$socialismartnature: Forest Service Inflamed by Brooklyn Anti-Fracking Artist’s Smokey the Bear Brooklyn-based artist and environmental activist Lopi LaRoe sees Smokey the Bear as a friend. As a kid raised by environmentalists, she grew up with him, she says, and feels a particular connection to the affable but informative cultural touchstone invented by the US Forest Service in 1944. “So I thought it was a perfect culture-jamming opportunity to take this very familiar conservationist and turn him into an anti-fracking activist,” she tells the Voice. The Forest Service, on the other hand, isn’t a fan of LaRoe’s representation of a Smokey who tries to prevent “faucet fires.” Nearly a year after LaRoe began carrying images of a newly radicalized Smokey to protests, selling T-shirts, and circulating what soon became an Internet meme, the Forest Service asked LaRoe to cease and desist. “The feds want to frack our national parks,” LaRoe says. “It’s not surprising that they’re coming after me to try and censor my political speech.”$