A Eulogy for David Braun, a Lion of the Anti-Fracking Movement
I often close rally speeches by saying that the struggle for climate justice is a David and Goliath fight and that our slingshot is made of science, love, and grassroots political power; David, you were the David of Davids.
The following remarks were delivered at the memorial service of anti-fracking activist David Braun in Oakland, California, on February 24, 2024.
Hi, I’m Sandra. I think the first task of any eulogy is to say what your relationship is to the person whose life we are celebrating.
But I don’t know how to do that, David.
I could say that you and I were both co-founders of a coalition in New York, that we fought against fracking, and that we each brought to that campaign complementary skill sets. But that sounds so transactional.
What we shared was a mission and a vision. A vision of a world freed from the tyranny of the oil and gas industry.
I could say that you were my mentor. When we helped formed New Yorkers Against Fracking, I was just a biologist deeply concerned about what was happening to the climate—and to children and to wildlife—when the Earth is turned inside out, when gas companies blow up the bedrock using water as their battering ram.
What I brought to the table was toxicology. I had never spoken at a rally, never sent out a press release, never drafted a sign-on letter. I hadn’t yet publicly confronted the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) commissioner in such an intense way that Bill Moyers ran the clip on PBS.
When I met you, I hadn’t risked arrest. I hadn’t even sent out a tweet.
I didn’t even have a smart phone. It was you who called me and said, “SANDRA! Sandra, if we are gonna do this, I need to be able to text you. SANDRA!”
Many activist leaders in the climate justice movement—including Mark Schlosberg, who will speak next—have generously taught me how social movements are built and sustained.
But I’m a college professor and am more comfortable with exegesis than bottom-line messaging. And it was you, David, who was my most patient tutor.
But even that doesn’t explain why you were the only person, besides my kids, who was allowed to call me at 2:00 am. Which sounds like we were friends. And we were. But mostly what we discussed in the middle of the night wasn’t a personal heartbreak but a request for a fact check or a review of a Facebook meme. If we were friends, it wasn’t because we bonded over shared hobbies or childhoods.
What we shared was a mission and a vision. A vision of a world freed from the tyranny of the oil and gas industry. Where the seas don’t threaten to swallow our cities, where rain and snowmelt are not our enemies. Where rivers flow inside of riverbanks, not up in the atmosphere. Where 3 million people a year don’t die from breathing fossil fuel-generated air pollution, where drinking water does not catch on fire, where two-thirds of America’s bird species are not headed for extinction.
You loved birds. Once, at an outdoor press conference, right before you took the mic, a flock of geese V-ed overhead, low enough for us to hear their wingbeats, and you burst into tears at the sudden disruption. You needed a moment to compose yourself. “Did you feel that?” you said. “It’s what we are fighting for, Sandra.”
Once, the New York DEC dropped a 1,537-page book of revised draft regulations governing how fracking was going to move forward in New York and gave the public only 30 days to submit comments, an interval of time that corresponded to Hannukkah, Christmas, and New Year’s. David and I hatched a plan called 30 Days of Fracking Regs, which we ran like an online advent calendar.
Every day, we sent out an email blast describing everything wrong with one of the regulations and all the ways it could be critiqued, based on science, and invited people to sacrifice their holiday in the name of heroism, create a unique comment based on the information that we provided, and do that over and over for 30 straight days.
I provided the data. David created the social media campaign. And to pull all this off, we worked 16 hours a day for 30 straight days. David encouraged holiday comment-writing parties, an idea that took off, and when it was all done, we had delivered 25,000 public comments, each unique, to Albany.
Other allied groups ran their own comment campaigns and, all together, we directed so many sentences to the agency that their staff couldn’t process and read them all before the legally mandated deadline. And that was the beginning of winning.
So, David what is the word for that?
We were brave together.
We were warriors together.
You were my brother-in-arms.
And afterwards, when we went out to eat, you flirted with the waiter and walked through the restaurant rearranging all the flowers on the table—because beauty matters and because you were also a floral designer. And when we needed the waiter to go away so we could debrief on sensitive political tactics, you put your hand on mine and said to him, “Oh, I’m sorry. We haven’t looked at the menu yet. We are just so into each other.”
We were gay together.
And for all of our bravado, we were vulnerable together. David and I had an understanding that came out of our shared experience of an early-life medical crisis. For me, it was a cancer diagnosis at the age of 20. For David it was HIV.
David and I understood what it feels like to have youthful invulnerability taken away, to be an outcast among our peers, to feel our lives discounted by the medical insurance industry, to feel uncertainty and dread. To face mortality as a young person is isolating.
We talked about that. How our personal health crises became a portal to social activism. How it created, for each of us, an allegiance to all those who are dispossessed, disenfranchised, harmed, and ignored. Silence equals death.
I believe that the specter of our possible deaths, which sat on our shoulders from a young age onward, was why we fought with our whole hearts, why we were all in. I also believe, David, that it was trauma. That it sometimes made us reckless and willing to take risks that we shouldn’t have.
I forgive us.
I often close rally speeches by saying that the struggle for climate justice is a David and Goliath fight and that our slingshot is made of science, love, and grassroots political power.
David, you were the David of Davids. The maker of slingshots. You are red tulips in Paris, wild geese flying over New Jersey, the voice that called my name. I love you.
