“Somebody’s gotta do this,” says Craig Brainard, Sierra Club volunteer and member since 2004. “Well, I know a guy that can.” And with that simple motto, Craig started up the Fracking Linkletter, an information exchange and resource for the “Fractivist” community in Michigan and beyond.
In the words of Anne Woiwode, Director of the Sierra Club’s Michigan Chapter, Craig has “gone well above and beyond the call of duty in his work to fight fracking.” First alerted to the dangers of fracking in 2010 by the movie “Gasland,” Craig has been sending out the linkletter since 2012, the year he realized that oil and gas companies owned at least three leases within a mile of his home in Barry County, Michigan. At the time, oil and gas leases in Michigan were being claimed at a staggering rate, with several new leases every day and over a hundred each month.
Craig joined the Beyond Natural Gas campaign in July 2012, and realized that there was no single source of fracking information for Michigan fractivists, or for anyone else who cares about the fracking issue. And so, he began regularly sending out lists of relevant and current information on the fracking front, a newsletter of links for which he coined the term, “linkletter.” The linkletter soon expanded to include other energy infrastructure news, including issues of pipeline development and leaks, and to include positive, encouraging stories about clean energy.
As time passed, Craig began adding personal touches to the newsletter in a foreword. It became like “a personal letter,” says Craig, like “talking to my friends.” The Fracking Linkletter was very well received, with over 200 subscribers hailing from four states and Romania. Often, readers will suggest articles and topics to link to, and Craig acknowledges he sometimes finds the best material through his community of “correspondents.”
But Craig’s contributions to educating the public about fracking do not stop at the linkletter. In early 2013, he realized that the fractivists’ stance was got getting out to the public. Most people didn’t know anything about fracking. Somebody needed to do public outreach. And Craig knew a guy that could.
Though it started out as a traveling presentation covering a wide variety of energy issues, the Fracking Roadshow, titled “Don’t Frack our Future,” has been polished over the last two years to focus on the most important issues surrounding fracking. Craig says he could not have done it without the help of other fractivists, including Rita Chapman and Nancy Shiffler of Beyond Natural Gas, and Steve Losher of Michigan Land Air Water Defense. However, he also acknowledges that “it’s my baby, pretty much 100 percent.” Recently, the Roadshow has begun to reach beyond the Sierra Club, attracting interest from local church groups. Shown thirteen times over the last year, and with two more showings planned over the next two months, the Fracking Roadshow needs to be updated continually, staying current while reaching hundreds of people.
Commenting on the positive reception he’s received, Craig wonders if “maybe I’m on to something here.” He has plans to expand the Roadshow further with new presentations, using the scrapped elements of the earliest presentations. “Getting Beyond Fossil Fuels, Why We Must and How We Can,” will be a call to action on the solutions and alternatives to fracking, and an as-yet-unnamed presentation will cover tar sands, coal, pipelines, and other dirty energy issues.
“The most important thing,” Craig says, “is to be educated.” Only then can one take the local political action that really makes change. What could be more grassroots than that?