A crowd of more than 1,000 attended the anti-fracking protest held in the capital of New York state, organized during the State of the State address. The governor, though, chose not to mention the issue of fracking in his speech.
Activists were protesting in order to urge the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, to expand the moratorium on fracking – which has been in place since 2008 – and ban the controversial gas-drilling practice altogether.
Protesters held signs ‘Don’t frack with our future’, and ‘We love frack-free NY’ as they took over the Empire State Plaza, where the State of the State address was delivered on Wednesday.
“Air contamination, high levels of radiation, earthquakes,” a man in the crowd enumerated to RT’s Marina Portnaya what made him believe that fracking was wrong. “The bottom line is incredibly dirty form of extreme energy extraction that cannot have any place in New York state.”
“This is life or death, you know,” another protester said. “Water is non-renewable. If we bring this fracking to upstate New York, we are going to ruin our farmland,” a woman said.