Rise Up
I'm so angry and full of emotion, I can't even focus to write down my thoughts. But, I need to be here on LJ, even if I can't express myself well.
The last month of my life has been focused on the Occupy movement, rural poverty, social injustice, and oil. Light stuff, huh?
I grew up in rural SE Ohio, in a very poor Appalachian town. My mom and stepdad have 10 acres of land...rolling hills and woods. They have a cabin in the woods built by an Amish family. They have llamas, deer, rabbits, skunks, fish, fox, and more birds than you can imagine. None of that matters anymore because the oil companies have determined the county is sitting on a lot of oil. Everything around my childhood home has been sold...541 mineral leases just last month. The type of drilling that they are doing is called fracking. It's where they drill deep into the earth and spray a chemical/water mix into the ground at high pressure. The pressure causes the rocks to fracture (it mimics a small earthquake) and oil is then sucked out. It makes the water poison and the people/animals sick. It makes the rich richer. In fact, it was Cheney who signed the law which made the oil industry exempt from the Clean Water Act and other environmental protections. Intellectually, none of this is a surprise. Emotionally, it hurts a lot more than I expected. I feel like I am fully waking up for the first time.