MarcellusProtest.org is an information clearing house about Marcellus Shale gas drilling and activism and related issues. Although this website’s primary geographic focus is Western Pennsylvania, MarcellusProtest.org also includes content pertaining to the five states in which the Marcellus Shale is located – as well as other Shale gas formations across the U.S. A new social movement is in the making, and it’s going national.
Help us keep this site updated with news, announcements, events listings, groups, resources, and more. Anyone can register to post on-topic events and stories to this website, and all visitors (registered or not) may post comments anonymously to many items.
Please get involved!
P.S. Note that this website site appropriates – for the purpose of cultural commentary – some of the design features of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, which is an industry-sponsored group “committed to the … development of natural gas.” They’ve got a lot more money than we do — perhaps on the order of 1,000,000 times more. But recall that Goliath, for all his size, didn’t fare so well. (You can also click here to see more “Credits” for our website developers.)
Marcellus Protest, archived. accessed 17 Dec 2024.
Read more about circa 2010 – 202o environmental activism in Pittsburgh, PA here:
Suzanne Staggenborg. Social Movements, Communities, and Campaigns in Pittsburgh. 25 Jan 2023. The Metropole.
Following the successful demonstration, many participants worked to build an ongoing umbrella organization, known as Marcellus Protest, and to organize smaller-scale actions and demonstrations across Pennsylvania. The Shadbush Environmental Justice Collective brought together several informal groups of activists to form a radical environmental collective in 2010 and quickly became involved in organizing the November 3 demonstration and subsequent anti-fracking activities.
Tactics and campaigns are clearly important in building social movement communities that support subsequent collective action. Movement organizations often dissolve or become inactive, but networks of supporters remain, and they often become involved in new actions, organizations, and movements. Movement campaigns leave behind networks, websites and social media, experienced activists, and other mobilizing structures that continue to support collective action. For example, many veterans of Marcellus Protest became heavily involved in a coalition called Protect Our Parks (POP), which opposed plans to lease county parks for shale gas drilling. After POP dissolved, activists went on to other activities and organizations, often using tactics learned in earlier efforts, such as testimony before city and county councils.
See also: Widener, Patricia, et al. Fractured Communities: Risk, Impacts, and Protest Against Hydraulic Fracking in U.S. Shale Regions. Rutgers University Press, 2018. Project MUSE.
See also: The Marcellus Shale Coalition, has just released a video promo that would make Leni Riefenstahl proud. A more comprehensive myth-busting is forthcoming.
Editor’s Note: For now, read “Marcellus Shale: Asking Tough Questions of the Oil and Gas Companies” by Claudia Detweiler and “Lies and Broken Promises” by Jon Bogle, which both expose the bias and inaccuracies the “Penn State Report” and other economic impact studies.
And read this assessment by Robert W. Howarth, of Cornell University, who writes, “natural gas is far less attractive than other fossil fuels in terms of the consequences for global warming.”
See also: Sourcewatch article on American Clean Skies Foundation.
Katie Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, joins Clean Skies News to discuss the environmental issues of natural gas drilling, groundwater contamination and how natural gas can protect the environment.
See: Natural Gas Drillers Protest Nomination of Fracking Critics for EPA Review Panel
See: Gasland – The Debate
See: Poison Fire
See: Pittsburgh’s drinking water is radioactive, thanks to fracking. Only question is, how much?
