On April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 workers and injuring 17 others. For three months the well gushed unchecked, sending 200 million gallons of crude oil into Gulf waters.
POSTED: 10:25 AM Thursday, May 24, 2012
BY: The Associated Press LAFITTE —
Gloom infects the hard-working shrimp and crab docks of this gritty fishing town as the second full year of fishing since the catastrophic 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill kicks into high gear.
Usually folks are upbeat and busy in May, when shrimpers get back to work in Louisiana’s rich waters. This spring, though, catches are down, docks are idle and anxiety is growing that the ill effects of the massive BP oil spill may be far from over.
An Associated Press examination of catch data from last year’s commercial harvest along the Gulf — the first full year of fishing since the spill — reveals merit in the fishermen’s complaints. According to the analysis of figures obtained through public records requests, seafood crops hit rock bottom in the Barataria estuary, the same place where some of the thickest waves of oil washed in when a BP well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.
Detailed data from “trip tickets” fishermen fill out when they unload at docks reveal steep drops in Barataria, though it’s far from bleak everywhere along the Gulf Coast. Fishermen are making money that is pretty equal to before the spill, according to the 2011 data not officially released yet by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Part of the reason is that though the fishermen aren’t hauling in as much, prices are up so people are paying more for seafood from the Gulf than other sources.
In Barataria, the number of shrimpers in the water has remained steady, yet the fall season was off by about 7 million pounds from an average of 18.1 million pounds between 2006 and 2009. It wasn’t a pretty picture for blue crabs either in Barataria: the crab catch was off by 2.7 million pounds from an average of 9.5 million pounds between 2006 and 2009, the data showed.
Fresh water from a historically high Mississippi River could have been the culprit for some of the drop off in productivity, marine experts said. Another factor may be that some areas in the estuary were closed because of oil contamination. One such place is Bay Jimmy, where oil is still gooey and thick on the shores.
Fishermen blame the spill. In Lafitte, they said the new shrimp season was off to a slow start.
“I’m afraid that oil spill has ruined us,” said Ken Lee, a shrimp dock owner. “We’re hardly unloading any brown shrimp at all.”
For now though, a range of government officials, scientists and seafood experts say it’s much too early to make any definite link between the oil spill and one-year declines in catches. Seafood harvests, while generally predictable, are subject to fluctuations even in the best of times.
But Lee shook his head as he looked over a sheet tallying recent shrimp loads in the past few days. It was slim pickings. Moments before, an 18-wheeler pulled away from his dock with just seven vats of frozen fresh shrimp. The truck has room for more than 40, he said.
“That’s pitiful!” he said. “We usually load a truck full.”
While catches were off, though, prices were high. The Louisiana data shows fishermen actually made as much or more in 2011 than they had in previous years. The total values of the blue crab and oyster harvests were higher than the six-year average.
Taken as a whole, the volume of seafood harvested last year in Louisiana for shrimp, crabs and oysters showed only modest drops from averages for 2003-09, according to
the AP analysis. Catches for 2010, the year of the spill, were excluded because much of the Gulf was shut down. Meanwhile, in Texas, the oyster and crab hauls were down slightly from 2003-09 averages, the AP analysis showed.
Drought could have been a cause there, a Texas official said. The state did not have figures on its shrimp catch. Florida’s data showed no major swings in harvests of oysters, crabs and shrimp. Mississippi’s shrimp haul was down about 13 percent from 2003-2009 averages and its small-scale crab harvest was down 52 percent. From the 2003-09 average, Alabama’s brown shrimp catch was off 12 percent, blue crabs were off 27 percent and oysters down by about 50 percent, the state’s data showed.
Fishermen say economic conditions were tough before the BP spill due to imports, high fuel prices and hurricanes. But now they say they’ve reached a low point since the blown-out well spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil.
In Bon Secour, Ala., Mike Skinner, a third-generation shrimper whose entire family works in the business, said last fall was the worst season he had ever seen.
“Hopefully it was a fluke thing. We’ll find out this year,” he said as he piloted his trawler across Mobile Bay.
In Alabama, seafood sales are down about 10 percent to $146 million in the two years since the BP gusher, according to an Auburn University study obtained by the AP. The downturn represented nearly $16 million in lost sales and has left few fishing boats in industry hubs like the Bon Secour River.
To ease the hardships, BP has given $48.5 million to Gulf states so they can market their seafood industries on websites, TV commercials, billboards and print ads that say the catch is healthy.
BP spokesman Craig Savage said the Gulf seafood industry was strong. “The fact is, the data show that seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is safe and abundant, according to numerous government reports,” he said.
Truly identifying any effect of the spill — if any — on marine stocks won’t be possible from landings data for several years, said Chuck Wilson, executive director of the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program, a university-based group of agents and researchers.
Still, there’s reason to be wary, said Olivia Watkins, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
“We are seeing a number of anomalies in the Gulf of Mexico,” Watkins said. “We should not attempt to draw premature conclusions.”
The long-term prognosis for the Gulf’s health remains uncertain.
Recent studies have found higher numbers of sick fish close to where BP’s well blew out and genome studies of bait fish in Barataria have identified abnormalities. Meanwhile, vast areas of the cold and dark Gulf seafloor are oiled, scientists say.
And many fishermen are convinced something’s amiss.
“I think the oil can kill the shrimp eggs. That’s why there was no shrimp to catch last year,” said Tuna Pham, a 40 -year-old Vietnamese-American shrimper docked in Lafitte. He said the catch this year was bad again.
“We was there to work, but couldn’t,” said Lawrence Salvato, 49, as he stopped for lunch on a dock where he moors a shrimp skiff he runs his wife, Lisa. “Usually people are excited and they can’t wait to get out there. This year, there’s no real incentive.”
He said he made about $10,000 in seafood sales last year compared to $75,000 in 2009. He said his family made do with a $40,000 interim payment they got from BP. Fishermen who haven’t settled legally yet with BP over damages continue to survive on periodic payments from a $20 billion trust fund set up by BP.
“We’re afraid,” Salvato said. “A lot of people are getting out of fishing. They’re afraid.”
INSTITUTE INDEX: Gulf recovery two years after the BP disaster
Date on which BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and burned: 4/20/2010
Number of rig workers killed: 11
Number of days the oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico: 87
Gallons of crude oil spilled: about 200 million
Gallons of chemical dispersants applied to the slick: 1.8 million
Peak length in miles of Gulf Coast shoreline where oiling from the BP disaster was apparent: 1,096
As of late February 2012, length in miles of Gulf Coast shoreline where oiling was still apparent: 450
Estimated percentage of BP’s spilled oil that remains unaccounted for: 60
Thickness in inches of deposits of BP’s spilled oil uncovered near Port Fourchon, La. by Tropical Storm Lee in September 2011: 18
Factor by which dolphin strandings in the spill-affected area between April 2010 and March 2012 exceed the historical average for a similar time period: 4
Percent by which some Gulf fishermen report their catches were down as of October 2011: 80
Date on which the National Institutes of Health announced the launch of a health study of cleanup workers and volunteers exposed to BP’s oil: 2/28/2011
Rank of this study among the largest ever conducted of oil spill cleanup workers: 1
Amount BP paid out for damage claims under its Gulf Coast Claims Facility: over $6 billion
Number of individuals and businesses that had their claims paid: over 220,000
Date that claims payments switched to a court-run process as part of a proposed settlement of a lawsuit against BP: 3/23/2012
Factor by which the processing of claims payments increased after the transition: 4
Amount BP expects to pay out in claims under the settlement: $7.8 billion
Amount BP has already agreed to pay for early ecological restoration projects as the Natural Resources Damage Assessment continues: $1 billion
Total amount in fines BP could end up paying under the Clean Water Act: $5 billion to $20 billion
Profits earned by BP in 2011: $26 billion
Facing South is your weekly source for in-depth coverage and fresh perspectives on the South, published by the Institute for Southern Studies.
On April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 workers and injuring 17 others. For three months the well gushed unchecked, sending 200 million gallons of crude oil into Gulf waters.
Two years later, BP insists the Gulf is well on the road to recovery. A PR blitz rolled out in late 2011 titled “Best Season” called on tourists to visit the Gulf, without even mentioning the Deepwater Horizon disaster. “The sun’s out,” the narrator says, “and the water’s beautiful.”
But a new report by Facing South/Institute for Southern Studies finds that the Gulf Coast is far from recovery — and many communities are still reeling from the aftermath of the disaster.
“The oil is not gone,” says Derrick Evans of Gulfport, Miss.. “The general perception is that BP made a mess and BP did a big cleanup and everything is all fine. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Local Gulf Coast groups have launched a variety of innovative efforts to cope and rebuild after the spill. But the scope of the recovery will require stepped-up federal and state action: Congress has yet to pass into law a single piece of legislation that directly addresses the BP disaster, and the issue of Gulf recovery has been absent from the 2012 political debate.
The report by Sue Sturgis and Chris Kromm, produced in partnership with the Bridge the Gulf Project and the Gulf Coast Fund, finds three areas where Gulf communities were hit especially hard by the BP disaster:
MAKING A LIVING: The BP spill idled thousands of fishing boats, pushing many into debt or out of work entirely. In places like Biloxi, Miss. and New Orleans East, local groups are re-training workers and trying to create new jobs, but struggle to meet the need.
RESTORING THE COAST: Louisiana loses a football-field sized chunk of coastal land every hour, in part due to energy industry activity. Gulf advocates say federal fines collected from BP should be steered back into restoring and protecting fragile coastal land.
PROTECTING PUBLIC HEALTH: Gulf residents still report a range of illnesses stemming from exposure to spilled oil and chemical dispersants. Organizations like the Louisiana Environmental Action Network are running free clinics to help, but say bigger efforts are needed to provide medical care, track the health impacts and prevent toxic exposures in the first place.
The report also outlines seven immediate steps Gulf Coast leaders say can jumpstart the recovery, from funding coastal restoration plans to creating a meaningful Citizens Advisory Board for community input.
Facing South is your weekly source for in-depth coverage and fresh perspectives on the South, published by the Institute for Southern Studies.
By Jordan Flaherty
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/20/the-aftermath-of-deepwater-horizon/
On April 20, 2010, a reckless attitude towards the safety of the Gulf Coast by BP, as well as Transocean and Halliburton, caused a well to blow out 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. As the world watched in horror, underwater cameras showed a seemingly endless flow of oil – hundreds of millions of gallons - and a series of failed efforts to stop it, over a period of nearly three months. Two years later, that horror has not ended for many on the Gulf.
“People should be aware that the oil is still there,” says Wilma Subra, a chemist who travels widely across the Gulf meeting with fishers and testing seafood and sediment samples for contamination.
Subra says that the reality she is seeing on the ground contrasts sharply with the image painted by BP. “I’m extremely concerned on the impact it’s having on all these sick individuals,” she says. Subra believes we may be just at the beginning of this disaster. In every community she visits, fishers show her shrimp born without eyes, fish with lesions, and crabs with holes in their shells. She says tarballs are still washing up on beaches across the region.
While it’s too early to assess the long-term environmental impact, a host of recent studies published by the National Academy of Sciences and other respected institutions have shown troubling results. They describe mass deaths of deepwater coral, dolphins, and killifish, a small animal at the base of the Gulf food chain. “If you add them all up, it’s clear the oil is still in the ecosystem, it’s still having an effect,” says Aaron Viles, deputy director of Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental organization active in the region.
The major class action lawsuit on behalf of communities affected by the spill has reached a proposed 7.8 billion dollar settlement, subject to approval by a judge. While this seems to have brought a certain amount of closure to the saga, environmentalists worry that any settlement is premature, saying they fear that the worst is yet to come. Pointing to the 1989 Exxon spill off the coast of Alaska, previously the largest oil spill in US waters, Viles said that it was several years before the full affect of that disaster was felt. “Four seasons after Exxon Valdez is when the herring fisheries collapsed,” says Viles. “The Gulf has been a neglected ecosystem for decades – we need to be monitoring it closely.”
In the aftermath of the spill, BP flooded the Gulf with nearly 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants. While BP says these chemicals broke up the oil, some scientists have said this just made it less visible, and sent the poisons deeper into the food chain.
It is widely agreed that environmental problems on the coast date back to long before the well blew open. The massive catastrophe brought into focus problems that have existed for a generation. Land loss caused by oil company drilling has already displaced many who lived by the coast, and the pollution from treatment plants has poisoned communities across the state - especially in “cancer alley,” the corridor of industrial facilities along the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge. “The Gulf is a robust ecosystem and it’s been dying the death of a thousand cuts for a long time,” says Viles. “BP is legally obligated to fix what they screwed up. But if you’re only obligated to put the ecosystem back to where it was April 19, 2010, why would we?”
Fishing is a huge part of the economy for the Gulf Coast. Around 40% of the seafood caught in the continental US comes from here. Many area fishermen were still recovering from Hurricane Katrina when the spill closed a third of Gulf waters to fishing for months. George Barisich, president of the United Commercial Fisherman’s Association, a group that supports Gulf Coast fishers, says many fishers still had not recovered from Hurricane Katrina when the oil started flowing from the BP spill. Now, he says, many are facing losing their homes. “Production is down at least 70 percent,” compared to the year before the spill, he says. “And prices are still depressed thirty, forty, sixty percent.”
In a video statement on BP’s website, Geir Robinson, Vice President of Economic Restoration for BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, says that the company believes the legal settlement will resolve most legitimate economic claims. “We do have critics,” adds Robinson. “And we’re working hard every day to show them that we will meet our responsibilities.”
Environmentalists and scientists also complain that Obama administration has let down the Gulf Coast. Viles is critical of the role the US government has played, saying that by inaction they seemed to protect BP more than coastal communities or the environment. “The coast guard seems to empower the worst instincts of BP,” Viles says. “I don’t know if it’s Stockholm Syndrome or what.”
International environmental groups have also joined in the criticism. Oceana, a conservation group with offices in Europe and the Americas, released a report on Tuesday criticizing the US government’s reforms as being either ineffective or nonexistent, saying “offshore drilling remains as risky and dangerous as it was two years ago, and that the risk of a major spill has not been effectively reduced.”
Theresa Dardar lives in Bayou Pointe-au-Chien, a Native American fishing community on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. Dardar and her neighbors have seen their land vanish from under their feet within their lifetimes due to canals built by the oil companies to access wells. The canals brought salt water into freshwater marshes, helping cause the coastal erosion that sees Louisiana lose a football field of land every 45 minutes. The main street that runs through the community now disappears into the swamps, with telephone poles sticking out of the water.
Now, in addition to worries about disappearing land and increasing risk of hurricanes, she fears that her family’s livelihood is gone for good. “It’s not going to be over for years,” she says, expressing a widely held concern among fishers here. “We’re just a small Native American fishing community. That’s all they’ve done their whole lives. Some of them are over 60. What are they going to do? If BP gives them money for the rest of their lives, that’s one thing. But if not, then what can they do?
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans and author of the book Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six. He can be reached at jordan@floodlines.org.
Global Green USA proudly partners with the AIA, New Orleans Chapter and USGBC, LA Chapter to present a monthly panel series on issues of sustainability and environmental responsibility.
Students from University of Louisiana School of Architecture and Design will be presenting their poster sessions, featuring the work of fourth year architecture students. We’ll learn more about these multi-story, mixed-use proposals for Lafayette that began with intensive site and urban design analysis and concluded with the production of highly developed drawings, including: plans, elevations, building sections and a wall section.
Thursday, April 26th
5:30pm to 7:30pm
AIA New Orleans Center for Design
1000 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, LA
Global Green events are free and open to the public. Light refreshments at 5:30pm, panel begins at 6pm. For more information on this and past events, see the AIA calendar, here: Events Calendar, or contact Heidi Jensen at our Green Building Resource Center: hjensen@globalgreen.org
Special thanks to our good friends at Whole Foods Market for their generous support.
Tues, April 10, 2012 ~ by Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune
Two years after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, there are still clear signs that the environment along the northern Gulf of Mexico, especially in Louisiana, continues to be affected by oil pollution, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Wildlife Federation. “Although the oil has stopped flowing from the wellhead, the gas has stopped spewing out of the wellhead, the Gulf oil spill is not over,” said Doug Inkley, senior scientist for the federation.
The federation called on Congress to pass the Restore Act, which would dedicate fines and penalties against BP and other responsible parties toward long-term restoration of the Gulf. It also called for better safeguards in oil and gas leasing practices and permitting.
The federation concluded that six key Gulf features remain at risk from BP oil, although not all are in serious danger yet, Inkley said.
The most visible of them: the bottlenose dolphins of Barataria Bay, declared in poor health last month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Prior to the spill, the federation rated the status of those dolphins as “good.” Today, they’re “fair,” because of an “unexplained mortality event” that has resulted in more dolphins being stranded at a higher-than-average rate for 26 consecutive months. Most of the stranded dolphins were dead.
NOAA scientists last month said that it’s still too soon to link the deaths to the heavy oiling of the Barataria Bay area, but said the dolphins’ health problems might have been exacerbated by the oil exposure.
“They are at the top of the food chain in the Gulf, perhaps even more than we are, because they eat whole fish. They consume everything,” said George Crozier, retired director of Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama. “That creates a situation where they might be bio-accumulating any toxics in the food chain.”
Because they breathe air, the dolphins also are likely to have inhaled toxic fumes and to have swum through oil.
The federation already ranked five species of endangered and threatened sea turtles that reproduce in the Gulf as poor. But the hundreds of dead turtles spotted during the spill raise new concerns, federation officials said.
The brown pelican, another very visible symbol of oil spill damage, was ranked good by the federation, although hundreds were killed by oil in the Gulf and coastal mangroves in which they nest, Inkley said.
Both Atlantic bluefin tuna and deepwater coral communities received poor rankings. The tuna already were overfished by commercial fishers, but their eggs and young may have been threatened by the oil spill.
Gulf Coast wetlands, especially in Louisiana, continue to garner a poor ranking, with oil from the spill is speeding the rate of wetland loss, Inkley said.
If there’s good news, it’s the “good” rating that the federation continues to bestow on Gulf shrimp species.
Inkley said data show the 2011 total shrimp catch in the Gulf may have been up significantly, in part due to the closure of much of the Gulf to commercial fishing in 2010.
But Inkley also warned that shrimp are heavily dependent on wetlands, and as “wetlands continue to degrade in the Gulf of Mexico, so too will shrimp face tougher times.”
On February 27, 2012, concerned citizens and LEAN members Dennis and Lori Bosarge collected samples of water and foam from the beach in Bayou La Batre, AL. While foam in general is a common and natural occurrence along the Gulf Coast; lately the dark color and persistence of the foam has been somewhat unusual according to some residents.
Laboratory analysis of the foam did confirm the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAH’s) including anthracene, naphthalenes, phenanthrene as well as many other PAH’s found in crude oil and consistent with those found in BP oil from the Macondo well site.
The graphs below compare two samples, one collected almost a year after the Gulf Oil Spill, and the other collected almost 2 years after. The top graph shows the chemical composition of a lab-fingerprinted “BP MC 252” oil sample from Louisiana collected by LEAN/LMRK in March 2011. The bottom graph shows the chemical makeup of the foam sample collected on February 27, 2012 in Bayou La Batre. The two graphs show a strikingly similar chemical makeup between the February 2012 sea foam sample and the March 2011 sample of BP fingerprinted oil.
arco Kaltofen, a civil engineer with Boston Chemical Data, has been providing technical assistance for LEAN since the Oil Spill began. Kaltofen notes, The data show that BP oil is still in the environment, two years later. The presence of such concentrated oil in sea foam is a sign of serious environmental damage.
The Gulf ecosystem, the fishing industry, and coastal communities have suffered greatly since the 2010 Oil Spill. Though a settlement looms, the struggles faced here seem far from over. Clear/honest information, direct support for struggling communities and ADEQUATE REMEDIATION is necessary for the recovery of the Gulf Coast and much like the oil still found on our shores, seems inadequately addressed some 2 years later.
Funeral for the Gulf of Mexico info can be found on Facebook event’s
http://www.facebook.com/events/271951906207368
February 27, 2012 ~
ROBERT DESMARAIS SULLIVAN (aiglefort@gmail.com or 757.642.8607)
WHAT: Funeral service and procession for Gulf of Mexico, recently murdered by BP, Transocean and Halliburton under suspicious circumstances. Several government agencies appear to have been accomplices after the fact. Signs and costumes are requested in honor of the deceased, who is survived by her ailing siblings, Mississippi River and Caribbean Sea.
WHEN: From 1:00 t0 4:00 on Wednesday, February 29, 2012, on the day designated by Occupy Portland for the nation to demand a democratic government be restored to the United States. The funeral procession is Occupy NOLA’s participation in this demand.
WHERE: Starting at BP headquarters, 1250 Poydras, the funeral procession carries the coffin seven blocks to the Federal Building, 500 Poydras. Elegies will be pronounced at both sites.
WHY: In the midst of the merriment of Carnival, it was easy to forget serious matters. That is of course why we do Carnival! It is good for the soul to forget troubles briefly, though the world continues to turn and the rains to fall and hurricanes to bluster and death to come. On Ash Wednesday, many of us go to work with smudges on our foreheads: ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, remember, man, that you are dust and unto dust you will return.’ We now return to the ashes of the Deepwater Horizon.
On February 27, 2012, only five days after Mardi Gras, the most complex trial ever in New Orleans is supposed to begin, and BP, Transocean and Halliburton will hopefully be called into court for judgment on their various roles in the most disastrous industrial incident the State of Louisiana has ever known.
It was an incident because it was not an accident. The corporate principle of profit before people led to shortcuts and errors in exploration that killed eleven in the explosion and caused several subsequent deaths as a consequence of chemical poisoning, while leaving thousands ill and perhaps dying.
We do not know whether the trial will even take place, though it rightly should in order to reveal the roles of corporations and governments in the pain and suffering so widespread along the Gulf after the explosion. However, corporations have obscene quantities of money to purchase political and legal favors. As the film ‘The Big Fix’ says, Louisiana is a ‘colony of the petroleum industry’.
Josh Tickell, co-director of ‘The Big Fix’, grew up in Mandeville and knows a bit about Louisiana’s corruption, penetrating the state like kudzu ever since the 1940’s, when another movie,‘The Louisiana Story’, was filmed as petroleum-industry propaganda here. Tickell’s co-director and wife, Rebecca, is herself suffering from chemical poisoning, contracted while filming ‘The Big Fix’. Not in competition at Cannes this year, the film was given a standing ovation in special showing there. Once the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans has a copy, it will be shown multiple times.
In June of 2011, as if to prove the thesis of ‘The Big Fix’, both houses of the Louisiana legislature revealed appalling collusion with the petrochemical industry by defeating a Senate bill to outlaw the poisonous Corexit and a House bill to inform Gulf residents of their rights in claiming compensation. Oil-company lobbyists were seen at private parties with legislators after the votes, high-fiving and drinking in great merriment. I was in the Capitol and could not believe that my friends in the legislature were actually voting against our own people. Let us name with special honor the sponsors of these bills: Sen. Crowe of Slidell and Rep. Connick of Marrero.
As colonists on the plantation, we have allowed ourselves to become accustomed to “mastuhs” telling us what to do as though we were slaves. No doubt we will see the corporations try to purchase a pre-trial settlement before February 27, to leave themselves enriched and the people of the Gulf impoverished, incapable of sustaining their traditional lifestyles, incapable of living on the Gulf, perhaps even incapable of living.
The President, the governors, and authoritative agencies have said the oil is gone, the beaches are clean and the seafood is safe to eat. Not all of us trust authorities. We do not trust them because they have lost our trust by so many lies.
The NOAA and the FDA have stated that the seafood is safe. We all want to believe them, especially those along the Coast and in the tourist industry, including my family and friends. At the same time, I will not eat Gulf seafood until I am satisfied with the test results, and I am not satisfied. It grieves me to state that, and it is additional cause to mourn. It is another manifestation of the death of the Gulf.
For these reasons, we have planned a funeral for the Gulf as symbolic rebellion. It will take place Wednesday, February 29, from 1:00 to 4:00pm. We invite you all to meet in front of BP headquarters at 1250 Poydras Street to hear from Louisianians impacted by the disaster, then to march to the Federal Building at 500 Poydras. We will carry a coffin and wear costumes according to each person’s Carnival whims. I plan to wear a ‘V for Vendetta’ mask and a business suit, and I will carry the Cajun flag.
Given that actual rebellions, even those as peaceful as the Occupations, are always mocked by corporations and viciously suppressed by their lackey police and politicians, we suspect the world’s movers-and-shakers will not change their ways just yet. Still, let us recall that the abolition of slavery in the Western world began in London two hundred years before the movement achieved its goals. We are today’s Abolitionists of unregulated carbon-product exploitation!
The Cajun flag I will carry to mourn the pain and suffering of the Gulf Coast and its people, so many of them living in small French communities for over 200 years. Alongside them have been other cultural communities, all thriving in the bounty of a healthy Gulf. Now it is appropriate for all Louisianians to mourn in ceremonial rebellion because nregulated exploitation has killed the Gulf. We hope for resurrection, but it is appropriate at the present time first of all to mourn that men in powerful positions have cared so little and even now continue their dangerous refusal to treat either dead or living with respect.
So come, wear your costumes, carry your signs, and mourn! For further information, contact Elizabeth Cook (yocandra42@hotmail.com or 504.231.8789) or Mike Howells (howellnow@bellsouth.netor 504.5870080) or me.