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Upwards of 2,000 people attended the Don’t Frack New York demonstration yesterday, Monday, August 27 in Albany, N.Y. That’s a lot of people on a work day in the last week of August.

But it wasn’t just the numbers that were impressive.

It was the vision articulated by numerous speakers at the pre-march and post-march rallies that Cuomo should be rising to the challenge of history and connecting with the history of past NY state leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Instead of allowing fracking, he should embrace a green energy program to make NY a national leader in the absolutely essential shift away from fossil fuels to the clean, jobs-creating and totally possible renewable energy economy we urgently need.

It was the determination that, if Cuomo bows to the demands of a profit-hungry gas industry and unleashes them, thousands of people are prepared to put their bodies on the line, risk arrest and jail, to physically disrupt and stop fracking operations. 3,200 people had signed a “pledge of nonviolent resistance,” if necessary, in advance of the demonstration.