Building A State-wide Mass Movement to Criminalize Corporate+Government Hydrofracking

Richard Grossman will lead a series of three workshops on Building A State-wide Mass Movement to Criminalize Corporate+Government Hydrofracking in New York …While Asserting People’s Authority to Define and Control Our Energy Futures)...[While Sowing Seeds To Govern Our Communities and Our State]; that is, opening multiple organizing fronts and building-in 2nd, 3rd, 4th steps towards dethroning institutional, cultural, educational, financial, constitutional, legal and cultural mechanics of our disembodiment & disempowerment.

Workshop I: Liberation via Reality

What groundwork has been laid for such business+ government as usual?

That is, what happened in the past that keeps people divided, disabled, subordinated, indoctrinated, disembodied, mangled & handled?

USA’s and NY State’s designs of governance, laws, jurisprudential theories & precedents, regulatory agencies, the USA’s federal structure, with regard to:

(1) the Earth; (2) human labor; (3) laws of the land defining decisionmaking on money, investment & production as “ private;” (4) industrial, financial, utility, media,
insurance, lawyer, accounting, propaganda and etc., corporations; (5) the corporate class’ non-profit corporations; (6) our municipal and non-profit corporations; (7) access to remedy; (8) speech, assembly and petition; (9) consent of the governed, majority rule, self-governance; (10) Earth law & cosmic imperatives; (11) History...

In current USA political and societal contexts, what is: “ Energy”?

“Energy & the Economy?” Energy and Jobs?” “Alternative Energy?”

“Energy & E*N*D*L*E*S*S M*O*R*E?”

What can we learn from past people’s struggles against business + government as usual?

Workshop II: Conceptualizing Commensurate Campaigns

Who are WE? What is our base?

The nature, structure, collective memories, inherited ideologies, language, jubilations, melancholias, hopes, apprehensions, goals, struggles of anti-fracking people in NY
& beyond, summer 2011.

What does it mean to ban corporate+government hydrofracking in New York State?

When is a “ban” not a ban? What seeds have people sown for banning corporate hydrofracking? What educating, what trainings, have taken place within our base? What are relations with State and National environmental, social justice and related groups?

What changes in power relationships, structures of governance, law, habits of thought, can we forge to ban fracking in ways that assert people’s authority to make ALL
energy decisions? To make all GOVERNING decisions....? What changes in ourselves will be necessary (for example, in how WE see, think, speak, write, talk, educate, organize)? What tools do we have? What tools don’t we have?

What legitimacy do we claim for our demands: where -- in history, culture, law, science, morality, solidarity, etc., -- do we plant our feet?

Realizing short-term, mid-term, long-term, goals & strategies; opening creative offensives & multiple fronts.

Building-in 2nd, 3rd, & 4th steps.

Reaching beyond single issue struggles and out to diverse constituencies.

Training ourselves to:

* Design campaigns to reveal and contest constitutional, legal and cultural barriers denying remedy, denying authority to govern;

* Sow counter-histories, counter-ideologies, counterconsciousness;

* Adjust the state -- especially its institutions of ideology, education and rule -- to Earth’s and our values, experiences, imperatives;

* Undermine NY State Government kingly prerogatives & Federal monarchical preemptions;

* Sabotage corporate job and royalty and tax carrots, along with corporate and politician threats to freeze and starve us, jobless, in the dark;

* Subvert “legal” violence by sheriffs, police, National Guard;

* Engage in escalating civil disobedience targeting illegitimate law and constitutional doctrine, perverted culture, pillars of the Corporate State, and Lally columns of liberalism.

* Escalate the costs of governance-by-the-few.

Workshop III: Solidifying Our Base

Establish basic principles and goals in context of long range visions of public law and public governing authority; Design campaigns to ban fracking in ways which teach public decisionmaking on energy investment, technology and policy; Lay out commensurate strategies, tactics, arenas of struggle, language...

Proposed educating/organizing vehicles:

We write, and oblige state legislators to enact:

* laws criminalizing corporate+government hydrofracking;

* laws correcting people’s disembodiment at work, & which provide a Workers’ Guarantee of Education & Income a la Tony Mazzocchi’s concept of 25 years ago;

* laws nullifying corporate contracts for land, gas, oil, and water;

* laws banning incorporation;

* (for starters).

Framing multiple offensives;

Building-in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc., steps;

Designing & implementing internal education and training;

Expanding our base by creating state-wide (multi-state?) anti-fracking confederation(s), We compel legislators to enact, and governors to sign, our law criminalizing corporate hydrofracking. With our tapestry of next steps on “energy” investment, technology, use -- and on “public governance” -- embedded in the consciousness of our base, we present State officials with a new list of demands.

Solidifying our base.
About Richard Grossman

The lead presenter for the workshops will be Richard L. Grossman. A native New Yorker back home after 35 years of wandering, Richard co-founded and taught ‘Stop the Poisoning’ Schools in the ‘80s; ‘Rethinking The Corporation, Rethinking Strategy’ Schools in the ‘90s; and ‘Democracy Schools’ in the ‘00s. He is co-author of the books: Energy, Jobs & The Economy (1979); Fear At Work: Job Blackmail, Labor & The Environment (1982; 1991); Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy (2001); and author of the pamphlets: On the First Day We Bulldozed it: Building the Rainforest Movement (1987); Taking Care of Business: Citizenship & the Charter of Incorporation (1993); Revoking the Corporation (1996); and The WTO, the US Constitution and Self-Government (1999), along with scores of articles. Richard is active with Frack Free Catskills in Ulster and Green counties, NY. For more information about the workshops, contact Richard at (845) 338-6857 or rgrossman@riseup.net