RIVERDALED

"...I need to make very clear that 

what has happened here is profoundly wrong."

"...I would encourage us not to forget that 

while Riverdale was first and foremost 

about the human rights of its residents,

 it is also about the rape of the environment for fracking."

Wendy Lee

"Beautiful 10-year-old children who are now living in what amounts to a prison replete with chain link fencing, construction machinery, the decimation of their community and its grounds, the loss of all of their new friends among the activists, and the loss of all of their old friends evicted from their homes. I can’t even imagine what this experience has been like for them."

"These are kids"

"The stress Aqua America has created for them is one of the ugliest, most revealing, and most damning aspects of this story. Look at the pictures of their handprints on our barricades reconstructed after the former owner, Skip Leonard, mowed them down. Imagine what it must be like for them to see what remains of these brightly painted walls now that Aqua America machinery has destroyed them. Imagine what they are learning about being an American."

"...everything we need to know about corporate fascism, the valuing of property rights over human rights, and the crass drive for profits is contained in the fact that Aqua America is so determined to build their water-withdrawal-for-fracking-station that they’ll risk the lives of two little girls on their bicycles rather than wait until they leave. And we cannot forget that this “leaving” is naught but the forced ejection of children from their homes, their friends, potentially their school, and their lives."

"That, Aqua America, 

is conscienceless."

Quotes & Photos by Wendy Lee

Raging Chicken Press

Here 

Mother, father please explain to me
Why forests march to desert speed
While snowcapped mountains melt away
What do we tell our babies, when do we say, oh

Mother, father please explain to me
How this world has come to be so
Twisted between time and dreams
Oh, mother, father please explain to me
Oh, whats all this talk about?
All this talk about it
Spinning down, down, down, down, down
All this talk about
Endless words without
Nothings done

Mother, father ...
Do you know?