Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon Organize Artists Against Fracking

Yoko Ono said it was not hard to recruit more than 180 artists to help convince Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York not to allow natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale through the hydraulic fracturing process known as fracking.

She reached out to some friends and soon, dozens of artists, many of them with homes in New York, agreed to publicly join the campaign.

Ms. Ono said she was leaving it up to the artists to design their own advocacy. “When people say, “What can I do?” I say, “think creatively,”” she said during an interview at The New York Times. “I’m thinking about spirit and brains. We have the brains and the spirit.”

She and her son, Sean Lennon, planned to formally announce their “Artists Against Fracking” coalition  Wednesday and said they had sent a letter to Governor Cuomo requesting a meeting.

The artists and their allies, including Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, David Geffen and Deepak Chopra, are jumping into the debate over fracking at the 11^th hour, just as New York officials are finalizing regulations to govern the new drilling. A decision is expected soon over whether and where fracking will be allowed in New York State, and under what conditions.

Mother and son said the artists would use their sway with their fan base to spread the message through social media and other events that fracking threatens watersheds and wilderness areas. Mr. Lennon wrote evocatively in an opinion piece in The Times on Tuesday about spending time on the family farm Ms. Ono and John Lennon bought in the Catskills in the 1970s before he was born.

“What distinguishes us is that we have the ear of our audiences and we have a collective presence,” Mr. Lennon said of the artists.

Ms. Ono, who said she’s been quietly supporting the anti-fracking cause for two years, wants New York to move away from fossil fuels and embrace renewable energy and become “an ecologically beautiful model state.”

She and Mr. Lennon spoke passionately about their hopes for the coalition, and as relatives often do, kept interrupting each other.

“Let me just finish,” said Mr. Lennon, 36.

“Let me say something,” said Ms. Ono, 79, wearing her trademark dark oval–shape glasses.