A rally and demonstration will be held October 18 in downtown Hollister during rush hour to protest the county’s recent approval of extreme oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing in San Benito.
The volunteer grassroots group called San Benito Rising welcomes anyone who objects to having their environment poisoned by Big Gas and Oil to join their cause on the corner of 4th and San Benito Streets, starting at 4:30 pm on October 18. This is part of a national protest called Global Frackdown 2, organized by Food & Water Watch, which will occur across the country on October 19. San Benito Rising is holding their rally a day earlier to take advantage of the Friday commute traffic in our community.
Please bring your homemade signs objecting to the county supervisors’ recent “Oil and Gas Ordinance” cobbled together this summer, which environmentalists believe rolls out the red carpet to the oil and gas industry to drill in this county at bargain-basement prices. Hydraulic fracturing — fracking — injects up to 700 chemicals, mixed with huge volumes of water and sand, deep underground at high pressure in order to release gas and oil from shale rock and dormant deposits. The practice has poisoned entire water systems in Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, and Wyoming, and recently led to a citizen-demanded moratorium on fracking in New York. San Benito Rising also objects to extreme oil practices such as cyclical steam injection which will be used at a site six miles from the Pinnacle National Park.
For more information, call San Benito Rising media coordinator Kate Woods at 831-693-4533, or email inquiries to rockturner8@yahoo.com.
Visit our website at https://sites.google.com/site/sanbenitorising2/
Food & Water Watch Global Frackdown info is at http://www.globalfrackdown.org/