Voices from the Gulf

“Cannons to the right of them, cannons to the left of them, cannons in front of them, volley’d and thunder’d, storm’d at with shot and shell, boldly they rode and rode well, into the jaws of death, into the mouth of Hell, rode the six hundred.” - from the Charge of the Light Brigade, by Alfred Tennyson

In the southwestern corner of Africatown, wedged between two sections of freshly cut new lumber produced by one of Mobile's most successful lumber companies, sits the remains of Africatown's Lewis Quarters. Lewis Quarters was aptly named because it was founded by and inhabited by descendants of Cudjoe Lewis, the youngest of the last shipment of slaves to be brought into this country in 1860. Lewis Quarters is just north of the deepest part of the Three Mile Creek and at one time encompassed all of that section of Africatown.

On Monday, April 20th, Gulf Coast fisherfolk, residents, and artists gathered at BP's Houston headquarters to speak out about the ongoing impacts of the BP oil disaster. Advocates said fisheries and the communities that depend on them are in serious decline. “When BP says it has done right for the Gulf, they are lying,” said Thao Vu* of Biloxi, Mississippi, "Less than 18% of the health claims submitted have been approved and even fewer have actually been paid out. While BP plays games with our media and with our court system, our fishing families are sick and suffering.”

I’m Darin Acosta. I grew up in Norco, Louisiana. That’s influenced a lot of work and research that I do. Most of my creative output centers around industrialization in the River Parishes. I went to graduate school for urban and regional planning at UNO (University of New Orleans), where I learned GIS (geographic information system), so I apply GIS  to my creative work in order to introduce users to environmental justice histories in the region that I grew up in.