Voices of the Gulf

It sounds like the stuff of movie scripts and novel fodder, the idea of darkly clothed men sneaking in and out of hotel rooms, leaving behind watch battery sized listening devices, hidden in phone receivers and taped to the inside of lamp shades. Yet during the not-so-long-ago civil rights era, that seemed to be the primary business of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. [...Read more]

Our little environmental group, RESTORE (Restore Explicit Symmetry To Our Ravaged Earth), founded in 1974, welcomes the new energies that are coming forward in the necessary struggles to restore public health and ecosystem vitality in our region! Sometimes in the past there have been eras of near dormancy in organized efforts along those lines. [...Read more]

By Dr. Bonny Schumaker and Dr. Rick Steiner.  Residents from across the Gulf Coast met last week to forge ahead with formal establishment of a Gulf of Mexico Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council (GoM RCAC), whose purpose is to empower and involve citizens in the prevention of and effective response to future pollution incidents occurring from oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico. [...Read more]

Last Thursday in Lake Charles, Louisiana, U.S. Senator David Vitter of Louisiana was asked by Ms. Dorothy Felix, a resident of Mossville, why he sponsored a legislative revision of the Safe Chemicals Act that cut out important provisions in the bill. [...Read more]

More than two months after ExxonMobil’s 65-year-old Pegasus pipeline burst and spewed a gusher of thick Canadian tar sands oil through Mayflower, AR, and into a marsh on Lake Conway—the state’s most popular fishing spot—residents are still complaining of health problems and are worried about poisonous impacts on wildlife and in the environment. Many locals and some scientists have little faith in the continuous rosy assurances [...Read more]

On Saturday, the Original Big Seven Social Aid and Pleasure Club paraded again, retracing their steps, and beyond—to the end of the route they never got to complete a few weeks ago.
  [...Read more]

Thanks to all of you who’ve been paying attention to the Mother’s Day mass shooting in New Orleans. I was in the crowd that was attacked in gunfire that left 19 people shot. When my eyes started seeing through the chaos, a bloody semi-circle of bodies arched around me and my people—my partner, my baby, my sister, my nephew, my teachers, my friends, the comrades I organize with, the musicians I dance to, the artists I create with… My community got shot up. [...Read more]

On May 9, New Orleans community members held a rally against racial and gender profiling. Over 75 people gathered outside the New Orleans police headquarters and called for an end to discriminatory policing practices. Some shared their own stories about being profiled.

Photo: Derwin Wilright, Jr. speaks at the Stop the Frisk Rally [...Read more]

It’s a pungent, nauseating smell, so strong you can literally taste it.  For nearly two years, it has blanketed the Eight Mile neighborhood of Prichard, Alabama, a predominantly African-American community just outside of Mobile. [...Read more]

By Andrew Whitehurst, crossposted from Gulf Restoration Network's blog.On May 3rd Governor Phil Br [...Read more]