the Fraction Camp, I think it was really good that we got a chance to attend.  I got to get to know some people who I had known in passing much better and I had an opportunity to learn a lot about Ohio’s Anti-Fracking movement.  I’m just hoping that going forward we can continue to break down those state borders and build solidarity across the Marcellus Shale!