With MLK Day Blockade, Seneca Lake Protesters Declare: 'We Are Planting Our Flag'

“Clean Air and Clean Water are Civil Rights,” was the message as dozens of protesters, taking up the call for civil disobedience in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, continued their months-long blockade of a natural gas facility near the shores of Seneca Lake in upstate New York.

Twenty people were arrested blocking the entrance to Texas-based energy company Crestwood Midstream on Monday, bringing the total number of arrests since the actions began late October to 200 people.

The group is protesting plans to turn the region’s salt caverns into a storage facility for gases extracted during fracking operations. Despite strong local opposition and what the group says are “grave” geological and public health concerns, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently approved construction of the storage infrastructure on the west side of Seneca Lake.

With the Martin Luther King Jr. Day demonstration, the diverse group of protesters paid homage to the lessons learned from the civil rights movement.

“We believe, just as the civil rights marchers must have, that a small group of people taking a stand and showing determination and bravery can achieve something huge,” Sandra Steingraber, Ithaca College biologist and co-founder of the grassroots group We Are Seneca Lake, told Common Dreams.

Emboldened by New York’s recently announced fracking ban, the group intends to continue the demonstrations as long as Crestwood poses a threat to the health of the community and local environment. However, they see their fight as part of a larger war against an economy and infrastructure rooted in the exploitation of fossil fuels.

“Civil rights marchers didn’t try to desegregate every single lunch counter across the South,” Steingraber explains. “They planted their flag in one lunch counter and tried to make it a national story. We’re trying to do that here.”

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This fossil fuel infrastructure project is one “among many,” she adds, “but this is where we are planting our flag.”