User:Rosalie1624/Helen Slottje

Helen Slottje is an environmental activist and american attorney, who won the Goldman Environmental Prize 2014 for giving legal assistance to defend communities from oil and gas companies by passing local bans on fracking.

Environmental activism
Slottje helped to establish fracking-bans in 172 communities in New York state. 1-https://netzfrauen.org/2014/04/30/anti-fracking-aktivistin-gewinnt-weltweit-groessten-umweltpreis/

In 2009 Helen Slottje and her husband David founded the CEDC Law - Community Environmental Defense Council, Inc. to provide pro-bono legal assistance to municipalities in New York. After New York State forbid fracking in New York State, the couple returned to private practice as lawyers. Even though Helen stands out in the media and received the price with her name, Helen and her husband are fighting against the fracking companies together and have from scratch on been a team in this fight. Helen Slottje sees the award as a joint award for the work she and her husband have achieved.

Helen was nominated for the price as the North America award winner and received $175,000 for her engagement against fracking. She used the money to keep on going in the fight against fracking.

Before becoming involved in fighting against fracking, Helen was a commercial attorney in Boston, where she met her husband a colleague from work. They then moved to Ithaca, where David had moved for family business and decided to stay. http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/helen-slottje/ In 2009 her motivation to get engaged against fracking started, after participating in a community group meeting in Tompkins, because she was horrified of the pictures she had seen during the meeting. http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/helen-slottje/ Furthermore she thought it was wrong, that big oil and gas companies, are able to come into towns in New York without the permission of people living there and wihtout people having control over what is happening in their own community, besides the destruction of surrounded environment. http://www.ithaca.com/news/speakeasy-ithaca-attorney-helen-slottje-wins-national-prize/article_ef0f7fbc-e680-11e3-8ea4-0019bb2963f4.html

To achieve fracking bans Helen and her husband used a law principle known as home rule, which allows individual communities to decide if they want to keep industries such as gas drilling companies or not, if these industries affect common resource such as air and water, despite the fact what state or federal law says. http://www.salon.com/2014/04/29/the_real_secret_to_beating_the_koch_brothers_how_our_broken_political_system_can_still_be_overcome/