Dear Lin-Manuel Miranda,
You are my spirit animal, a source of inspiration, fascination and procrastination.
Everyone knows the Hamilton soundtrack is nothing short of spectacular. It keeps me singing while driving, preparing dinner, and it has me dilly dallying instead of writing. I know I’d get a lot farther by working harder. But these songs keep me dreaming and scheming.
Even when the music isn’t playing, your lyrics continue to dance in my head.
I write down the lines that resonate deeply, put them in flow charts and elaborate doodles in attempts to connect the dots and decipher underlying messages to help guide me in my quest.
Why do you write like you’re running out of time?
Write day and night like you’re running out of time?
Ev’ry day you fight, like you’re running out of time
I feel like I’m running out of time.
Climate change is unfolding exponentially and gas pipeline projects are moving forward in my community at an alarming pace. I wish my words would come faster. Words that could stop the looming disaster.
Who lives who dies, who tells your story?
So far, the story is being told by the gas industry on mainstream media. I see their ads on TV and hear them on NPR. They have snuck into people’s brains like an evil ear worm. Using bankrupt words like clean, safe and natural. Let me tell ya Lin, that ain’t factual!
History has its eyes on you
My future grandchildren have their eyes on me. They’re not here yet, they are years away. Their questions hit me in the dark of the night: What did you do to stop the gas? You knew it was bad. What did you do with the info you had?
History is happening in Manhattan and we just happen to be
In the greatest city in the world!
I live less than an hour north of the greatest city in the world. That great city will have to be evacuated if the gas pipeline next to the nuke plant blows, sending 40 years of radioactive waste downtown. Where you put the banks!
I’m watching history happen. I’m working to change history in whatever way I can, to stop the pipeline. Using my words to write letters to the editor – like Hamilton did with the Federalist papers. Making short films to wake people up. Telling them to rise up, rise up!
Your lyrics boost my metabolism and remind me to be in gratitude despite the deep despair that permeates while fighting for a livable climate, clean water and air.
Look around, look around at how
Lucky we are to be alive right now!
You spotted an epic hero’s journey in those 800 pages of text. A story that would resonate for all of us. You turned that tale into snappy hip hop lyrics, singable songs and choreography that dazzles. My three kids had to put up with boring textbooks about this timeframe. Instead of studying, they were snoring! Your work will forever change the way middle school and high school students learn US history. It is no longer boring.
How I wish I could follow in your footsteps and turn my documentary film project about gas pipelines into a smash hit Broadway musical. One that shines a bright light on the David and Goliath fight to stop fossil fueled climate chaos. To find a way to tell the story creatively that will inspire people to rise up, take action and do more. Most documentaries are seen by the already converted, it can be a bit of a bore. We need to break out of that and make it hot. How can I not throw away my shot?
Right now we are powerless colonies under the tyrannical rule of the gas and oil industry. We live with bomb trains riding the rails, oil-filled barges floating down the Hudson and a growing web of explosive gas pipelines beneath our feet. It’s all happening against our will.
We don’t just have a fracking problem, we have a democracy problem. The energy companies have overrun our government and they’ve written the laws to support their deadly deeds.
We are outgunned
Outmanned
Outnumbered
Outplanned
We gotta make an all out stand
Ironically, a new battle of Yorktown will be happening this year as Spectra Energy’s fracked gas pipeline heads through Yorktown, NY. I wasn’t in the room where it happened. Yorktown’s town board did a shady back room deal with the gas company.
The art of the compromise. Hold your nose and close your eyes.
A Yorktown park will be turned into a fracked gas pigging station, spewing fugitive gases to the masses.
I know you took a year to write that first song and more years to write the show. With my film project, I can’t afford to be slow. Things are happening fast and our government is rubber stamping gas projects faster and faster. This is nothing short of a climate disaster.
There are plenty of villains in the gas pipeline drama.
The top villain has to be Vice President Dick Cheney. He masterminded the Energy Act of 2005 that created the Halliburton loophole, extended daylight savings time and gave superpowers to FERC. Thanks to this law, energy companies can frack away with no regard for clean air and water regulation. All the energy corporations were in the room where it happened.
No one really knows how the game is played
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens
But no one else is in
The room where it happens
Revolutionaries from across the country protesting at FERC
FERC, an evil spawn of Mr. Cheney’s dastardly deeds, is now a rogue agency run by gas industry insiders. They rubber stamp approvals on pipelines and other gas infrastructure. Nothing stops these zombies.
Many of our elected officials act as puppets playing roles that enable the gas corps to succeed.
Senators on the take from the energy industry, their silence speaks volumes.
Local town supervisors with no integrity and lots of ambition happy to partner with the gas corporations for short term gain. The think that a stack of money will ease their town’s pain.
Many misinformed folks remain silent and compliant on the sidelines. They still think gas is clean, safe. A bridge fuel to a sustainable future. Their apathy and obedience enables further injustices and accelerated destruction of land, water and air. Lin-Manuel, this is simply not fair.
Of course, there is no one hero like Alexander Hamilton in today’s battle against the frackers. The gas industry likes to paint us as tree huggers. We are so much more.
The resistance movement against the gas pipeline projects are scrappy bands of rebels. Unlikely heroes, similar to the revolutionaries in colonial times, fighting to stop jumbo pipelines against unsurmountable odds. Groups like Friends of Nelson down in VA, Stop the Constitution Pipeline in upstate NY, and Resist the Pipeline in Boston are just a few of the many troops on the ground. We do what we can to build our numbers.
Raise a glass to the four of us
Tomorrow there will be more of us
The story isn’t fully written. We haven’t lost, they haven’t yet won. The battle against the pipelines and the fossil fuel overlords has only just begun. Right now, the not all of the heroes have been identified.
My dear Lin-Manuel, on the eve of the Aquarius new moon and the Year of the Monkey, I am writing this note to you like a magical spell. The Monkey is a trickster, applying unconventional solutions to complicated problems. If I could just channel your lyrical brilliance and find a way to tell this gas story so that people would line up around the block to see it. And then rise up to stop the plunder of our planet.
That would be enough.
