Green activists left paper “donkey droppings” beneath twenty Democratic National Convention (DNC) donkey statues in Philadelphia Tuesday morning to protest DNC’s alleged tolerance of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
The environmental group Food & Water Watch (FWW) was behind the fake fecal matter and said they were “meant to visually show how the party really stinks” for demanding a national fracking ban. There was also an orange spray-painted message next to the donkey sculptures saying “No Ban on Fracking? The Dem platform is crap!”
FWW also plans on marching from City Hall to Independence Hall Sunday to protest the DNC platform.
“Most Democratic Party constituents support anti-fracking policies, but the leaders refuse to take further action,” Sam Bernhardt, a senior organizer with FWW, told Philly.com. “The city is at a crossroads and we have the choice to move over to clean energy.”
Fracking is an industry worth $34 billion in Pennsylvania but most environmental groups oppose the process even though the scientific consensus says its safe.
Video surfaced late last month of environmentalists yelling “shame” after they lost a battle to include a fracking ban in the DNC platform. Bill McKibben, the co-founder of the environmental group 350.org, proposed the moratorium, but the drafting committee spiked the proposal by a vote of seven to six. When it became clear that the platform change would fail, environmentalists in the audience began yelling “shame on you” and “shame” at the committee members.
Part of the green backlash against the DNC is likely due to emails published in May, which showed that Hillary Clinton worked closely with private sector oil and gas companies to lobby the White House to promote fracking. Clinton secured technical assistance with the geologic science of finding shale reserves and helping partner nations find investments for new fracking projects. It helped advise world leaders on the benefits of fracking, connected them with American energy experts, and organized visits to drilling sites in America to make it a role model for fracking around the world.
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