Climate and Environment

Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) has confirmed that the controversial Bayou Bridge pipeline has been rerouted to go around the L’eau Est La Vie resistance camp.

“We are glad that we are safe in our little corner, but we still have grave concerns for our neighbors whose land has been taken by this disaster-prone company,” said Cherri Foytlin, a representative from L’eau Est La Vie camp.

Baton Rouge, LA -- TigerSwan, the mercenary firm under fire in North Dakota for using counterterrorism tactics against water protectors opposing Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, has applied for a license to provide private security in Louisiana.

While the application process does not require the firm to indicate who they will be working for, Energy Transfer Partners spokesperson Alexis Daniel said the pipeline company anticipates work to begin on the Bayou Bridge pipeline in the third quarter of this year.

New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre is hundreds of miles from the Gulf Coast and it’s been seven years since BP’s Deepwater Horizon exploded, killing eleven men and starting one of the worst environmental disasters in our nation’s history.  
 
But Spill, a play written and directed by Leigh Fondakowski, makes it seem like only yesterday. The play opens in small-town Texas diner, during an interview with Shelley Anderson.

Editor's Note - Last week, after 24 years with the EPA, Mustafa Santiago Ali resigned his position as Assistant Associate Administrator for Environmental Justice and Senior Advisor for Environmental Justice and Community Revitalization. During his tenure, Mustafa elevated environmental justice issues and worked across federal agencies to strengthen environmental justice policies, programs and initiatives. He worked tirelessly to protect overlooked, forgotten and vulnerable communities, including many across the Gulf Coast.

On January 17, 2017, a congressional hearing to confirm Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s chosen appointee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, was held in Washington, D.C.  

Originally posted on the Bold Louisiana site on December 1, 2016 

Photo: Moon rising on the Oceti Sakowin camp on November 12, 2016, by Karen Savage

December 2, 2016

Sheriff Greg Champagne
President, National Sheriffs’ Association
St. Charles Parish Sheriff
15025 River Rd.
Hahnville, LA 70057

Dear Sir,

I began my career in West Africa in the 1990s, where Nigerians who peacefully protested the oil industry’s destruction of their farms were raped, beaten and murdered. In the Niger Delta, violent repression was the oil industry and the Nigerian government’s response to a movement that had grown so powerful that on one day, in one protest, there were 300,000 people in the streets.

The Africatown community and other residents within the boundary of Mobile's District 2 received what amounts to "a public lashing" a few weeks ago as the city council voted by a count of 6 to 1 to approve an ordinance that will allow more storage tanks to be constructed within city limits. This ordinance was not wanted, asked for and did not deserve to be dumped on the citizens of Mobile.

I am a community organizer with Steps Coalition, a grass roots social justice organization in Biloxi, Mississippi.  In 2014, we were invited by a group of residents living in the Cherokee subdivision to help support their organizing efforts to reduce their exposure to industrial pollution.  The subdivision is located near Bayou Casotte Industrial Complex in Pascagoula, which houses the largest Chevron refinery in the world, two sandblasting and paint operations, two chemical plants, and a BP processing plant and gas exporting facility. 

Written by: Monique Harden, Dorothy Felix & Rebecca Johnson*

Days before accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech in 1964 about the struggles for racial justice taking place in the United States and South Africa. A recording of the speech was recently discovered and aired on Democracy Now!. In this speech, Dr. King conveyed the unity of purpose of these struggles for freedom and justice.