Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America

In response to complications arising from Range Resources’ fracking, a group of irritated farmers form a monthly meeting group, called “Hang ’Em High,” to discuss how to protect their farms from the fracking company. Griswold describes how these farmers differed themselves from traditionally progressive “environmentalists,” and instead saw themselves as “conservationists who believed in the prudent use of resources” (78). The movement had its roots in Pennsylvania to opposition to the environmental degradation caused by coal companies in the 1960s—a movement which was spurred by the publishing of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. Griswold describes how coal is easier to fight than fracking, as fracking’s effects on the environment tend to be “harder to see and harder to clean up” (83).

Stacey decides to attend one of the Hang ’Em High meetings to hear about other people’s experiences with Range, but she is apprehensive about becoming too heavily involved in a public battle with the company. Stacey is also scared that “industry spies” might be secretly in attendance, and doesn’t want the company to know that she is involved with activism against it (79). As Stacey watches the presentations, she recognizes a photograph of the Yeager fracking site, with her own farm visible in the photograph’s background.