Gulf Coast Citizens Head for Nation’s Capitol to Fight for the Gulf
Louisiana songwriter Drew Landry will play at the Cajun Experience Restaurant at 1825 18th Street NW in Washington D.C. on Thursday, August 25, beginning at 7:30 pm, with a press conference scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Joining Landry will be a delegation of Gulf Coast citizens who will speak about the long-term effects of the oil gusher and subsequent dispersant use.
Representatives from the Gulf Restoration Network (GRN), one of several non-profit organizations supporting the delegation’s journey will also be available, as will representatives of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights. The RFK Center recently toured the coastal states and is calling for access to treatment for Gulf communities sick from the BP disaster (see more here).
Landry is insistent that restoration efforts must require that the American people first hear the truth about what coastal citizens are facing. Gulf Coast residents are being denied their human right to health, he said in a press release.
The Obama administration’s mediator, Ken Feinberg, has denied 100 percent of health claims submitted, according to this report from Ada McMahon with Bridge the Gulf.
“People of the Gulf Region deserve the same treatment as people who received compensation for their toxic exposure-related illnesses from the Agent Orange Settlement Fund and the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, both administered by Kenneth Feinberg. Anything less denies their human right to health,” Landry says.
The very fate of our human species, yes, and your state too — as well as this country and the earth — may well depend on a compromise between science and religion.
Yes, you read that correctly. Not that I ever wanted to admit it before.
This will be a precarious journey with no guarantee of success like the fate of all life itself, from the beginning into the infinite future.
A top American scientist from Alabama writes that religion and science “are the two most powerful forces in the world today, including especially the United States.” That is from Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson’s book The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, which he wrote to Southern Baptist preachers who hold sway over millions of votes that could have a positive, or negative, impact on all kinds of government policies.
Cherri Foytlin and three Gulf Coast activists have been arrested in front of BP Headquarters in New Orleans.
“The time has come. We have exhausted our options, collected the facts, tried negotiation, gone from meeting to meeting,” Foytlin said in a press release. “The oil is still here. We are still here, and we will not wait! Take care of my people on the coast!”
Since last summer, when Foytlin reached out to President Obama (to no avail), she said in the press release. She has attended countless town hall meetings, community forums, and has walked from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., she says, in order to be sure federal officials are aware of the unresolved economic, environmental, and health devastation caused by the BP disaster.
Foytlin is one of several dozen Gulf Coast fishermen, BP clean-up workers, residents and community organizers who gathered in front of BP Headquarters in New Orleans to mark the one year anniversary of the date when the White House falsely claimed that 75 percent of the oil was gone from the Gulf of Mexico.
The group demanded BP and Kenneth Feinberg honor health claims and operate a transparent and fair claims process for those impacted financially. Feinberg has denied all health claims and has approved less than 40 percent of all claims submitted.
Water and fish samples have been sent to the Alabama Department of Public Health to try and figure out what is causing a fishkill in sea waters off Gulf Shores, Alabama, according to a report from WKRG News 5 in Mobile.
“The middle of last week is when we started getting reports of them washing up on the front beach of the state park,” Chief Biologist for the Alabama Department of Conservation Kevin Anson said.
For about a week now, fish — mostly menhaden — have been dying by the hundreds, popping up in Gulf waters either to be eaten by seabirds or other marine life or just washing ashore.
Biologist are trying to figure out why. Anson told the news channel it started with an algae bloom and could have to do with calm waters and high temperatures depleting oxygen levels.
Ocean lovers around the world will join hands on beaches and in cities beginning at 12 noon local time Saturday, June 25, for the second annual “Hands Across the Sand” event, a demonstration of opposition to expanding offshore drilling and support for cleaner energy choices.
With the oil industry pushing for a dramatic expansion of offshore drilling in U.S. waters, “Hands Across the Sand” participants will show leaders like President Obama the breadth of opposition to new drilling and support for a clean energy future rooted in energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy solutions, such as wind, solar and geothermal.
“Offshore drilling will never be safe. Expanding offshore oil drilling is not the answer; embracing clean energy is,” said Dave Rauschkolb, a Florida restaurateur who founded Hands Across the Sand. “We’re here to say NO to offshore drilling, and YES to clean energy.”
According to BP ads and the lamestream media, including local newspapers and television news outlets that have taken millions of dollars in advertising money from BP, the Gulf of Mexico is now “clean” only a year after being polluted on a massive scale by the BP oil spill of 2010, the largest and worst mand-made environmental disaster in American industrial history.
The only problem is, it is NOT true. According to this video by Trisha Springstead with Captain Lori Deangelis of Dolphin Queen Cruises, the oil and chemicals are still showing up.
Louisiana charter boat captain Louis Bayhi discusses the severe health problems he’s experienced after serving on clean up crews in the wake of the BP oil spill.
Dr. Wilma Subra, a Louisiana physiological biochemist, founder and president of the Subra Company of New Iberia, was interviewed in the award-winning documentary “Gasland.” She reports on recent blood test results on Gulf Coast residence showing that corexit is making its way into the food supply and humans.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the second in a series of three fast-track drilling bills Wednesday that impose arbitrarily rushed permitting deadlines and would force the Secretary of the Interior to approve or deny drilling permits within 30 days.
If a final decision is not made within 60 days, the bill requires that the permit automatically be approved, according to the Defenders of Wildlife.
In addition. H.R. 1229, the so-called “Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work” bill, “eliminates important safety and environmental considerations and gives experts far too little time to adequately evaluate the safety and environmental implications of drilling — exactly the type of reckless protocol that contributed to the disastrous BP Deepwater Horizon explosion,” Rodger Schlickeisen, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, said in a press release.
“This bill should more accurately be called, ‘Pandering to Big Oil Interests at the Expense of Coastal Economies and the Environment,’” Schlickeisen said. “By fast-tracking the important review process, the bill puts at risk the very fishermen, restaurant and hotel owners, and coastal communities, wildlife and habitat still reeling from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.”
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
