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" Brian Williams&amp;#039;s new show, Rock Center With Brian Williams, which not anywhere near enough people are watching, possibly because its title leads them to believe that Williams is attempting to replace the recently departed Don Kirschner and/or the recently departed Don Cornelius as a television music mogul \u2014 Tonight, on Rock Center With Brian Williams, Kansas! Also, Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds! \u2014 has a feature tonight on Svante Myrick, the 24-year old mayor of Ithaca, New York. Myrick&amp;#039;s personal story is fascinating enough; the son of a biracial couple, he is the city&amp;#039;s first African-American mayor. Most notable, though, is the fact that Myrick, a longtime environmental activist in the area, rode into office on a platform based on clean energy and, especially, his resolute opposition to hydrofracking in the pursuit of natural gas.  (UPDATE -- Name of really sucky pop band corrected due to commenters who listened to far too much Top 40 radio in the 1970&amp;#039;s. Thank you. The Management.) Fracking is a huge issue in the Finger Lakes region of New York, which sits atop the Marcellus shale, a massive geologic formation thought to contain huge amounts of natural gas. (This formation continues down through most of the Appalachian Basin, including the area beneath Pennsylvania that was featured in the movie, Gasland, which included an impressive demonstration of fracking-based exploding tapwater. And let&amp;#039;s not even get into the earthquake problem.) Most of the resistance to fracking has been concentrated in the local governments, and it is based on the not unreasonable conclusion reached by these cities and towns that large energy extraction companies will screw up their drinking water, lie about it, and then buy their way out of the ensuing lawsuits by offering the affected communities some lovely parting gifts and 50 cents on the dollar. For his part, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been tap-dancing around the issue, leaving the actual fight to local mayors and aldermen and conservation commissions. Just yesterday, a New York judge ruled in favor of a fracking ban passed by the town of Dryden, just outside Ithaca. Myrick campaigned not only on a fracking ban, but also on a promise that Ithaca&amp;#039;s water-treatment plants would not be used to treat the waste water produced by the fracking process. I know this is something of a tin drum around this blog, but it really is the people on the ground in places like Ithaca and Dryden who are fighting a lot of the battles in progressive politics. It would be more than a damn shame if they all got hung out to dry. Anyway, Myrick&amp;#039;s story makes Williams&amp;#039;s show worth watching, I&amp;#039;m thinking, even if Cornelius Brothers And Sister Rose won&amp;#039;t be performing. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a12855/ithaca-says-no-fracking-way/>