Dear Friend, this is urgent.
As you are probably aware, the Utah BLM, under mandate from President George W. Bush, will be auctioning off several parcels of Utah’s wildest and most beautiful land to big oil corporations on December 19th. This lease auction comes as a last-ditch effort by the outgoing administration to secure drilling and mining land that would most likely not be available once President-Elect Obama takes office. Much of this land will be leased for its deposits of shale oil, which isn’t drilled for like liquid petroleum, rather it is obtained and processed through a method more comparable to strip-mining. While—thanks to pressure from the public, the National Park Service, and other groups concerned that this rush job is taking place unethically— the BLM has removed certain parcels of land from its leasing list, there are still hundreds of thousands of acres in some of Utah’s most pristine and unique wilderness that will be auctioned off to the highest bidding oil company on December 19th.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) plans to bring legal action against the BLM to reverse any land leased at the oil auction. However, SUWA very much needs help in raising funds to fight this legal battle. My group, Visual Cacophony, is organizing a fundraiser at Momentum Climbing Gym (220 W. 10600 S. next to R.E.I. in Sandy) this Friday, the 12th of December, to help raise funds for this legal battle. There is a group that has promised to match any donations up to $100,000, so anything you donate will be automatically doubled. Talk about bang for your buck!
To raise funds, we are holding a silent gear auction and would like to invite you to attend. Please spread the word to your co-workers and friends. I’ve attached a poster invite with all the details. You can hang it in your break room or somewhere in the office where others can see it.
We are also congregating outside the BLM’s office in Salt Lake City during daytime business hours on Friday the 12th to stage an organized protest, as the BLM has said they will finalize the list of which lands are to be included in the lease sale on the 12th. We are inviting the media, and will also be returning on the day of the actual lease sale, December 19th to protest once more.
I implore you to take an active role in this issue:
1) Please come to our fundraiser at Momentum Climbing Gym on the night of the 12th (this Friday). There will be a band, a movie, an auction, and an art project which will be presented to the BLM on the day of the land lease auction.
2) Please donate money—remember, anything you donate will be matched.
3) Please come to the protests outside of the BLM office in Salt Lake (440 West 200 South, Suite500, SLC 84145) during daytime business hours on the 12th and 19th of December. By visibly making this an important public issue, politicians and private companies will be under more pressure to right the wrongs being committed.
We ask that you RSVP if you are coming to the fundraiser. Please send your response to me at lovebarn@yahoo.com. We greatly appreciate your generosity, and hope that this issue becomes as important to you as it is to us here at Visual Cacophony and to other lovers of Utah’s beautiful wildplaces.
Thanks again,
Hasen Cone
Visual Cacophony
