PHOTO/CHARLES MILLE
CARBONDALE, IL—The past two years the region often referred to as “Little Egypt” in the bottom third of Illinois has been ground zero in the fight to keep our land, air and water from being contaminated by fossil fuel extraction corporations, i.e., coal, oil, and gas. Coal has been mined here since the start of the twentieth century. Many battles were fought by miners in their quest for control over the conditions of their lives. A century ago 100 million tons were mined by 100,000 miners. Today, 30 million tons is produced by around 3000 miners. The wealth extracted left the area along with the coal.
Most mineral rights do not belong to the occupiers of the land here. Those were bought up long ago by absentee speculators. Abandoned mines and stripped areas burden the state with clean up costs in the billions. Toxins seep into the soil and water. The region suffers from poverty and ill-health as a consequence.
Today the oil and gas industry have sold the people a new snake oil. This one is dangled before the speculator’s eyes, sparkling like fool’s gold. “Fracked” oil and gas is the new “fool’s gold.” And it is “fools” that plead the case for it. An estimated $500 million has been spent on leases thus far. Now the corporate marauders are pulling out all stops to guarantee their rewards.
Included in their bag of dirty tricks is to verbally “attack” the working people of Southern Illinois who dare voice opposition to the corporate plan to “frack” the shale, potentially causing earthquakes, contaminating aquifers, despoiling our Shawnee National Forest, polluting air and contributing to global warming. We are now labeled “outside agitators” and “extremists.”
When residents of Johnson County successfully petitioned to put a “Community Bill of Rights” initiative on the March ballot (which if passed would support the county commissioners passing a law to ban “fracking,”) the Illinois Chamber of Commerce put up $23,000 to counter the local group’s ads in the two jointly owned county papers. The spokesperson for Southern Illinoisans Against Fracturing Our Environment was then called by one of the owners and told they would no longer accept our ads and to come pick up the inserts already printed and paid for which were scheduled to be inserted in the papers for two weeks prior to the vote. However, the oil and gas industry placed vicious and vile ads in those same papers attacking the local groups. The ballot initiative failed 42% to 58% due to these bullying tactics. Some county commissioners dropped their opposition to “fracking” and joined in the attacks.
We, the people of Southern Illinois must strengthen our resolve to fight this corporate take over. We can learn lessons from the struggle going on in Benton Harbor, MI where Reverend Pinkney is under house arrest for initiating a recall vote of the mayor who is in the pockets of the Whirlpool Corporation. We must expand the struggle, unite with our class brothers and sisters, and take control of the corporations before they destroy us.
Cathy Talbott is a former telephone operator, a job lost to automation. She was a homeless mother of two and fights for welfare rights. A former co-host of a weekly community radio program out of Carbondale, IL, “Occupy the Airwaves,” Cathy is the Environmental Desk for the People’s Tribune.
There is nothing to be gained by fracking in the Shawnee Forest region, there is however the potential for great damage.
The Vienna Times in Vienna, IL, was the newspaper that blocked information being shared with the public by the anti-fracking groups. Citizens were told lies such as the Bill of Rights would tell farmers what chemicals they could and could not use on their crops. The Bill of Rights had not been written because the commissioners would have done the writing. They knew that and anti-frackers made no comment or took no position of what farmers could or could not do. Three members of the group WERE farmers. What happened in Johnson County was so 1984, shameful! Don’t let the commissioners off so easily as is stated at the end of this piece. One had even sold his own mineral rights.