Spirit in Action

Fighting Fracking & Mining - Singing to Save Mother Earth

The effective struggle to protect us against the destruction and desecration of the Earth draws on the powers of both mind and heart, and little can capture our hearts and open us to realities like a powerful song. We draw on the music and messages of Sarah Pirtle, David Rovics, Brian Bethke, Sara Thomsen, & Bryce Black to shine a light exposing the wrongs of fracking, mining for frac sands and copper, piping tar sands, and more.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 05 Jul 2015
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Today for Spirit in Action, we're going to continue a journey that I started back around Earth Day 2014 When I invited a number of musicians to share their stories and music related to current environmental issues I'll have five guests and five songs today Around the topics of fracking, mining for fracksand, and for copper And about the tar sands pipeline, the KXL pipeline I'll even have on a musician who chaired the town board As they wrestled with how to deal with the fracksand mine company These are good folks doing good work in the face of serious threats to our well-being We'll start with a visit with Brian Bethke, who I had on the show a few years ago for Song of the Soul Brian, good to have you back on Northern Spirit Radio for Spirit in Action It's great to be here And thanks for doing the benefit concert recently, filling in when Larry had to cancel People were loving your music and I'm really glad to have a little bit more on it Now for Earth Day, are you an Earth Day guy? Is this something that really calls to you? Yeah, I am. Ever since I was a kid in school when they were teaching us about Earth Day and about preserving things And about this whole solar revolution that was supposed to take a place 30 years ago I've always kind of observed the day and always been kind of someone who's there for nature and our planet And you live kind of in nature as we would consider it because you're not in the big city You're not even in a medium-sized city You're around Ossia, are you a country boy? Yep, I'm a country boy. I live off of a dirt road out by a little town they call Levis Which is just two bars in a town hall It's been a pretty quiet life until recently with the new frack boom that's going on And how close is the fracksand mining coming to you? Right now we have one in Augusta which is about eight miles from me But they're looking at putting one in just about a half mile off my road And it's an area that has always been a hunting area, you know, recreational They're looking at taking a big section of woods and pretty much stripping the land and studying a big operation there And taking down the hills, that's something that I'm not sure a lot of people know They're not just digging a hole in the ground They often level hills because that's the easiest sand to get at if it's stacked up properly That area around Ossia is just absolutely beautiful with the rolling hills I'm not sure all of our listeners from California, Washington state Understand that this part of Wisconsin is so rolling and beautiful They want to flatten it out, right? That's correct and especially where I am It's a nice valley we have just these beautiful hills around And if they get their way, which we've been fighting this for about three years now If they get their way, they're just going to pretty much force us The neighbors out of the township because no one's going to want to be here You know, it's sad to see because it's been for years It's been agricultural and hunting and all the people who live around here I've always been courteous of one another Even the hunters that do hunt out here, you know, they preserve the bigger deer Let them go and let them grow and, you know, we just got a few bad seeds in the mix That want to mix it up for us And so you wrote a song for it Was this just for your personal expression or was it for a fight song for a group there locally? It was, you know, just my personal expression I had gone to our first meeting when I heard about it three days before That they were proposing this mine, so I went down the town hall meeting to, you know, talk with representatives about it We were there with the lawyer from the sand company who was also supposed to represent us And we were supposed to draft this bill because they said there's no way we could fight it, no way we could keep them out And they were getting ready to send this bill through so it would have put the regulations on them And I was looking to there and I was like, well, who wrote this? And we found out it was a sand company and stuff And, you know, we tried to put our input in and the lawyer just told us, no, they'll sue you If you pretty much, if we took any steps to protect ourselves from the lining, they would sue us because that's not what their other deals have done And that's what the song came about. I was really steamed after that meeting Because I felt helpless and like there was nothing we could do that became the song It's like a little more kind of, I don't know, a little angry, you know? For good reasons, for very good reasons Because we've had to try to fight this three times, our township put it in, you know, into a moratorium for six months And then they tried going to the county to turn them down And then now they're suing the neighboring townships Because the mine would lay in both townships and it's just been over and over You know, spending money out of our butts Try to protect this land since crazy I do want to let our listeners know that I did an interview back in 2013 with Jerry Lauste Very knowledgeable, he's part of the Save the Hills Alliance And it was about fracking, so if you come and search for fracking on my site You'll find that interview, which gives you a whole lot of information But in the meantime, Ryan, let's play your song, it's called "Song For You" And I thank you so much, Brian, for getting some steam up And passing it on to us in the form of a beautiful song Alright, thank you Song for you ♪ Just another day in paradise, I'm gonna sit on down and try to ride another song for you that I don't even like ♪ ♪ You lost all our senses, we've been gone for a while now, getting on this song ♪ ♪ And they don't even care about the rights ♪ ♪ I wrote a song for you, mister, I don't want to take you off ♪ ♪ But I've got something to say ♪ ♪ Another song for you, mister, I don't want to miss ya ♪ ♪ 'Cause I don't want to find my home ♪ ♪ In your sandmine ♪ ♪ You got mister meat, he's got his old sandmine ♪ ♪ Now he's living the high, love drinking all that wine ♪ ♪ And he's tainted the water, he's only paid a piece of the fine ♪ ♪ They build a new overpass, but your trees are gone ♪ ♪ And they're all the hills away all night long ♪ ♪ In the sandbox, but how the neighbors fight ♪ ♪ I wrote this song for you, mister, sorry that I've pissed you off ♪ ♪ But I've got something to say ♪ ♪ Another song for you, mister, I don't want to miss ya ♪ ♪ I don't want to find my home ♪ ♪ In your sandmine ♪ ♪ I wrote a song for you, mister, sorry that I've pissed you off ♪ ♪ But I've got something to say ♪ ♪ Another song for you, mister, I don't want to miss ya ♪ ♪ I don't want to find my home ♪ ♪ In your sandmine ♪ ♪ That was "Song For You" by Brian Bethke. And next up is another singer-songwriter, Bryce Black, who had the painful distinction of having to deal with fracksan mining issues as part of his town board. This is a song that came out of his experience. We'll get Bryce Black on the phone now. Bryce, it's great to have you back on Norden's Spirit Radio. This time for "Spirit and Action." Yes, well, thank you very much for asking me to be on Mark. I don't have that many friends who have direct experience of the sand mining that's going on around Wisconsin. You're one of them. You live in a place or outside of a place called Arkansas, Wisconsin, near Durand if people have a map. Can we find Arkansas on the map? It all depends on how detailed your map is. It would have to be even more detailed to find the town of Frankfort, which is actually the name of the municipality of the state of Wisconsin that I live in and which I also happen to be the elected town chairman of. And so you're the chairman and this fracksan, this sand that's being taken from Wisconsin and a lot of other places, all the way to where they're doing hydraulic fracturing. How recently was your experience with them? When did that start to hit Frankfort? Well, it was in 2011. I was not on the town board at this time. But the fellow who runs a local trucking company came to our town board meeting and announced that he had taken over the lease on an existing limestone quarry in our town and that he planned to turn it into an industrial fracksan mining operation, which meant that he was planning to blast through about 100 feet of limestone, just to get it out of the way to get it to sandstone that's underneath. What role did you play and what role did the town play in his request, his demand, his insistence? First of all, in the state of Wisconsin, fracksan mining is under the same regulation as all non-metallic mineral extraction, which means it's governed by the same rules that govern gravel pits and limestone quarries. Since this guy was taking over the lease on an existing mining operation, which had been only sporadically mined over the years, all that he was required to do basically was to get a revised reclamation permit and the Department of Natural Resources rules for these reclamation permits are basically -- there's a set of conditions that the operator has to meet, and then they have to be given a permit if they meet those conditions. There's no way to stop somebody from mining with a reclamation permit. So they applied for a reclamation permit from Pepin County, and there was a public hearing. The permit was granted. Meanwhile, the town of Frankfurt had a very steep learning curve. First of all, we are a town of about 350 people. So this was definitely something we had no experience with and had no idea was coming. At that time, the town had not yet adopted a comprehensive plan, although I was on the plan commission that had drafted -- wanted to submit it to the town board, but they hadn't adopted it yet. So the town board adopted a comprehensive plan that put in a temporary interim zoning ordinance. By the spring of 2012, I was on the town board because a previous member resigned, and I offered to take his seat and was appointed. At that time, the town developed and adopted a mine licensing ordinance, and then a few months after that, we negotiated a mine operating agreement with Beckle trucking the operators of this mine, and just signed that agreement with them. That agreement limited their operating hours, and what we hoped were groundwater protection features in there as well. And so you did the best that you could with this situation. It would not have been an option just to say, no, you can't have your mine. Well, certainly there were people in the town clamoring for the town board to do that. I was one of them. But once one becomes a public official, one has to find out how the law works, and basically there is no legal way for a township in the state of Wisconsin to say, no mining. I mean, you can try to do that, but the town had hired by this time a very cautious lawyer with a lot of experience in municipal law, and some consultants who know something about this issue, and they told us, well, you can just say, no mining, no way, and you'll get your butt sued. So, as you said, you were one of the people who opposed this mining expansion into fraction mining. Your objections to it were based on what kind of things? First of all, I believe that people should have the right to do whatever they want with their property, but what they do with their property impacts, the health and safety and property values of their neighbors, and then there has to be a balance struck there. Where this mine was was right next door to several residences, a few hundred feet away. Also, this mine, it's blasting, like I said, blasting 200 feet of limestone. So, they're doing a lot of blasting and very powerful blasting. They are creating dust, and then once they get the sandstone, they load it on trucks, and they're hauling it to an off-site processing facility, which is about 15 miles away in Plum City. So, there's a lot of truck traffic, like 80 trucks per day, so that's 160 trucks if you count the out-trip and the return trips. These are very heavy trucks that weigh over 20,000 pounds a piece, do a lot of wear and tear on the roads. The mine operator did negotiate a road agreement with Peppin County to use all Peppin County roads. Peppin County required them to put a million dollars cash deposit in an escrow account, which they have to keep maintaining for Peppin County to reconstruct and maintain the roads. So, dust, noise, seismic impact on neighbors. Many of the neighbors complain that the tumps in their wells are pumping sand all the time, because their wells are down in the sandstone layer that's being blasted, and it shakes sand loose that fills up their wells. The mining company does not admit to any fault in that, but they did agree to provide neighbors within a half a mile with a whole house sand filter, which is kind of a band-aid. So, those are a few of the things. Did the fact that this sand is going for hydraulic fracturing or fracking, did that play any part in your opposition to it? Certainly, I feel very sorry for the people who live at that end of this industry, who, because of the hydraulic fracturing, are mixing proprietary chemicals that tell people what they are with the sand coming from Wisconsin, and injecting it underground under pressure, and I have read numerous accounts of how residential and municipal wells are being contaminated by those chemicals and by the petroleum products that wind up being released into the groundwater. And also, of course, I think that the scientific evidence that global warming is man-made is quite compelling, and that if our planet is not going to be unrecognizable in the next few decades and centuries, then we need to change our ways and figure out a way to wean ourselves off of the petroleum economy, which hydraulic fracturing is just allowing us to prolong that. For a whole number of reasons you've opposed this, but yet in your role with your town board, you had to, a role also in facilitating it. Yes, and I've lost a lot of sleep over that, but it seems like signing this operating agreement with the mine was the best way for the town to get some control over the situation. So you wrote a song called "Sandman," and in the song you mentioned 50, and then 100, and then 500 trucks a day. Is that your nightmare coming up, and can it get up to 500 in your town? Oh, I hope not. With this particular mine, our operating agreement on the county's road agreement puts some limits on the number of trucks a day that we experience. Of course, I also wrote this song "Thinking of the Wider" issue, certainly our little town is not the only town faced with this issue. Out of me in Buffalo and Tremolo County, there are even more sandmine proposed. There are places there where processing plants are being proposed that would have 500 or 1,000 trucks a day coming into them. This is a song that is written by Bryce Black. It's performed by Bryce and Yatta. It was also recorded in Cricut Studios in Baden Rock, so some of the other folks playing on this record are Bruce Hexel and Julie Petule of the very excellent folk duo Petule. And I just, as my last message, I just want to say that if you live in Western Wisconsin, this is something that could happen in your community too, and I recommend that folks think about it and are prepared before it happens. Thanks again, Bryce. This song is "The Sandman," Bryce Black and Yatta and Petule. When the Sandman comes, he sprinkles sand in our eyes, drinks me, dreams filled with pretty lies. While our dines and nickels might trickle down and he can gouge a hole in our town. Now, 50 trucks a day are rolling down the road, but peace of our hearts shut down in every load. And if we love this land, all we ought to make a stand before it's all all the way by the Sandman. In every town, all around our deck of the woods, there's a sand rush we'd slow way down if we could. But our sands in demand, the Sandmans arrive, the pricey commands will rule all the life. A hundred trucks a day are rolling down the road, but peace of our hearts shut down in every load. If we love this land, all we ought to make a stand before it's all all the way by the Sandman. All the way, all the way, yeah, they're all in it, all the way, so they can fracture the ground in some other town. A thousand miles away, all the way, all the way, all the way, yeah, they're all in it. All the way, all the way, so they can fracture the ground in some other town. A thousand miles away, we sure don't care for the noise and the dust. The thing that scares us is who can you trust to tell the truth. What's going down our wealth, what's blowing in the wind, what's growing in ourselves. Five hundred trucks a day are rolling down the road, but peace of our hearts shut down in every load. If we love this land, all we ought to make a stand before it's all all the way. All the way, all, all the way by the Sandman. Bryce Black wrote, "The Sandman" and performed it with Yada and with Bruce and Julie of the group, Pachule. This is Spirit and Action, a Nordenspirit radio production. Find us on the web at nordenspiritradio.org. With nine years of programs, free for your listening and download. And find where we're broadcast, post comments on our programs. Please, we love hearing from you. And there's a place to donate on the Nordenspirit radio site as well. We don't live by bread alone, but something on the plate can help. I especially want to encourage you to support your local community radio station with your hands and wallet. What a wonderful, irreplaceable source of alternative news and music. So let's prove the kind of power we can create when we work together creating real community. We'll continue on our way with more musicians working for the Earth with their efforts and their music. Next up is Sarah Thompson, located just off of Lake Superior near an area threatened by a proposed mine. We'll join Sarah now by phone. Sarah, I'm really excited to have you back for Spirit and Action. It's great to be here, Mark. Thanks for having me. In this beautiful season in this beautiful place known as the Midwest, how are you doing up there? Is the water still blue and beautiful? It is, yes, and it's finally melting. There's still some ice on the lake. Well, I've chunked, I should say, but it's green and the air is full of the smells of the Earth coming back to life. So that's wonderful. Well, you've got this song, Precious Water, and you do have some Precious Water. I think Lake Superior is the world's largest freshwater lake. Yeah, yeah, that is true. And there's been tack-and-ite mining up there for a long time. I recall it from back in high school reading articles about it. The water, still good quality? You know, you should ask the experts in that area. I know that this new mining proposes much more of an issue of the danger of polluting the water. Supposedly, this new mine proposed near the boundary waters would be very detrimental. Is it also going to affect, I assume, the groundwater, the water that we're drinking coming up through wells? Yeah, it would be affecting the groundwater and, you know, eventually that ends up running into Lake Superior. But also just the groundwater, in particular, one of the things that shows it would impact some of the wild rice patties in the area. And so that is also of concern. So tell us about the mine. I'm sure there's a lot of listeners who aren't hooked into this northern end of Minnesota and what's happening over there. They may be hooked into the KXL pipeline. They may be hooked into fracking, but maybe they don't know about what mining can do to an area. What's proposed? Climate is a company mine in northern Minnesota. Not in the boundary waters, but right on the boundaries of the boundary waters. And let me mention that the boundary waters is this million acres or whatever, wilderness, which is open to canoeing. You go in there and you get to experience wilderness in a way that you find almost nowhere else. Yeah, no motorized boat. You can go in to canoe and camp and it's quiet like you've never, you know, I mean, obviously you're hearing the sounds of nature. But that's another even thing of this mine besides the danger of the water pollution is the noise pollution. It would also cause in this preservation area. It's a carbon mine. There's other things that would be mined, nickel, but the real danger is what it would do to the water. And the 500 years of water treatment or more plan that can happen to keep the water from supposedly doing damage. So it's a big concern for many environmentalists and even more. It's just people who care about that area. And your song is called Precious Water, which anybody with any sense knows how precious water is to us. Less than 1% of the water on the face of the earth is fresh water. That's what we depend upon for so much of our lives. We don't live without fresh water. Your song, the line that reverberates for me, is we don't want your mind. Now certainly there's some people who say that. How generalized is the feeling up there? You know, there's definitely people on both sides. There is of course the need for employment in the area. And I, for one, can't say that I don't use any of those things that are being mined, you know, like there's copper and I'm sure the phone that I'm speaking on. So, you know, it's a complicated issue. And I think that there's definitely a strong movement against the mine because of the concern in this area for our area. It's the environmental care of it. But it's definitely, it's controversial because there are, it will provide not a lot, but short-term jobs for people. But the long-term consequences are just to me not worth it to many not worth it. And I think that calls us to also not to think about protecting the water, but to think about how do we create jobs for people that are not harmful for the environment. So it's a call to action on a number of levels. And do you perform this in public or do you only do it in the quiet of your little room? No, no, I definitely perform in public and have been in concerts as well as gatherings where people are speaking about this particular issue. So, but no, I share it in my concerts as well. It's part of the set to bring awareness. I sang it recently in Tucson, Arizona, and they're like, "We need that song here. Just have to tweak the words a little bit before a May and May were organizing against you." So hopefully people can hear it in that sort of folk way of tweaking lyrics to particular issues that could apply to other scenarios. In the meantime, our listeners, they're getting awfully antsy saying, "Where is Sarah's song?" Enough already. So here it is, folks. Sarah Thompson, her song "Precious Water" from her album "Somewhere to Begin", her website, SarahThompson.com. Sarah, thank you so much for constantly leading the good work in so many spheres of life. And thank you for sharing this today for Spirit in Action. Well, thanks so much, Mark, for having me on. We don't want your sulfide mind 20 years here, then you leave it behind. We don't want your acid brines, even in the river, noxious wine. Short-term job creation, long-term devastation. Don't want your pollution crime, we don't want your mind. We don't want your mind, we don't want your mind. We don't want your mind. We don't want your company, I wish pretty plants have gone a proper dish. What do we have when you finish, mess the grass and poison fish, market profit, and your gun first class? We get toxic, drinking glass, bottom lines the dollar sign, we don't want your mind. We don't want your mind. We don't want your mind, we don't want your mind. Rain falls on the ground, groundwater flowing down. Simple lesson, science fair, water goes back in the air. Put in the water what you made, you breathe it in some other day, drinking well, wishing, dream precious water, precious water, living steam. We don't want your careless plant, creeping in this forest land. Cleaning water, redeeming, we don't want your helping and your economic contribution. We don't want your noise pollution in our ancient past. We don't want your mind, we don't want your mind. We don't want your mind, we don't want your mind. Rain falls on the ground, groundwater flowing down. Simple lesson, science fair, water goes back in the air. Put in the water what you made, you breathe it in some other day, drinking well, wishing, dream precious water, precious water, living steam. We don't want your sulfide mine 20 years here, then you leave it behind. We don't want your acid brines, even in the rivers, not just wine. Short term job creation, long term devastation. We don't want your pollution crime, we don't want your mind. We don't want your mind, we don't want your mind. Precious water, precious water, living steam. Precious water, precious water, living steam. Sarah Thompson, agitating for protecting the waters in her region by Lake Superior. Precious water is the song. I'll keep moving along so we can get two more guests in. The next topic is fracking. Our guest is the stalwart activist and also fertile folk musician David Rovex. I've tracked him down on tour over in Germany and we've got him on the phone to talk about fracking. David, it's great to have you back today for a spirit in action. Great to be back. Just a note to our listeners, you're not exactly on the site, I mean normally you're in Portland, Oregon. Right now you're in Germany, part of a tour, tell me what you're doing. Yeah, on the way to Berlin at the moment and on a tour sort of near the end of a two month tour around Europe. You know David, I'm having you on for this special that I'm collecting music and people who are active about certain current environmental issues. Fracking, you've written the song No Fracking Way. Is that an issue that they have there over in Germany or in France or Italy? Yeah, Transband it. Germany, there is fracking happening. There's fracking happening in England and Denmark and really, really big way happening in Poland. And I don't know where I'll ask but certainly it's an issue where I tour in Germany and Denmark a lot. It's in England, it's an issue in all these places in a big way. But it's not happening to the extent to which it's happening in the US as far as I can tell only sort of duplicated in Poland but it's definitely happening elsewhere in Europe. And there have been successful actions to stop it like in Sussex and in southern England, protests pretty much stopped the fracking plans that were happening there. Does that mean when you get your water out of the tap there, it doesn't flame? So far, so good. Yeah, I don't think it's gotten to that point anywhere in the countries in Europe that I'm spending time and I'm not sure about Poland. I mean, of course, in the US, it's so extreme in some of the places in North Dakota and Oklahoma, Texas, Pennsylvania, you know, it's just been disastrous. Massive loss of clean water and massive rise of certain kinds of can'ts and clusters. It's really just been devastating. Does it affect you in Oregon? You know, I should keep better track. I don't think there's any fracking happening nearby. It is all sorts of other terrible environmental contamination and Portland has terrible record of cleaning up or monitoring industry. And so there's massive numbers of toxic sites all over the city, but I'm not sure about how fracking in particular is affecting things. Do you do anything yourself personally, David, to try and not contribute to the toxic stream? Well, sure, but generally, I'm a pretty toxic kind of guy really flying around as much as I do. I strongly believe and encourage others to consider that until we overthrow the capitalist system, there's no hope for humanity. And there's nothing in between. It's all well and good to take measures yourself as an individual, but basically the system is rigged towards our collective annihilation. And until we can stop spending half of our tax dollars on the military and on building more highways and on continuing this kind of mad suburban development that the way that things are structured in the US is just complete and other unmitigated disaster. And we really have to change course in a way that's so much bigger than what anybody as an individual can possibly do in terms of trying to live within the structures of the society we have. We have to change course as a society. It's a big order, but there's nothing short of that that's going to save us, I think. And since you are traveling around in Europe right at the moment, are you seeing any governments there that seem to model the kind of development, the kind of way that we could be working so that we're not as destructive with the earth? What are the hopeful signs that you see? Well, there's all sorts of social movements that are pushing towards this kind of more sensible development. And definitely there's although there's a heck of a long way to go anywhere, the model of capitalism is really different in many European countries compared to the US and the kind of progress that some countries are making in terms of zero emissions buildings and in terms of massive investment in alternatives, renewable energy. I mean countries like Germany and Denmark are definitely doing a lot better than the US. Nobody's going far enough in terms of what actually needs to get done, but in terms of models that are far better than the US, they definitely exist right here in Europe and the biggest one would be Germany. And since you're in Germany right at the moment, do you see solar panels everywhere? I keep seeing these things on Facebook about something like the majority of their electricity comes from solar. I don't think it's not nearly at that level yet, but definitely there's been a lot of solar panels that have come up in Germany over the past few years. It's very noticeable. There's also tremendous numbers of windmills, more windmills than anywhere else on earth, but the solar panels are definitely proliferating and pretty soon by law they'll be required to be on every house in the country. And there's also lots of commercial buildings that have done all sorts of retrofitting to be zero emissions. Every hallway in every building you ever be in in Germany has these lights that are on a timer that go on and then go off and meet automatically in 30 seconds. I mean there's just all sorts of things that are required here that are built in the way that they do things here that makes for a much more energy efficient society. Also the cars, I mean what we call a hybrid car in the US is just what they call a normal car here in terms of the gas mileage. Like any car will get kind of gas mileage that a so-called hybrid gets in the US. So there's all different standards of how regulated things are here. Well it's exciting to hear that there are alternatives being put into place somewhere and we can only hope that the US will catch up. Of course with your music shocking us into the direction that we need to go it makes a little bit more hopeful. Would you mind sharing your song no fracking way? I would be more than happy to. And I also wrote a song called Oil Train about the oil train explosion and derailment and killing of 47 people in Quebec last summer too. I think those two songs are both on the band camp site that can be downloaded there on Spizer reading my blog or you can find those songs on SoundCloud. SoundCloud.com/DavidRovix. So you've got SoundCloud, you can find David Rovix, you can go to his website, DavidRovix.com. Links on Northern Spirit Radio right now. We'll say goodbye to David as we listen to, no fracking way. Have a good tour there David and we'll be talking to you soon. Alright, thanks so much, take care. There was not one morning a man was standing at my door. He said hello, I'm from Halliburton, have you heard of us before? We'd like to lease your backyard to drill for natural gas. It's called hydraulic fracturing and is the very past for a clean energy future. Above the Marcella stone, plus we'll give you lots of money in a new mobile phone. I said you are a corporate crook, I don't believe the things you tell and you can drive right off my property. And then go straight to hell, no fracking way, no fracking way. I don't trust corporate salesman, whatever they may say, no fracking way, no fracking way, no fracking way. My neighbor was out of work and things were looking grim. So when the fracking guy came knocking, he had better luck with him. The company said don't worry, everything will just be fine. So just sign your name right here sir, on this dotted line. Pretty soon the water was tasting pretty dire. One day I lit a match and the water caught on fire. I thought about a lawsuit, then stumbled upon the fact that fracking is exempted from the Clean Water Act, no fracking way, no fracking way. This hot democracy works here in the USA, no fracking way, no fracking way, no fracking way. If the situation weren't sufficiently unattractive, we tested the water and found it. It was radioactive, now my property is worthless, and there's a tumor in my brain. Half of my neighbors are sick, and the rest are just in pain. Maybe I should take the money, move off to live somewhere, but all the places I look at, they're fracking there. Our choices now are simple, lose that which we hold dear, or communicate the message. In a way that's unstoppably clear, no fracking way, no fracking way. Tell these freckers to frack off, both tomorrow and today, no fracking way, no fracking way, no fracking way, no fracking way. David Rovik's delivering the message, full and clear, no fracking way. One more environmental message, an issue for today, but I've got more folks to interview yet about this current Earth protection issue series. So we'll have on part three soon, including an extended interview with one of my perennial favorites, Magpie. Right now, we'll close out today's Spirit and Action program, talking about oil and gas pipelines, including the infamous Keystone XL pipeline with Sarah Pertle. We've got her by phone over in Massachusetts. Sarah, it's great to have you here today for Spirit and Action. Thanks, Magpie. I'm so glad to be able to talk to you. And it was so fortunate that I stumbled upon, and this is a song that you haven't even released yet, that is relevant to one of the issues that I knew I needed to do. That I knew I needed to bring out the current environmental concerns, issues, and the work that's being done today. So what's your connection with tar sands and pipelines and that kind of thing? This is very weak. In my small town in Western Massachusetts, our town meeting approved a community rights resolution as one of towns all up and down a proposed high pressure gas pipeline that would take fat gas, Tennessee gas company, Kinder Morgan, to Dureka and send it to Europe. So that's one reason why I feel very connected. But I also wish that I could have gone to the Reject and Protect action from a group called Cowboy in Indian Alliance, where April 26th, they had 5,000 people in Washington, D.C. So the very day when they were putting up 15 TPs in a covered wagon and 40 people riding on horseback, I wish that I was there. And so this song was a way to join and also to say, "How can people all over the world who have a common vision of what we want to be getting to the future? How can a song come to action stitch us together?" Which of course has been kind of your life work in any case, you know, stitching together in terms of activism. It goes way back for you, right? Well, interestingly enough, the place that it really started is with the music of Pete Seeger. When I was 12, I was able to hear his songs. And he wrote this song that today the words are sung, "Just my hands can't tear a prison down. Just your hands can't tear a prison down." But if 2 and 2 and 15 make a million, we'll see that day come round. So the 12-year-old standing in a group of people singing that, I took it really seriously. And I got excited about how do people support each other towards the kind of world we want. So again, specifically, there is a pipeline that's coming near your town and the cowboy in Indian Alliance, they're working on the pipeline for tar sands that's trying to cross through the entire midsection of the United States. How did these get tied together? I've been going to meetings as a part of a group called Help Town Community Rights, and we even think of it as a large community rights revolution where people are using power they've always had, but we're maybe afraid to use it. We didn't understand how the legal tools worked, and I would be able to stand up to companies, like in this case, Tennessee Gas, to say this would really damage our lives, not only hurt the people where the pipeline would run. If we look at what that tar sands project is all about, it's basically a hose that would go from the Alberta tar sands in Canada to Texas then to be shipped overseas. And they're using steam to loosen and melt the tar sands, and it's just causing massive skyrocketing of cancer as well as violating the treaties of indigenous people. So it's this whole change in our world for companies powerful entities to say we get to go in and do whatever we want so that we can harvest petroleum. So my song is intended to say we want a sustainable future. You know, we don't want to think of new ways to have an oil infrastructure. But more than that, what's happening is that the connection heart to heart between people, Chief Marvel Looking Horse, who is a spiritual leader of the Dakota, Lakota, Nakota nations where the exile pipeline would cross. I've been really watching and learning from him. He came twice to the area of western Massachusetts where I live, and I was very affected by meeting him. So when I heard that he and also Bobby C. Billie, another ceremonial leader in South Dakota, that same week in April, were having a council fire and they called it Uita, meaning coming together. It just grabs me as something that I wanted to connect with. And you've got a video out there on YouTube, but the pictures that are part of that video, where did they come from? Well, my friend, George Aguilar, selected photos, and he helped to put together this whole YouTube. So he's part of Climate Action Now, and he's on the steering committee. And the two of us both wished that we could have been there in Washington DC at that encampment of all of the TPs, the 15 TPs. But instead, we wanted to have a way through the photos for people to be able to see what it was like. What I love thinking about is that all over the planet, the majority of people, the 99% want a life that is renewable, sustainable, that we can hand over to our children, and that each of us can do something that will support that. Back in 1978, I moved specifically here to what's known as Franklin County in Western Massachusetts, because President Carter had given money to us as a county to figure out how to be using only renewables by the year 2000. And so I wanted to be among people who had a similar vision. Very recently, I heard Laurie Wyatt sing a song that Ann Pete Seeger had written. It was one of the last ones that Pete recorded, and it has this beautiful line that says, "What we do now, you and me, will affect eternity." So I live with that, and I ask myself, "What can I do?" And that's the spirit in which the song was created. I think that people carry questions with themselves, and it matters which questions we carry. Like a question might be, "How can we stitch the world together?" Or I think these words came from public ourselves, "How can we make a world worthy of our children? How can we join long distance with other people in a way that makes a difference?" So I really love to talk with children about, "Well, what are the questions that you're carrying?" He was reading about Chief Arville looking horse and how he says something similar to Pete when Pete says, "What we do now, you and me, will affect eternity." He says, "Do you think that the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of danger, know that you are essential to this world?" So I feel like this action, the reject and protect action that brought together ranchers and people from different tribal nations, is that kind of, "How can we call ourselves further to act together?" I wanted to have a way to support it by writing the song. Well, we're going to hear a lot more about you when I do an interview with you shortly on Song of the Soul. So, folks, please tune in to nordonspiritradio.org, Song of the Soul, to hear my interview with Sarah Pertle. Right now, Sarah, we want to share Uwita. Again, that means? Coming together, and the words came from Chief Arville looking horse. Via my site, you can find a link to the video of Sarah Pertle singing and images from the actual cowboy and Indian Alliance event. Working together, we are all going to make it possible to have this planet cleaner and specifically to not have the pipelines, which are such a danger to people and the environment. Sarah Pertle, Uwita. They raised up TPs on the national mall. Indians and cowboys hear a common call. They invited thumbprints on one T.P. cloth to say, "Don't let this sacred land be lost." Uwita, people of the world. Uwita, our common prayers are heard. Uwita, we night and stand. Uwita, no pipeline may cross this land. When the water pours and the reflecting pool, it's ogolala water from the aquifer. The very same water that this line would cross, but we won't let this sacred land be lost. Horses ride against the flood of oil and stop the tide that would destroy the soil. With this T.P. cloth, we unite as one. The mending of the sacred hoop has begun. When the T.P. is folded and becomes a gift, and the elders stand on the T.P. cloth they lift. When they carry it to a resting place, the sacred fires that we like can't be erased. May the forewinds rise, Uwita, may our hearts combine, Uwita. May the ones who lead, heal their wounded minds, find their conscience and reject the lines. Uwita, people love the world. Uwita, our common prayers are heard. Uwita, we night and stand. Uwita, no pipeline may cross this land. Uwita, no pipeline may cross this land. Sarah Purdle, Uwita, finishing off part two of our three installments with musicians sharing on today's environmental issues. Part three will include an extended interview with Magpie and with other folks. We'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You