Protesting Chesapeake Energy in Church

Interesting incoming today from the leader of the Eastside Rabblerousers, Don Young, commemorating the 3rd anniversary of a protest outside a Baptist Church in Fort Worth. If you are going to protest outside a church in Fort Worth the odds are that it will be a Baptist Church. There are more Baptist Churches here than Starbucks.

Below is the message from Don Young....

"It was a hot and humid Sunday morning on 9/28/05, but that didn't stop a couple dozen folks from picketing outside a Baptist church in east Fort Worth. This was before Just Say NO. FWCanDo was not yet named. Just say WHOA! was still a star in the sky. Urban gas drilling was in its infancy. But we knew trouble when we saw it, even back then.

The reason for the protest? Sagamore Hill Baptist Church, owned 50 acres of very rare, original Texas prairie which is next to a historic neighborhood. They had announced that they were striking a deal with the devil. The devil in this case is Chesapeake Energy who wanted to extract the minerals under the property which is also adjacent to Tandy Hills Natural Area.

With full knowledge of the negative impact to the immediate neighborhood's integrity, its residents safety, wildlife and the adjacent, natural area, church leaders signed a mineral lease with Chesapeake. When all efforts to reason with the church failed, we felt the only way to get their attention was on Sunday morning.

Chesapeake later bought the property, outright and continues to terrorize the neighborhood and the region in the name of free money. The church has abandoned the neighborhood for greener pastures.

As far as I know, this was the first public protest against urban gas drilling in the Barnett Shale, maybe the world. It will not be the last.

Stroll down Memory Lane by reading this report in the Fort Worth Weekly by Jeff Prince, who we all met for the first time at this protest on '05."