First Day of FERC Blockade Begins at Beyond Extreme Energy in DC

Approximately 100 activists from across the Country gathered to shut down the offices of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). This was the first day of a week of actions to close FERC down and demonstrate that their actions are incompatible with all that sustains life on Earth, including our climate system and clean water, air, and land.

Today's action was led by some activists from the Great March for Climate Action, a 3,000-mile cross-country trek from Los Angeles that arrived in Washington D.C. on November 1. The goal of the Great March for Climate Action is to change the heart and mind of the American people, our elected leaders and people across the world to act now to address the climate crisis.

"We walked 3,000 miles across the country and heard firsthand from families and communities the hardships they are facing due to extreme energy extraction," said Faith Meckley, Climate Marcher from New York.

Meckley herself has been affected by a FERC rubber-stamp approval. Her original intentions were to walk 2,000 miles from New Mexico to D.C., but she left the March early on Oct. 10 to return home and be a part of the fight to save Seneca Lake and the Finger Lakes region from dangerous methane storage in unstable salt caverns.

Communities across the nation have risen up to fight pipelines crossing the land, gas stored under lakes, and compressor stations and fracked-gas export plants in our backyards, but FERC has remained unmoved, unresponsive, and unaccountable. FERC has answered only to the fossil fuel industry, rubber-stamping every project.

Today at FERC, that image of FERC destroying communities was reversed, as organizers used a massive portrait of families from Maryland and New York whose homes and communities are threatened by fracking infrastructure FERC has already approved. Organizers also brought a model town, which they erected outside their blockade to prevent employees from entering the building.

"The object of the blockade art is to give FERC no other option but to destroy the town and families in order to get to work, said Kim Fraczek, Sane Energy Project of New York. "The destruction of the art serves a metaphor of reality."

The blockade of FERC is planned to continue all week. More information about future days activities and the mission of theBeyond Extreme Energy week of actions is available here.

Live updates are posted on the Facebook pages of Environmental Action andCCAN, and using the twitter hashtag #FERCdoesntwork