Bonnie Reynolds has distributed thousands of copies of her newsletter “The Flowback” around the state. It is one of the few print media sources of information on fracking in New York. Always a good read and deserving of your support.
Here is Bonnie’s update below:
Dear Friends of The Flowback,On August 26, The Flowback was delivered, inserted into the Pennysaver, to 22,000 homes in Tioga County, New York. Tioga is one of the 5 “demonstration” (read sacrifice and guinea pig) counties where, word has it, Governor Cuomo will soon unleash the Hounds of Hydrofracking upon New York State. Pro-frackers in Tioga are in a tizzy. One of their amusing assertions is that “the President of Venezuela and the King of Saudi Arabia paid for it – The Flowback is propaganda aimed at keeping us dependant on their oil.” Eeerrrrrrrrrh! Wrong answer. It was just Bonnie, dipping into her savings account yet again. And the success of the saturation of Tioga County was apparent at the Owego town meeting the other night. I am told that, on account of The Flowback, so many people jammed and overcrowded the place that they had to postpone the meeting.Hopefully, however, I won’t have to continue to, for the most part, pay for The Flowback activities single-handedly. I am delighted to tell you that Sustainable Markets Foundation has agreed to be the Fiscal Sponsor for the “Flowback Project.” (SMF is the organization that sheltered Bill McKibben’s 350.org when it started out.) This means that donations are now tax-deductable, so that we can approach major donors, and we can apply for grants.(Indeed, we have already begun to do both of those things.)At this point there are over 100,000 Flowbacks out there, a new printing of 20,000 just received, and 9000 more being printed and going out in Pennysavers and newspapers in Broome County, one of the sacrifice counties, this weekend. Most of the new printing of 20,000 is spoken for, so that another printing will soon follow. The Flowback Movement is mushrooming. And the blanketing of Tioga County, and now Broome, must be only the beginning. We have got to educate hundreds of thousands of people, eventually millions of people, who currently have no idea about the tsunami that is about to engulf them, so that the number of people expressing indignation and anger finally gets a message through to the minds of our Oil-and-Gas-Industry-financed-politicians.(A really distressing piece of news received this morning. Some Egyptian billionaire has just paid 1.8 billion dollars for hydrofracking rights in Iowa. Iowa, the breadbasket of the U.S. and of much of the world. About to be destroyed, irretrievably poisoned for the profitability of Oil and Gas billionaires!. We have become a third world nation, with “foreigners” buying up our land, our rivers, our mountains, our everything. And then there was the news yesterday of the vast tar sands mining about to be opened on federal land in the west. Yes. Millions. We have got to get The Flowback out to millions of people.) When I first wrote The Flowback and came up with the money to publish the first 10,000, I had no idea that I had created a tiger and was taking it by the tail. That 10,000 was gone in a week. But my e-mailbox was filled with requests for thousands more. I dug into my savings and printed another 10,000, telling Ron, my production man extraordinaire, “This is it. I can’t afford to print more after this.” That second 10,000 was gone in another week The next printing was 20,000. And on and on, you know the rest of the story. I could not stop. You, all of you, the endless emails from more and more people, for more and more of The Flowback — sometimes for just a few copies, sometimes for thousands – throughout New York State at first (even the New York Public Library!), then from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Michigan – you all helped me to understand this tiger of mine – made me understand that I had only just begun to distribute The Flowback, and that if we, all of us, get those hundreds of thousands, and millions, of copies out there, we can and will win this fight.Now I am seriously and urgently asking for your help. I need all of you now, all of The Flowback’s “distributors.” The Flowback needs you! Our movement needs you. Needs you to help raise funds so that we can fully utilize this amazing phenomenon that we find ourselves in possession of. Every one of you has recognized the importance of The Flowback. Whether you have taken shipments of a dozen, or several thousand, you have seen The Flowback work magic on those who read it.I need all of you to start showing The Flowback to individuals, business people, merchants, Great Aunt Martha, anyone you can think of to approach, be creative, anyone who will support our movement, help them understand how important this is, and get them to donate. Now that Sustainable Markets Foundation makes it possible for their donations to be tax deductable, many will gladly do so. I know that soliciting donations is difficult for some people, but the” product” you are “selling” is such an excellent product, and the cause so important to everyone including the person approached, that you can solicit proudly, with not a drop of embarrassment. No one is in this to make money. My own contribution has so far been about $42,000, much of the savings that I had to live on for the rest of my life. If ever there has been a clean and worthy cause to donate to, this is it. If ever there has been a cause for which every single donated penny will go directly into getting the job done, this is it. All donations, large or small, will be happily received, and it will all add up to the large amounts we will need to turn our movement into an unstoppable juggernaut. Please direct that checks be made out to Sustainable Markets Foundation, with “Flowback Project” in the note field, mailed c/o The Flowback, 3364 State Route 12, Clinton, New York 13323.Additionally, there are those among you, both individuals and organizations, who have expressed the intent to, someday, send donations of your own for shipments that you received without being able to donate anything. Well, if you are now in a position to do so, now is that day! (And to those of you who did donate, for copies received or else just out of the goodness of your hearts – like the party who slipped me a check for $300 at the August 27th Rally in Albany, or the party who sent the $300 just received in the mail — again, my very very great thanks. The total of donations that I have received at this point is equivalent to the printing of about 25,000 copies!)And lastly, if any of you receiving this have contacted me and not heard back from me, or if there have been any kinds of mix-up, or promises that I have not fulfilled, please forgive me. I have been inundated here, all alone, trying to keep up, trying to keep things straight, to do all the emails, all the shipping and deliveries, while working on production, planning, and updating each new printing (and while trying to figure out how to pay for it all.) In the last week, to make things worse, I was plumb out of copies, and had to wait for the new printing, which just arrived. I have a stack of “To-Do’s here on my desk, you might be in the stack, but don’t hesitate to rattle my cage again for whatever you need.Let me know where more copies are needed and how many, and please get creative and aggressive about getting them into new areas, to new people, and hopefully to movers and shakers, major donors, who have the good sense to see this tiger to whose tail we are clinging, who will help us take an even firmer grip and grow to those millions of copies so desperately needed.With so much appreciation and the firm expectation of success,Bonnie
{ 0 comments… add one now }