The final and professionally edited recording is available! It was so fun to collaborate with the team at FracTracker to offer an in-person & online event – and this video captures the celebration and congratulations of the 2023 awards. Enjoy!
The Ceremony featured Keynote Speaker @Eliza Evans, artist behind All the Way to Hell, an activist art project for disrupting fossil fuel development on private land in the U.S.
Many of this year’s nominees and winners were quick to point out that they could not do this work alone. The Community Sentinel Awards is an opportunity to celebrate the winners, but also the movement for a clean energy future as a whole.
Meet Our Community Sentinels
In an outpouring of support for grassroots leaders across the country, we received over 40 distinct nominations for the 2023 Community Sentinel Award this year. Though it was a challenging decision, our distinguished panel of judges selected five award winners, and we’re thrilled to introduce them to you.
Gillian Graber
@Gillian Graber, from Harrison City, Pennsylvania, is the executive director and co-founder of Protect Penn-Trafford (Protect PT), a grassroots community-based nonprofit established in 2014 to protect residents of Pennsylvania’s Westmoreland and Allegheny counties from the impacts of fossil fuel activity. As a mother of two, Gillian is passionate about keeping children safe from the impacts of fracking.
Debra Ramirez
@Debra Sullivan Ramirez, from Lake Charles, Louisiana, is an activist and founding member of Mossville Environmental Action Now. Her environmental activism began in the 1980s after Condea Vista (SASOL) announced that ethylene dichloride (EDC), a suspected human carcinogen used in the production of PVC, leaked into the groundwater beneath the neighboring Mossville community.
Sarah Martik
Sarah Martik, from Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, is the executive director of the Center for Coalfield Justice (CCJ), where she began working as a community organizer in 2017. Sarah’s work has spanned a variety of issues and geographies, from organizing in her hometown on a zoning ordinance fight, to helping pull together the regional People Over Petro Coalition, and advocating for a strong, legally-binding global plastics treaty with Break Free From Plastic. Sarah is motivated to stay in this work for her nieces and nephews, and her fur-baby, Lucy.
Maury Johnson
@Maury W Johnson, from Greenville, West Virginia, is a member of the Board of Directors of Preserve Monroe (WV) and WV Co-Chair of the Protect Our Water & Heritage Rights (POWHR) Coalition. Maury, a southern West Virginia landowner whose organic farm has been impacted by the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), has been fighting the MVP and other harmful projects across West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina for over eight years.
Anaïs Peterson
@anaïs peterson (no pronouns (if you’re cis) / any (if you’re trans)), from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is currently the lead petrochemicals campaigner at Earthworks where anaïs works on fossil fuel and petrochemical infrastructure in PA, WV, and OH. Over the past year anaïs co-led rapid response, watchdogging, organizing, and communications around the Shell Plastic plant in Beaver County.
This annual event is hosted by FracTracker Alliance and Halt the Harm Network – please stay tuned for the next 2024 event!