Before coming out to San Francisco in the West Coast for some talks and interviews,
I spent the last couple of weeks in New Orleans holding hearings and public meetings around the Gulf.
The Environmental Court is in full working swing in New Orleans…
Ironically the impact of the Oil spill will be felt by the marginal people last…
And it will last for a very long time.
The people here call this oil spill and Environmental disaster Obama’s 9/11 moment. And they understand that the government response has been non-existant…
This thing cuts deep. It bleeds everyone when the Environment is dying. First though it affects the working folks.
The middle class workers of Louisiana and in the classic sustainable industries of the Gulf region states.
People here are feeling all kinds of Unhappy. With multitudes of nasty, mean pressures. Environmental, Economic and Social, but above all else they are afraid that the HOPE is gone…
They stand to lose the most, they are scared and scarred.
They are also being radicalized towards the Right. They see BP being allowed by the government to be in charge… of their own disaster making machine and after a whole month of their ineffective and incompetent handling people, having lost their Hope are moving away…
Unsurprisingly, they become very Conservative…
Seeing the environmentally progressive President signing off to big Oil exploration and off shore oil extraction developments in areas protected till now and territories with no oil-rigs on them yet opening up throughout, they feel the Environmental degradation is getting out of control.
We live in a topsy turvy world…
Timing couldn’t have been worse. Just few days before the massive spill… President Obama signed off to the demands of the oil companies for massive Exploration off shore
So people become radicals of the Environmental Conservation sort.
Not Bad…
I like people who are Conservative on the Environment…
What I don’t like is the massive sign up drives by the Army down here.
The Coast guard, the Navy, the Marine Corp and the Army have been the main beneficiaries of the Oil Spill. Their drives to recruit the unemployed poor are legendary and very successful…
Not only the new unemployed sign up, but all those who had done their service and returned to civilian Life, Now all men and many women from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and other Gulf States, are rushing pell-mell to go back to fight the losing battles of Cheney-Bush on behalf of Haliburton and the Oil majors. The marginal folks follow suit as it seems the right thing to do now that the Environment all around is collapsing… and the normal jobs disappear everywhere around the Gulf states. Sign up for the Army and get shipped out to another hell hole named Iraq or Afghan, Pastun, Waziri land or whatever, to continue working for the resource fueled wars that drove You out of your home and family in the first place.
Only this time they really offer their lives too.
Well… – dying in an oil rig explosion or in an oil war is approximately the same – they figure.
Even the odds are similar.
Talk about placing people and families between a stone and a hard place.
The Environmental Court and all of us have given a Voice to these issues and our Town Hall discussion are producing real Change.
And we bring forth the unsung heroes…
We have a huge debt of Gratitude to the workers of the rig and the honest people working within the oil industry who have been coming forward to tell the truth and alert us to the reality, the size and effects of the massive BP oil well spills.
As you might have known the Environmental Court was the first to inform people of the proper size of the erupting well and the massive oil volumes, well before anyone else.
We held a conference a whole two weeks before NPR broke the story, in clear contrast with the well organized government and British Petroleum well lubricated efforts at PR and spin publicity of the small amounts of oil; and against their attacks – we persevered.
Then many others came forward with separate and independent analysis and scientific measurement confirmations and now our initial Volumetrics of the Oil spill have been widely accepted as the reality.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
We got lots of hateful attacks here in the South, including the torching of my car…
But we persevere.
Be patient my friends…
