• Your Membership Strengthens OVEC; New Online Form Makes Joining Easy

• Marcellus Shale: Call the Governor December 1

• Remembering Laura: Ten Years On

Your Membership Strengthens OVEC; New Online Form Makes Joining Easy
As 2011 winds down, we want to update you on some of the behind-the-scenes innovations that have been going on at OVEC. For the past nine months (it was a huge undertaking!), we’ve been installing and learning how to use a new database system.

Part of that system includes a brand-spanking-new way to support our work and build our strength: click here to easily join OVEC, renew your membership or donate, all via a secure server.  Now that this new system is up and running, please help us test it.

Of course, you can still also use snail mail or PayPal to join/renew or donate. OVEC is a 501-c-3 organization, so donations to OVEC are tax deductible.

We have other membership options, too. There’s the Kroger gift card program, sweat-equity volunteer work (contact your OVEC organizer or reply to this e-mail for more info on that) and the Sustainer program.

Besides receiving our quarterly Winds of Change newsletter, invites to our annual meeting and other special events, OVEC members have the satisfaction of being part of a team working to make our little part of the world a better place. 

Not only is OVEC working to curb the harmful actions of fossil fuel energy extremists, but we are also collaborating to create a clean, renewable energy future and we are working towards a small-scale, community-owned wind farm at a site in southern West Virginia. More on that in 2012... We so excited to continue this work; your support makes it possible!

Return to Index

Marcellus Shale: Call the Governor December 1
After three years of debating, legislators are very close to passing a bill to regulate Marcellus Shale gas drilling and fracking.

In the face of uncounted environmental travesties and families having their lives and land ruined, plus an almost constant barrage of citizen outcry, legislative meetings, hearings, news articles, letters to the editor and editorials, state leaders have so far avoided enacting meaningful law to reign in the runaway gas industry.

This Thursday, December 1, join members of citizen groups across West Virginia in calling Governor Tomblin. Tell him you want him to exhibit some leadership and “call a December special session of the Legislature to get the Marcellus bill passed.” Call 304-558-2000 or 888-438-2731.

Return to Index

Remembering Laura: Ten Years On
It’s been ten years since beloved OVEC organizer Laura Forman left this world. She'll remain forever 39 to us. We were in the middle of a protest at the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters in Huntington when she collapsed and died. OVEC’s co-director and founder Dianne Bady’s words of remembrance are just as touching and pertinent now as then:

For all of us who painfully miss Laura, let’s remember her by carrying on her work and her style. Do you want to save the mountains? Then reach out to other people who care. Get to know those who share in our fight, learn more about their lives, support them when times are tough for them. Put up with their faults, but talk gently and openly to them about those faults if they cause problems. Invite someone new to the next action, then greet them warmly and introduce them to others when they show up.

Take the time to love. Slow down sometimes and just appreciate the love that IS there deep in your heart. And then act upon that love, with courage and humor.

Light and love to all of you this holiday season.

Return to Index