We followed Cuomo to fundraisers, his polling place, and to the state fair each year. We showed up at his book launch event in Manhattan, where protestors outnumbered attendees. We mobilized Skidmore students to birddog Cuomo during a retreat deep in the Adirondacks, Alex recalls. This helped keep fracking top-of-mind for the governor. In the fall of 2014, just months before the ban, Cuomo told reporters a sto- ry about showing up to an event with his daughter. She had joked that it had to be the wrong venue, because there were no fracking protestors outside. Cuomo called us “literally the most prevalent protest group in the state by far.” We followed him outside of the state, too. In 2014, the Food & Water Watch California team helped organize a birddog as Cuomo fund- raised in Hollywood. When he traveled to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina and to Iowa, NYAF took out full-page ads in local newspapers. Even away from home, Cuomo couldn’t forget us. “When NYPIRG joined the fight to ban fracking with NYAF, we immediately saw how motivated our college student members were to join the fight, too. Students from Buffalo to Binghamton to New York City and Long Island joined birddog rallies. We burned up the gov- ernor's phones with call-in drives, and we knocked on doors statewide. With how broad and deep the coalition was, we were impressed by how well it was managed and how quickly we could react.” Megan Ahearn Program Director at NYPIRG
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