(en) US, A Fracking Manifesto from the people of Illinois to the nation (endorsed by Four Star Anarchist Organization)

We know that high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracking (HVHF) is an accidentprone, 
inherently dangerous industrial process with risks that include catastrophic and 
irremediable damage to our health and environment. ---- We know that HVHF and its 
attendant technologies: Contribute to groundwater contamination, including 219 cases in
Pennsylvania alone. ---- Turn massive amounts of fresh, drinkable water into massive 
amounts of briny, poisonous flowback fluid for which there is no failsafe disposal 
solution. ---- Vent hazardous air pollutants that are associated with cancer, asthma, 
heart attack, stroke, and preterm birth. ---- Release radioactive substances?including 
radon, which is the number two cause of lung cancer and benzene, which is a proven cause 
of leukemia, from deep geological strata.

Fragment forests in ways that decimate birds and wildlife, sabotage natural flood control 
systems, and pour sediment into rivers and streams.

Industrialize communities in ways that vastly increase truck traffic, noise pollution, 
light pollution, stress, crime, and the need for emergency services.

Offer jobs that are dangerous, toxic, and temporary with a fatality rate seven times that 
of other industries.

Leak prodigious amounts of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas.

We know these problems cannot be prevented by any set of rules or government office, let 
alone state agencies like those in Illinois, which have been cut to the bone by budget 
cuts and cannot be counted on for regulatory enforcement.

We have heard the warnings of our brothers and sisters living in the gasfields of 
Pennsylvania and Ohio, whose children, pets, and livestock are sick, whose property values 
are ruined, whose water is undrinkable. We have heard the pleas of our neighbors in 
Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, where stripmining for frac sand has devastated 
communities, destroyed landscapes, and filled the air with carcinogenic silica dust.

We are aware that our own beloved Starved Rock State Park is already threatened by 
industrial mining of silica sand used for fracking operations and that the pressure to 
stripmine Illinois for sand will only increase with every well that is drilled and fracked.

We assert that fracking is a moral crisis. In a time of climate emergency, it is wrong to 
further deepen our dependency on fossil fuels. In a state such as Illinois, where chronic 
drought and water shortages are already forecast for our children?s future, it is wrong to 
destroy fresh water resources in order to bring new sources of climate-killing gas and oil 
out of the ground.

We reject the legitimacy of Illinois? fracking regulatory bill, which was the result of
closed-door negotiations between industry representatives and compromise-oriented 
environmental organizations. Responsible only to their funders and their members, these
environmental groups do not represent us nor are they empowered to negotiate on our 
behalf. We consider the fracking regulatory bill to be a subversion of both science and
democracy. Throughout its creation, no comprehensive health study or environmental impact 
study was ever commissioned. No public hearings or public comment periods ever took place. 
And yet it is the public that is being compelled to live with the risks sanctioned by this 
bill. It is an unjust law.

Knowing that our own government has abdicated its responsibility to protect the safety and 
wellbeing of the citizenry, knowing that no one is coming to save us, we declare our 
intent to save ourselves from the ravages of shale gas and oil extraction via HVHF. We 
declare our intent to join together in a fracking abolitionist movement.

As such, no longer shall national environmental organizations based far from impacted 
realities make decisions that will have life-changing impacts on the people living in 
impacted zones. We will call out organizations that betray core values and integrity. We 
will openly inform their membership and their funders and reveal the truth of where they 
stand and at whose expense.

We call for a mobilization that brings fracking realities to the rest of the nation. If
our elected officials refuse to visit the fracking fields, then we will bring the fracking 
fields to them?in the form of science, stories, photographs, film, lectures, hearings, and 
journalism. If elected officials refuse to defend our land, water, air, and health against 
those who would despoil them for their own profit, then we will do it ourselves, using 
peaceful, non-violent methods.

We hereby commit ourselves to building a powerful movement that will protect Illinois? 
children?and safeguard the living ecosystem on which their lives depend?for generations to 
come. In short, we declare our intent to take the future into our hands. And that future 
is unfractured.