ערנסטע פייט קומט פאר צווישן סאקע

To:
From: Info@SocaAtWork.org
Subject: SOCA AT WORK BULLETIN # 3
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 14:53:11 -0500

SOCA AT
WORK

We are very glad to see that, after months of inactivity, the Southern
Orange County Alliance is talking about getting to work. It was their
paralysis that forced us to create a new organization. If that was what was
needed to wake them up, then fine.

The more groups working to protect our communities the better. We look
forward to working with the Southern Orange County Alliance to accomplish
our mutual goals.

People have written to us asking "how do we choose.?" No one is asking you
to choose. We are, however, asking you to work.

Find a job to do and do it. Write letters, sign petitions, help make signs
and distribute them, volunteer to be available to show up when the block
busters invade a neighborhood, help make the props that we will need to get
the pipeline question on television in NYC so that the voters down there
will know what may happen to their water supply. But do something.

See what jobs there are and start working.

In the end, NO ONE WILL SAVE YOUR COMMUNITIES BUT YOU!

Please join with us and get to work.

SOCA AT WORK

Mindy Prosperi

Nanci Binder

Jonathan Swiller

Robert Fromaget

Shelby Young

Eli Ignatoff

Rud Lawrence

***S.O.C.A. NEWS UPDATE***
March 2, 2005
Dear neighbors,

The Southern Orange County Alliance is still very active and we are currently planning several campaigns which will be announced in detail as soon as our new strategies are formalized. Some items we are working on:

We recently sent the NYS DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) a statement with our objections to the Larkin Drive well, which has been targeted by Kiryas Joel as a new well supply for their village.


The NYC DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) has a new commissioner. We will have form letters available for our subscribers to send to the NYC DEP and other agencies via the web site as soon as next week.


We are in the process of producing professional yard signs with a new slogan. We will be contacting you again soon regarding this.
We appreciate the help of all those who have volunteered in the past and we will be asking for your help again as soon as we launch our new campaigns.

Sincerely,

Joseph Ferguson
Chairman, Southern Orance County Alliance (S.O.C.A.)

S.O.C.A. Committee

http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2005/03/10/soca10.htm

New anti-KJ pipeline group forms

By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
cmckenna@th-record.com

Woodbury – There is a scene in Monty Python's satirical "Life of Brian" when a group of characters bristling under Roman rule bicker over which revolutionary group they belong to.
"Are you the Judean People's Front?" a stranger asks.
"We're the People's Front of Judea!" comes the indignant response.
Well, a similar schism has occurred in Woodbury among the activists hoping to stop neighboring Kiryas Joel from tapping New York City's water supply and expanding its borders.
The Southern Orange County Alliance, established last May and better known as SOCA, has now splintered into two groups, each with its own board and Web site, because of a dispute between two of its founders.
The new organization is SOCA at Work, a name that reflects its creator's conviction that the predecessor group – just plain SOCA – had fallen asleep at the wheel in the last two months.
"The whole reason for it was so we can work," said Jonathan Swiller, former vice chairman of SOCA and the leader of SOCA at Work, yesterday. "Nothing was being done."
"He wanted to do his own thing," SOCA Chairman Joseph Ferguson responded. "He didn't want to work within our parameters. We work on consensus."
Swiller and Ferguson's group played a big role in local politics last year by corralling citizen opposition to the $22 million pipeline proposal – a campaign that resulted in the Orange County government going to court to challenge the project's environmental review.
SOCA also made its presence felt in a state Assembly race and distributed lawn signs with two pithy slogans: "Not for Sale" and "Not One Inch," statements meant to ward off roving home buyers and oppose any expansion of Kiryas Joel.
The group had already spawned some name confusion in October when it established a political arm called SOCA-OCEAN so it could campaign for an Assembly candidate.
As promised, the splinter group has already gotten to work: Sunday, it met for two hours with a leader of Kiryas Joel's opposition movement to hear each other out. The opposition group has a pending request to expand Kiryas Joel by 184 acres.
Swiller and Pinkus Jakobowitz of the Kiryas Joel Alliance said yesterday their groups will meet again but haven't set a date.