The People’s Tribunal
On Human Rights and Environmental Justice Impacts of Fracked Gas Infrastructure
Saturday, October 28th 2017
• 11:30am to 7:00pm
City Space • Charlottesville, VA
What are the environmental injustices of fracked gas infrastructures? While many know about the environmental hazards of fracked natural gas pipelines, few people know who is being forced to give up their human rights to clean air, water, and soil for the economic benefit of corporate stockholders. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) routes target rural, poor, African American, Native American, and Appalachian communities from West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina to bear the disproportionate burden of their toxic polluting fracked natural gas infrastructure. What is a People’s Tribunal? A people’s tribunal creates a public forum to present evidence for and information about issues critical to a just and civil society, especially when local, state, and federal governments are not responsive to public concerns. The UN Committee on Eliminating Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the Human Rights Impacts of Fracking call on member nations to:
“Undertake independent and effective investigation into all cases of environmentally polluting activities and their impacts on the rights of affected communities; bring those responsible to account; and ensure that victims have access to appropriate remedies.”
Experts in the fields of environmental and medical science, environmental justice, Virginia Slave and Freedmen, Native American and Appalachian history, and fracked gas economics will preside as Judges to hear first-person impacts and expert testimonies. Judges’ findings and recommendations will be sent to these human rights committees and will form the basis around which local groups can organize. Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the Human Rights Impacts of Fracking (tribunalonfracking.org)
Help us to act now to counter imminent threats:
The ACP and MVP companies expect the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue certificates of use soon and begin construction along routes where no one will receive access to this gas. Together they will present Virginians with an incalculable bill for the costs of leaks, explosions, environmental degradation and climate change. Vote in November, and hold those elected responsible for these impacts. Who is at risk? Union Hill in Buckingham, Virginia is an 85% African American community built by Freedmen. White descendants of former plantation owners sold their land to the ACP LLC where the only Virginia mega-compressor station is to be built, within 150 ft. of households in this populous minority community. Compressor stations pose documented health and safety risks with their release of highly toxics gas emissions, air-borne particulates, and continuous noise pollution. The area in W VA where the MVP & ACP jumbo pipelines begin will be replete with
(more) compressor stations, metering stations, extraction plants, cryogenic plants, and soon, cracker plants and more fracking than ever. West Virginians are the source colony, yet they get little attention or help. Across the U.S., new pipelines leak, break, and explode more often than even those 40 years old, causing permanent well-water, stream and river contamination, and destruction of property and its value, a nightmare for those unlucky to live in their path. Landowners along the ACP and MVP are coerced by threats of eminent domain to give up their property rights and live with these risks. Several Native American communities are directly impacted and all proposed routes were once Native American lands. To Testify, Volunteer, and Attend
To Testify (impacted people and ecosystem, environmental injustices, economic, construction, safety, etc),
register here: https://goo.gl/forms/nVCFPOmRexCdkGc22
(Interested testifiers without internet access,
please contact: Lakshmi Fjord (510) 684-1403)
To Register to Volunteer and to Attend this event, please sign up here:
https://goo.gl/forms/GlxiLyvYTKkZaewx2
Support this Effort:
• Like and share on Facebook: VA Peoples Tribunal on Human Rights Environmental Justice
and Fracked Gas: here
• Share our live-stream widely
• Attend the next-steps organizing meeting following the testimonies, 5:00-7:00 pm
•Make a tax-deductible donation to:
Highlanders for Responsible Development- ABRA
P.O. Box 685 Monterey, VA 24465
Join allied groups to bring these stories into local, state and national spotlight! Friends of Buckingham, Virginia Sierra Club, Allegheny Blue Ridge Alliance (ABRA), Concern for the New Generation - BREDL, Virginia Student Environmental Coalition, Appalachian Voices, Bold Alliance, Protect Our Water Heritage Rights (POWHR), Yogaville Environmental Solutions, Journey the James, Cville Rising, 350 Central Virginia, Preserve Montgomery, Preserve Franklin,Preserve Giles, Oil Change International, Rachel Carson Council, Virginia Organizing, Interfaith Power and Light, Cville Indivisible, ARTivism Virginia, Friends of Nelson. For more information about the impact of pipelines please watch
"True Costs of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline ACP"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fds4cmFa3Vg
