Throughout history, South American nations have had their futures decided by a small number of people. It began with the Spaniards, who, as soon as they touched ground, let two or three religious and political authorities rule from 5,000 miles away. Sadly, little has changed since then, except now the ruling few are the corporate elites, empowered through government deals like the recently ratified free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States, NAFTA, and thousands of illicit licenses given to multinational companies. But this trend is beginning to change, as protests in Peru over the last month have challenged the country’s largest mining project.

The story of this ambitious and dangerously exploitative project dates back to 1993, when the US company Newmont Mining Corp. arrived in Peru to open the Yanacocha gold mine in Cajamarca, a region located in the North of the country. Using a process called “micro-mining,” which requires large quantities of a dilute cyanide solution to capture minuscule pieces of gold, Yanacocha ended up contaminating the region’s water sources–a fact overloked by then-president Alberto Fujimori and his intelligence strongman Vladimiro Montesinos.

When they left power in 2000, their many crimes over the years began to come to light. In regards to Yanacocha, it was revealed that Montesinos accepted bribes from Newmont to convince the Peruvian Supreme Court to allow its mining operations in Cajamarca.

For 18 years, the people of Cajamarca have used water that was contaminated with chemical waste to irrigate their crops and, in a chain of disasters, it has affected their animals as well. Farmers reported widespread livestock deaths and a 40 percent decrease in crop yields, since 2009. The contamination has also caused breathing illnesses in children, denounced by the inhabitants but continually denied by national health authorities.

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Farmers from Cajamarca during a strike to protest the Conga mining project on November 24. (Click to enlarge)

Today indigenous people and peasants are fighting against the recklessness of the few by rejecting the new Yanacocha project Conga, which–due to the amount of water it’s expected to consume–will lead to the disappearance of  the region’s many lagoons. At least three have already disappeared due to Yanacocha’s over use of water.

The fight against the Conga project has been brutal, and even some violent uprisings have taken place. On the sixth day of protest, eight people were shot with pellets by the police, and three police were injured. The media insisted on covering these images, encouraging the institutional rejection to the protests. But nonviolence has prevailed among the demonstrators who condemn the contamination of water as a violent act coming from the private interests in collusion with the State.

Current President Ollanta Humala has used the issue to his advantage. Before being sworn in to office in July, Humala announced his total commitment to the protesters’ cause, insisting that “the lagoons of Cajamarca are not for sale, because you can’t drink gold, and you don’t eat gold.” But seven months later–in order to stave off protests and resume mining operations–Humala’s cabinet declared a 60-day State of Emergency for the Cajamarca region, suspending such constitutional rights as personal safety, home inviolability and freedom of reunion and association.

Given that seven percent of the Peruvian GDP comes from gold and mineral mining, companies like Newmont can rely on governmental support when dealing with protests and strikes. So far, 6,000 Yanacocha workers joined the strike that forced Newmont to suspend its operations for more than a week last month, which then led to the suspension of the Conga project.

The Peruvian movement against mining companies is growing in strength and along with the protests in Cajamarca, it has expanded to Puno in the South, and 14 other regions as well. If the government will finally decide to give up their claims in Conga, it will have to do the same across the country and the main threat will be over the national short-term finances.

The State of Emergency was lifted on Friday after local leaders agreed to talks and suspended protests, but the prospect of negotiations yielding anything positive remain uncertain. First Minister Salomon Lerner recently resigned after a previous fruitless five day attempt at negotiations.

The demonstrators have stated their commitment to returning to the streets every time Newmont attempts to restart the Conga project without taking measures to prevent the destruction of their community’s environment, health, and ultimately, its future. For this, the Peruvian movement stands as an example to other Latin American countries, where mining projects are still in a negotiation stage and the prospect of short-term profits is still alluring.

Environmental victories are so rare that apparently even environmentalists don’t quite know how to kick back and rejoice. At a rally in Trenton, New Jersey on Monday, discussion veered between joyous celebration of Friday’s announcement by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to indefinitely postpone a vote that would have paved the way for 20,000 natural gas wells in the region and serious preparation to one day block their construction through nonviolent direct action.

These activists can be excused, however, for mixing business with pleasure because even more rare than an environmental victory is one that’s complete and total. Much like the recent announcement by the Obama administration to delay a decision on the KeystoneXL pipeline that would transport tar sands oil from Canada to Texas, the DRBC vote delay was hardly an indictment of extreme carbon-based extraction that poisons water and the atmosphere. If anything, it’s a temporary roadblock to something government seems all too happy to allow.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie have already promised to vote “yes” for drilling in the Delaware River Basin–a region that provides drinking water to 15 million people. Corbett is no surprise because drilling–or fracking as it’s more commonly called–is already a common practice in Pennsylvania. New Jersey, on the other hand, does not have any natural gas deposits. But it does have Christie, who earned nearly $30,000 last year from selling his shares in a company whose clients include gas drilling operators.

The holdouts as of now are New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Delaware Governor Jack Markell–neither of whom are sure bets to stay that way. Both would apparently switch their vote if the right regulatory processes were put in place. Nevertheless, Markell’s decision to vote “no” came as a surprise, since it is believed that the Obama administration–DRBC’s fifth and final voting member–was pushing the Delaware governor to vote “yes” so that it wouldn’t have to and thereby tarnish its environmental image.

Shrewd as that may sound, it’s not hard to believe given Obama’s tar sands pipeline non-decision. He has demonstrated a clear intention to avoid angering either side of the issue, as he enters campaign season. But it was only until recently that Obama realized he had to worry about environmentalists. As actor Marc Ruffalo told the crowd of several hundred gathered in front of Trenton’s Patriots Theater, “There’s no doubt that President Obama chose not to take this vote today because of what we did with the Keystone pipeline action in Washington D.C.”

Fittingly, perhaps, these two issues overlap in ways beyond just the activists and politicians involved. They represent desperate efforts to wring the planet of its remaining fossil fuels, which have until recently been cost prohibitive due to their inaccessibility. Fracking, which is short for hydraulic fracturing, is a process that requires mass amounts of water and chemicals to tap into natural gas reserves. Methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas, is usually released as a byproduct, effectively counterbalancing any benefits of switching from coal. In turn, the tar sands industry uses enormous amounts of fracked gas and water to extract the oil from its reserves, which are second only in size to Saudi Arabia. Given that every barrel of tar sands oil emits three times the amount of greenhouse gases as conventional oil, it’s no wonder NASA scientist James Hansen has warned that further development would be “game over” for the climate.

Furthermore, the tar sands and fracking processes are known to contaminate water, poison the air, and, in general, diminish the quality of life. For many, these environmental health factors are the most pressing. Craig Sauter–a resident of Dimock, Pensylvania, which has been called natural gas drilling’s ground zero–spoke of his troubles getting Cabot Oil & Gas, the company that drilled on his land, to pay for poisoning his well water with methane, arsenic, barium, and uranium. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has also refused to help despite Sauter’s exhaustive efforts to engage them. The state capitol police are now threatening to arrest him if he calls the DEP one more time.

Upon hearing this, the crowd chanted, “We will call for you.” Plans are also in the works to for a protest in Dimock at the end of the month, when Cabot takes away the drinking water tank they provided Sauter, before shirking any responsibility.

Another stirring account was rendered by Stephen Cleghorn–an organic farmer from Pennsylvania’s Jefferson County, whose land was leased for natural gas extraction without his knowing. He offered a heartfelt, if not wrenching, story of testifying before an impotent Department of Energy subcommittee on natural gas, while his wife was dying of cancer.

“I have a power in my soul now to enforce a moratorium of one if I have to,” he said. “But I don’t have to, because we are building a mighty movement to stop this.”

Immediately following these testimonials, the crowd marched to the New Jersey State Legislature, demanding they “ban fracking now.” Of course, New Jersey’s legislature was the first of any state in the country to ban fracking. It passed overwhelming, but Governor Christie vetoed it, proposing a one-year moratorium instead. Nevertheless, activists seem hopeful that the legislature might overturn Christie’s ruling. And why not? They’re starting to get the kind of momentum leaders were hoping for years ago.

In his address, Oscar-nominated director Josh Fox, whose 2010 documentary Gasland made fracking a national issue, reminded the crowd of one such leader, the recently imprisoned Tim DeChristopher.

“Three days ago, I got a call from a guy named Tim DeChristopher in a federal penitentiary on his 30th birthday… He says to me, ‘I feel really isolated in here. I feel one step behind everybody.’ And I said, ‘You were five steps ahead to begin with. And he was looking at all the things that have happened, the victory of the KeystoneXL. And his birthday happened to be the day that we won this [the fracking vote delay]. And he was looking at Occupy Wall Street. And he said, ‘I feel like we’re headed toward something much much bigger than this.’ And we are. He said, ‘You know that sound when you walk into the opera house and you hear all the violins and everybody tuning up? And everybody’s starting on a little bit of a different note, but they’re trying to get to the same note. All these strands are coming together. We’re fighting extreme energy. We’re fighting KeystoneXL. We’re fighting mountaintop removal. We’re fighting the banks that finance these things. So we’re tuning up this orchestra and we’re going to be here for a really long time.’”

In keeping with the mood, however, Fox made sure to follow up this feel-good sentiment with a hard-hitting call to action, saying, “When it comes time to blockade the well-sites, we’ll blockade the well-sites.” And before the day was over, the crowd retreated to a nearby Quaker meeting house, where nonviolent direct action trainings began–assuring that this movement, if the time has come to call it that, is not about to let any amount of success go to its head.

• A few hundred protesters marched on Waikiki Saturday as leaders of Pacific Rim nations gathered for a summit to discuss free trade agreements and other issues. During the gala dinner, renowned Hawaiian guitarist Makana spent almost 45 minutes repeatedly singing his new protest ballad “We Are the Many” instead of the expected instrumental background music. Over a dozen heads of state, including President Obama, heard Makana’s message that included lines such as “The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw…. And until they are purged, we won’t withdraw.”

• Police confronted an estimated 1,000 protesters in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday after clearing parks occupied by demonstrators for weeks. 50 were arrested after refusing to leave one of the parks. The demonstrators regrouped in the streets, blocking traffic for hours.

• Twenty-seven “Occupy St. Louis” protesters were arrested early Saturday morning after defying an existing park curfew.

• Portuguese civil servants and soldiers staged an anti-austerity protest in Lisbon on Saturday, a sign of the rising social tensions in debt-hit Portugal over deep cuts in spending.

• Thousands of demonstrators rallied in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday against oil legislation that could cost the port city and surrounding state billions of dollars in revenues.

• Angry over a range of environmental issues, about 250 protesters erected a mock coal-fired power station on the steps of Australia’s Parliament House before marching backwards to Treasury Gardens, arguing the government’s policies have taken Victoria backwards.

• More than 350 people linked arms to form a “human chain” on the Stirling Bridge in Fremantle, Australia on Sunday to protest the live animal export trade.

• About 100 peaceful marchers sent a clear message Sunday to vandals who torched cars and scrawled Nazi swastikas in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn. The march included about 25 people from the Occupy Wall Street movement in Manhattan, which put out a statement condemning the vandalism.

• More than 2,000 students marched through London last week to protest cuts to public spending and a big increase in tuition fees.

• Hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded the streets across Yemen on Sunday to demand the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh on the anniversary of his rise to power in  1978.

• Dozens of tents have been erected in Tel Aviv, with plans for further encampments in other Israeli towns and cities, to protest high house prices.

• Several Indian and Pakistani citizens Saturday gathered near Rajghat, Delhi and formed a human chain on Saturday to protest the July 13 Mumbai blasts that left at least 19 people dead and injured 130.

• Journalists at the BBC walked off their jobs Friday to protest planned job cuts as a result of lower government funding.

• Greenpeace activists dressed as polar bears occupied the Edinburgh offices of Cairn Energy on Monday as the environmental group stepped up the pressure on the company over its Arctic exploration plans.

• Around 2,000 farmers, backed by student groups and academics gathered in front of the presidential office in Taipei late on Saturday to protest government proposals that would make it easier for farm land to be forcibly turned over to developers.

• Around 200 people gathered at the Jordan Press Association headquarters earlier today to denounce an attack on journalists by riot police on Friday.

• Greek taxi drivers blocked roads to Athens’ airport and main harbor today, holding up thousands of tourists at the start of a two-day protest against plans to liberalize their trade.

• Several hundred people attended a protest march against the EU-IMF austerity programme in Dublin on Saturday.

• A small group of mass transit activists against freeway expansion unfurled a banner overlooking the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday that read “L.A. Beyond Cars.”

On Saturday, rallies against genetically modified food were held in cities across the United States. The Millions Against Monsanto campaign, which is organized by Organic Consumers Association, is now planning on taking their effort to the next level. On World Food Day, October 16, they are calling for a million people to come out in a nationwide day of action.

While mobilizing a million people sounds like a daunting task, they have broken it down in a unique way. They are forming 435 local chapters, one for each congressional district, and are seeking to attract 2,300 supporters in each location. If they can reach this goal, they will have a million people in the streets.

I like this approach in that it reminds me of the way that military contractors influence legislators. Boeing for example manufactures the F-22 in 44 different states, which had made it next to impossible to muster the votes to cut its funding.

The Millions Against Monsanto campaign is not calling to make these genetically engineered foods illegal, but simply to make GMO labeling mandatory by law. They believe that if people knew which foods were genetically modified they would buy less of them and instead go organic. This is apparently what has happened in Europe, where there are almost no genetically modified foods in grocery stories because labeling is required.

The above video lays out the group’s strategy and also gives some advice on how to start a chapter in your area. To sign their petition click here and join a local chapter if one already exists.

Over at UN Dispatch, Mark Leon Goldberg has an interesting post on how world food prices, which reached an all-time high in December and could be at a similar level for January, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), are a contributing factor in the protests in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond. As Goldberg explains:

So what does this chart have to do with the riots in Egypt?  Several commentators have noted that the high price of food staples contributed to the overall feeling of discontent in Tunisia.  There have already been protests over the sharp increase in food prices in Jordan earlier this month.  Reading the writing on the wall, the Algerian government even put in a huge rush order of wheat.This is not to say this is the cause of the civil unrest in Egypt today. But these questions of political economy really cannot be ignored when trying to understand the protests across the Middle East and North Africa.  If this trend in the Food Prices Index continues, it is not unreasonable to expect that civil unrest will spread to several other countries.

And at Climate Progress, Joe Romm has an interesting piece looking at how this rise in food prices is connected to climate change.

President Obama and the State Department are considering the permit for a 2,000-mile dirty tar sands oil pipeline, known as the Keystone XL, that would run from Canada through six US states to refineries along the Gulf Coast. With 900,000 barrels of dirty oil flowing across the heartland every day, public water supplies, crops, and wildlife habitats will be at great risk.

Opposition to the pipeline has already begun to take shape, with protests, town hall gatherings and press conferences taking place in Detroit, Chicago, Lincoln, Houston and Missoula. There’s even a TV ad (shown above) calling on President Obama to “prevent the next oil disaster” that’s set to air on CNN, MSNBC, and Comedy Central.

For more information, check out the No Tar Sands Oil campaign website.

• Tens of thousands of union members, social activists and students gathered in Seoul Sunday to protest the Group of 20 economic summit meeting that begins on Thursday.

• Tens of thousands of government employees marched in Portugal’s capital on Saturday to protest an austerity budget that would slash their salaries.

• Thousands of protesters in France and Germany have attempted to block a train carrying nuclear waste. Some protesters chained themselves to the train tracks while others drove trucks on to the tracks. Hundreds of protesters have been detained.

• On Sunday, Cafe de Coral, Hong Kong’s biggest fast-food chain, said it had ditched plans to scrap paid lunch breaks for its employees after a public and Facebook campaign was mounted boycotting its restaurants.

• Hundreds of gay and lesbians protested the Church’s position on gay marriage by kissing publicly as the pope passed by on his way to the  Sagrada Familia in Barcelona on Sunday.

• In Oakland, police arrested 152 protesters who streamed through the streets Friday after a white ex-transit officer received the minimum two-year prison sentence for fatally shooting an unarmed black man on a California train platform two years ago.

• A group of 400 survivors of the Bhopal disaster have been protesting Obama’s visit to India. In addition, the cotton growers of Vidarbha, who are suffering immensely due to the prevailing agrarian crisis, staged candlelight protests ahead of US President Barack Obama’s India visit on Friday.

• Hundreds of people convened in downtown Pittsburgh on Tuesday to protest the development of “fracking,” a new and untested method of natural gas extraction that is threatening to take over Pennsylvania and neighboring states.

• More then 4,000 BBC employees started a 48-hour strike over pensions today, forcing the state-funded broadcaster to curtail programs and run pre-recorded shows.

• Concerned residents of the Navajo Nation, along with activists, constructed symbolic black crosses in front of Kayenta Mine in Arizona, which was named last spring as one of the most dangerous mines in the nation.

• About 40 North Carolina State University students painted the school’s “Free Expression Tunnel” black overnight to protest racist and homophobic graffiti.

• 11,000 London Underground staff began a 24-hour walkout on Tuesday night to protest job cuts.

• Hundreds of people in India’s Amritsar City gathered for a sit-in early Wednesday morning to protest the federal government’s delaying of justice to the victims of the 1984 Anti-Sikh riots.

• An extremely frail 38-year-old woman dubbed “The Iron Lady” marked 10 years without voluntarily taking food or water Thursday — a hunger strike launched to protest an anti-terror law that grants Indian soldiers sweeping powers to crack down on rebels.

Two weeks ago, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers signed workers’ rights agreements, included a promise to pay farm workers a penny more per pound of tomatoes that they pick, with Pacific Tomato Growers and Six L’s Packing Co., the first deals that have ever been struck by the organization with major tomato growers themselves. As Kari Lydersen explained at Working In These Times:

These back-to-back victories show that when confronted with social and economic pressure and a nationwide grassroots movement that refuses to back down, even the seemingly worst employers can do an about-face. Both Six L’s and Pacific Tomato Growers, which signed the agreement with the CIW last week, were responsible for cases of modern-day slavery which the coalition had worked with the Department of Justice to expose and prosecute in recent years.

Knowing they’d be hard-pressed to get results from the growers themselves at the start of their campaign a decade ago, the coalition targeted high-profile buyers, starting with Taco Bell and later McDonald’s, Burger King, Whole Foods, Sodexo and others with the idea they would pressure growers to do the right thing.

The fact that growers are in quick succession now signing on with the coalition shows an historic sea change in farm worker-employer relations – even as the coalition and their allies continue to target tomato buyers including the Florida-based supermarket Publix, Kroger, Trader Joe’s and Quiznos.

Paying a penny more per pound could raise farm workers’ income from about $10,000 to $17,000 a year. And perhaps even more importantly, the agreements signify that farm workers are indeed human beings with human rights and dignity whose labor is crucial to feeding the country and making possible the nation’s massive restaurant industry.

This campaign for worker justice, however, is not the work of these farm workers alone. Over at God’s Politics, Brigitte Gynther writes of several easy steps that we can all take:

As people of faith, and as consumers, we can ask major supermarkets to do their part in ensuring that the people who pick our tomatoes are treated with the dignity they deserve as God’s children.  Send an e-mail to Kroger, Stop & Shop/Giant, Publix, and Trader Joe’s asking them to work with the CIW to implement a code of conduct for farmworker rights and pay an additional penny per pound of tomatoes to improve farmworkers’ wages.

You can also deliver a letter to the manager of a supermarket near you next time you go grocery shopping and ask the manager to pass it on to corporate headquarters.

And, of course, if emails and letters don’t work, which they rarely do by themselves, protests and other forms of nonviolent action can create more pressure on these corporate holdouts.

As genetically modified organisms become more prevalent, so do protests against them. In just the past few months, French activists have uprooted GM vines at a research center, Spanish activists have destroyed experimental GM Maize crops, and Haitian farmers have burned Monsanto seeds. But are these destructive direct actions the best form of protest against the rising corporate control of the food system and its very genetic material?

My good friend Zack Denfeld, a self-described information ecologist and lecturer at Pacific Northwest College of Art, is developing a creative form of resistance through his Center for Genomic Gastronomy. Taking a somewhat Yes Men-inspired, tongue-in-cheek approach, Zack is extending the logic of GMO’s to their unnatural conclusion by putting them in situations their inventor’s never considered.

In his first experiment with the Center for Genomic Gastronomy, Zack made sushi rolls out of GloFish—a patented brand of GM fluorescent zebrafish, which is publicly available as a pet. The idea, as Zack explains in the above video, is to give people the opportunity to beta test transgenic fish before the FDA approves GM salmon—soon to be the first genetically-engineered animal for human consumption.

We’ve made a number of recipes with these [GloFish], so you don’t have to wait for approval from the government to try these transgenic fish if you’re interested. What’s really interesting about this is they’ve been existing in science labs and all of a sudden one guy had a really interesting market strategy, which was to make them available to the public. And we think that’s really innovative and we’re building on his innovation by cooking with them. I don’t know how happy he is about that, but I want to ask you how happy you are with these recipes. If you’re all for transgenic foods, you’ll love my sushi rolls. If you don’t like my glowing sushi rolls you may want to tell the US FDA to hold off on that transgenic salmon. The decision is up to you. You are no longer passive. You are active in this process.

In another experiment—this time going after the secret nature of GM research—Zack created a recipe called Vegetarian Bouillabaisse. It calls for something known as the Fish Tomato—a somewhat mythical GM design that involves a tomato being inserted with a cold-tolerant gene from a fish.

In our research we found documents that proved this very much did exist. This brings up really important questions. Is the Fish Tomato vegetarian? Is it an animal? Is it a plant? We don’t know. But it’s important to eat this, taste this and find out. The problem is we can’t because both the genome and the data that came out of the research vanished in a cloud of confidential business information and corporate appropriation. The issue here is that if we don’t have the data we’re not doing science. Scient is about verifiability and repeatability. So we need to stop calling the people who don’t give us data scientists. They’re not scientists. They’re just biohackers like me and you. Until they make their data public we should not call them scientists.

When I spoke with Zack about his work, he stressed the imporance of being able to reach these so-called scientists with our concerns. They are people after all. And they can be reasoned with and persuaded to reconsider their actions. But when their work is challenged destructively, they, like most people, respond with indifference. They just write off the protesters. If however, the protests are targeted at discrediting their work and exposing their inability to anticipate its consequences, they are far more willing to listen. Having scientists on our side, instead of on the corporation’s side, may be the key to preserving control over our food systems.

• About 100 people demonstrated Thursday outside the Japanese Consulate in the 300 block of South Grand Avenue in Los Angeles as part of a worldwide protest against the annual slaughter of dolphins in that country.

• Union workers shut down all of France’s 12 oil refineries on a fourth day of nationwide protests over pension reforms Friday.

• About 100 workers from the Greek culture ministry barricaded themselves inside the Acropolis on Wednesday by padlocking the entrance gates and refusing to allow any tourists in until their demands for unpaid wages were met. But riot police cleared the site after obtaining a court order.

• Activists with Change Chevron infiltrated and interrupted a speech of Chevron’s CEO at the University of Chicago on Wednesday, and turned it into conversation about his company’s toxic pollution in Ecuador.

• Dozens of people dumped what they labelled as “GM-canola weeds and GM-contaminated soy infant formula S-26″ on Monsanto’s Melbourne office today as a protest to coincide with UN World Food Day.

• More than 100 Chinese writers, lawyers and activists have released a letter urging the government to release the Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo and other political prisoners.

• Activists with the Sierra Club stood frozen outside a Board of Trustees meeting on Purdue’s West Lafayette campus yesterday to protest the university’s decision to “remain frozen in the 19th century and not move into a clean energy future” by building a new coal powered boiler.

Earlier this month, New Yorkers won a nine-month moratorium from the state Senate on the dangerous and highly-polluting drilling practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” The inspiring story of civic action that led to this decision is told by Maura Stephens in a recently published piece by Yes! Magazine.

Many fighting this battle had never before been involved in political issues. But after seeing the impacts of fracking around the country or in their own daily lives, they got active.

They organized and attended forums, panels, meetings, and rallies—sometimes alongside public figures like actor Mark Ruffalo and singer-songwriter Pete Seeger. Day after day, thousands of people called state senate and assembly offices to pressure for the moratorium. Achieving it was a first-round victory beyond expectations—a small but important win.

With their air, water, land, properties, communities, and health on the line, residents have made the campaign a priority, often sacrificing family time, leisure time, and sleep to keep abreast of developments and share information. “The petrochemical-industrial complex is stealing our land and our health,” says New York resident and architect Joe Levine. “Life as we know it will change forever if we don’t stop them.”

Levine has a home near the New York State border in Damascus, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Jane Cyphers, and their two daughters. The family has turned over their lives to this issue since they were first approached by gas companies wanting to lease their land. They soon realized that their beloved Delaware River would be imperiled by drilling. Levine cofounded Damascus Citizens, a grassroots group made up of people who are fighting to keep the Delaware safe from fracking. Their influence, and the experiences of the town of Dimock, Pennyslvania, inspired Josh Fox to make the documentary Gasland.

Sullivan County, New York, resident Larysa Dyrszka, a retired pediatrician, has also taken on the role of state-level activist for the first time.

“Nobody thought drilling would really come here, to a populated area, with technology that couldn’t ensure against harmful effects to our drinking water and health,” says Dyrszka. “Little did we know it was already happening in Texas and Colorado and in other populated areas.”

Together with her friends and neighbors, Dyrszka started SACRED—Sullivan Area Citizens for Responsible Energy Development. On January 25, Dyrszka joined hundreds of New Yorkers from all corners of the state to lobby their representatives in Albany—many, like Dyrszka, for the first time.

“I was hooked,” Dyrszka says. “Now, whenever Roger [Downs, of the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter] or Katharine [Nadeau, of EANY] or any fellow foot-soldier groups suggest a lobby day, I’m there.”

For months, Dyrszka and her fellow activists continued building relationships by phone, e-mail, and in person with legislative staff, sending them scientific, health, legal, economic, and other information on fracking.

Those involved in the organizing, however, also credit the release of the powerful anti-fracking documentary Gasland with influencing the moratorium decision.

Filmmaker Josh Fox brought his award-winning Gasland to many New York cinemas in early summer. Fox, who’d traveled to 24 states to document the heartbreaking human stories behind the industry hype about a “safe, clean fuel,” has appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and other national shows. Gasland has been showing on HBO since debuting there in June. Its scene of a man lighting the water coming from his kitchen tap on fire has become iconic of fracking’s dangers to drinking water. Everywhere it shows, more people join the antifracking movement.

Having recently watched this film, I can attest to its action-stirring message. The devastating effects fracking has incurred on many rural American communities—from explosions to undrinkable water and disease—leaves little doubt that the fight must go on until a permanent moratorium is installed. Thankfully, the movement to do this seems to be growing.

n September, the New York Assembly will vote a similar moratorium bill. Activists are working to ensure it gets to the floor for a vote. Another focus is on educating outgoing Governor David Paterson, whom they expect to sign the moratorium bills (he had threatened to veto, but that’s now unlikely, given the huge majority Senate passage).The incoming governor will be the focus of attention post-election. Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins has called for a total ban on the practice. Democrat Andrew Cuomo and Republican Rick Lazio say they are in favor of “safe” drilling. Activists are already showing up at Cuomo’s statewide rallies to let him know that fracking isn’t safe.

Antifracking advocates believe their multifaceted approach—based on educating themselves, the public, and legislators—will work. They’re optimistic that their concerns about their health, homes, and drinking water won’t be ignored.

“Cooperation from around the state made us succeed in the Senate,” says Dyrszka. “None of us are being paid. Nobody’s offering us money, now or in the future. We’re just fighting for our lives, and that ‘s why we’re winning these little battles.”

• Men wearing face masks of British Prime Minister David Cameron gathered in London on Friday to call for a ban on the cloning of cattle for human consumption, following the discovery of a cloned U.S. cow that was slaughtered and eaten in Britain.

• Two members of the environmental group Six Degrees climbed onto the roof of Queensland parliament house in Australia last week to display an anti-coal mining banner that read: “Don’t undermine our farms.” Meanwhile, hundreds of farmers and green activists staged a peaceful protest outside parliament.

• The “We Are Guahan” coalition in Guam gathered at a major intersection in Tamuning on Friday to protest the use of historic and ceremonial lands for military buildup.

• Some 150 protesters gathered outside a federal prison farm in Kingston, Ontario this morning to protest its closure. They say the government is ignoring the rehabilitative and healing effects that farming offers low-risk inmates.

• Up to 60 people have been camping out in front of the county government building in Santa Cruz since July Fourth to protest the city’s camping ban, which prohibits sleeping on public or private property from 11 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. But deputies rousted the homeless protest camp just after midnight Saturday, arresting five people and handing out 17 other misdemeanor citations.

• Workers who were fired by a Brooklyn kosher food producer after demanding overtime pay have been protesting outside the owner’s house and a supermarket this summer, and preparing for a return to the National Labor Relations Board this fall.

• Baristas and community supporters shut down a Starbucks in Omaha last week demanding that management reverse all cuts to healthcare, staffing, and benefits that have been imposed during the recession. The baristas claim that executives have no justification to squeeze working families with Starbucks raking in profits of $977.2 million in the past four fiscal quarters.

Last week, Corporate Ethics International launched a multi-year ad campaign – including an online video (above), ads on Google and tourism websites, and billboards in Seattle, Portland, Denver and Minneapolis – calling on tourists to boycott Alberta over the province’s oil sands. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Tourism is important for Alberta, which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year to its wilderness parks and resorts in Banff and Jasper, and to the annual Stampede rodeo and outdoor show in Calgary.

Alberta officials and members of the oil sands industry were angry at the ad campaign. Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach said in a press conference Wednesday that the campaign “does, of course, anger me to a large degree because it’s an attack on about a hundred thousand Albertans whose lives depend upon the tourism industry.”

In an interview with CTV News Channel,  executive director of Corporate Ethics International Michael Marx explained the motivation for the “Rethink Alberta” campaign and why the characterization of the the effort as an “attack” isn’t accurate:

“We think the Alberta government has been pretty arrogant in ignoring the concerns of environmental groups in the U.S., in Europe and in Canada, as well as First Nations, and that it’s been deceptive in its public relations in claiming that they’re greening the tarsands,” Marx said.

“We felt like we needed to be more aggressive in calling the government out.”

He added that his group doesn’t wish to harm tourism businesses but hopes they will get involved in oilsands issues.

“Ultimately we think that the tarsands industry, by contributing to global warming, actually endangers the tourist industry,” he said.

Whether that message will resonate with Albertans is yet to be seen. Next week the group is rolling out a similar ad campaign in the UK.

In other tar sands news:

Another campaign has been growing in the U.S. that hopes to block TransCanada from building the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry crude from Alberta to refineries in Texas. Henry Waxman, a prominent congressman, and 50 other legislators stated their opposition to the project.