414wire

02/03/2015

From Al Jazeera to VICE News and now operating independently as Discourse - Please follow/like our new page at https://www.facebook.com/fosterdiscourse.

Discourse is a media firm focused on creating quality in-depth coverage of under-reported issues. Fostering discourse, highlighting humanity.

04/11/2014

New documentary about Milwaukee teen Corey Stingley.

Does skin color preemptively decide another young black man's fate in the American justice system?

01/04/2013

"Wisconsin is now under a well-funded mining industry attack on the grassroots environmental, sportfishing, and tribal movement which mobilized tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens to successfully oppose Exxon’s destructive Crandon mine at the headwaters of the Wolf River and enact Wisconsin’s landmark Mining Moratorium Law."

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the mining industry have begun a major lobbying effort to overturn Wisconsin’s landmark Mining Moratorium Law. The law, also known as Wisconsin’s “Prove it First” law, was developed to address the problem of acid mine drainage from metallic sulfide mining.

11/21/2012

“We’re still blasting fossilized animals and plants out of the ground and lighting them on fire. It’s a Neanderthal, 19th century, brutal, destructive toxic process & it’s killing us and it’s killing the planet” - Sandra Steingraber

For years now, the United States has tried to lower its dependence on foreign oil for its energy needs. With stability in the Middle East in question, drilli...

11/15/2012

In September of this year, after about a year of work on 414wire I got the opportunity to move to Washington, DC to work on the Al Jazeera Fault Lines team. Fault Lines is Al Jazeera's award winning documentary program focusing the US, both its role internationally and its domestic politics.

After much debate about the future of the project with fellow collaborators, I felt that it was time to announce that 414wire will be on indefinite hiatus.

I wanted to thank everyone for their support of the project, including Jay Burseth, Justin Klug, Brianne O'Brien, Joel Van Haren, Jane Hampden Daley and Tracey Po***ck.

Additionally, I will hope that you will take the time to support Fault Lines by checking out our page: https://www.facebook.com/AJFaultLines

To serve as a preview of our work to come, below is a film featuring Milwaukee that was released last year.

Best,
Spencer Chumbley
Founder, 414wire

Labour unions are under fire across the US, but do they have enough vitality to fight back?

11/14/2012

From Al Jazeera Fault Lines - How the White House Was Won. 414wire founder Spencer Chumbley contributed to the production of the film. Give it a watch!

It was a long and bitter race that lasted months and cost at least $2.5bn. This episode of Fault Lines takes viewers through a tour of the US 2012 presidenti...

11/04/2012

Ohio is referred to as a "battleground state" due to its status as a "swing state" in presidential elections. But another important battle is brewing in the Buckeye State, also set to be settled in the voting booth.

This battle centers around a "Community Bill of Rights" referendum in Mansfield, OH and will be voted on in a simple "yes/no" manner. Mansfield is a city with roughly 48,000 citizens located 80 miles southwest of Cleveland and 66 miles northeast of Columbus, right in the heart of the Utica Shale basin.

Though the "Bill of Rights" has the full support of the City Council and the Law Director, as well as the city's newspaper, the Mansfield News Journal, one faction in particular isn't such a big fan of the Bill of Rights: the oil and gas industry. In response to the upcoming referrendum vote, the industry has launched an 11th hour astroturf campaign to "win hearts and minds" of those voters still on the fence as it pertains to the "Bill of Rights" in the week before the election.

DeSmogBlog has obtained images of flyers distributed via a well-coordinated direct mail campaign conducted by the oil and gas industry in Mansfield, made public here for the first time in an exclusive investigation.

Ohio is referred to as a "battleground state" due to its status as a "swing state" in presidential elections. But another important battle is brewing in the Buckeye State, also set to be settled in the voting booth.

10/31/2012

"I’m here to connect the dots between super storm Sandy and the record heat, drought, and fire we’ve seen this year – and this Tar Sands pipeline, which will make all of these problems much worse. And I’m here to connect the dots between climate devastation and pipeline politicians – both Obama and Romney – who are competing, as we saw in the debates, for the role of Puppet In Chief for the fossil fuel industry. Both deserve that title. Obama’s record of 'drill baby drill' has gone beyond the harm done by George Bush. Mitt Romney promises more of the same." -Jill Stein

This is a guest post by Janet MacGillivray, Tar Sands Blockade Legal Coordinator And Strategic Liaison

10/22/2012

Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability's just-published report, "Gas Patch Roulette: How Shale Gas Development Risks Public Health in Pennsylvania," makes the case that the decision to allow fracking on PA's campuses has opened up a Pandora's Box stuffed with a looming health quagmire of epic proportions.

"Surveyed children averaged 19 health symptoms, including some that seem atypical in the young, such as severe headaches, joint pain, and forgetfulness," wrote Earthworks. "Among all the survey respondents, it was children living within 1500 feet of facilities who had the highest occurrence of frequent nosebleeds (56%)," also noting severe throat irritation as a reported ailment by 69-percent of people younger than the age of 16.

It's a dim outlook in PA to put it mildly, with a recent cherry on the top: Anadarko Petroluem Corporation is in the midst of "talks" with PA's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources about fracking in the Rock Run area, site of a state-owned park. Republican Governor Tom Corbett recently fired the Director of its state parks system, John Norbeck, who was diametrically opposed to fracking in PA's parks.

Whatever's left of the state's public assets currently being auctioned off for fracking - in what author and activist Naomi Klein described as "shock doctrine" fashion - to the oil and gas industry's highest bidders.

Pennsylvania recently passed Act 147 - also known as the Indigenous Mineral Resources Development Act - opening up the floodgates for hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") on the campuses of its public universities. As noted in a recent post by DeSmog, the shale gas industry hasn't limited Version 2.0

10/18/2012

On Sept. 27, the PA House of Representatives - in a 136-62 vote - passed a bill that allows hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" to take place on the campuses of public universities. Its Senate copycat version passed in June in a 46-3 vote and Republican Gov. Tom Corbett signed it into law as Act 147 on Oct. 8.

The bill is colloquially referred to as the Indigenous Mineral Resources Development Act. It was sponsored by Republican Sen. Don White, one of the state's top recipients of oil and gas industry funding between 2000-April 2012, pulling in $94,150 during that time frame, according to a recent report published by Common Cause PA and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania. Corbett has taken over $1.8 million from the oil and gas industry since his time serving as the state's Attorney General in 2004.

The Corbett Administration has made higher education budget cuts totaling over $460 million in the past two consecutive PA state budgets. The oil and gas industry has offered fracking as a new fundraising stream at universities starved for cash and looking to fill that massive cash void.

Yet even these details are merely the tip of the iceberg, as fracking has occured close to K-12 schoolyards for years, with accompanying devastating health consequences.

In Pennsylvania - a state that sits in the heart of the Marcellus Shale basin - the concept of "frackademia" and "frackademics" has taken on an entirely new meaning.

10/17/2012

John Hagedorn - Milwaukee academic and author of the only real comprehensive study of gangs in Milwaukee - People and Folks: Gangs, Crime and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City - weighs in regarding the release of gang territory maps in Chicago. If you are interested at all in Milwaukee history or politics as it relates to the urban experience, would highly suggest you read People and Folk.

Probably not, but as a recent case in Chicago shows, it might not be too helpful either.

10/17/2012

http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/10/16/astroturf-new-gas-industry-front-group-landowner-advocates-of-ny

A pro-fracking rally held on Oct. 15 in Albany, NY was described by about a dozen local media outlets as a gathering of roughly 1,000 grassroots activists from all walks of life.

All came out to add their voice to the conversation regarding the extraction of unconventional gas from the Marcellus Shale basin in New York state. But the marchers weren't concerned landowners worried about losing their water supplies or property values. Their demand: to lift the current moratorium on fracking, which was prolonged by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sept. 30.

One rally attendee, Doug Lee, described the ongoing fracking moratorium as a "communist act" to the Albany Times-Union. Another described anti-fracking activists as "well-funded and organized activists masquerading as environmentalists, who often do not need to make a living in our communities." Republican Sen. Tom Libous, observed that Hollywood stars Mark Ruffalo and Debra Winger weren't on the scene, telling them to "Stay in Hollywood. We don't want you here."

Unmentioned by any of the news outlets that covered the event was a crucial fact: these weren't actual "grassroots" activists, but rather astroturf out-of-towners bused in from counties all across the state. Their journey was paid for by the legitimately "well-funded" oil and gas industry, which raked in profits of $1 trillion in the past decade.New Gas Industry Astroturf: Landowner Advocates of NY Buses Activists to Albany Pro-Fracking Rally.