Climate and Environment

With the kids out of school and things slow for the holidays, I have been using the opportunity to get myself better organized a bit for the year to come. I have amassed quite the collection of business cards, papers, reports – bills too, lol – over the last five years of this journey, and it has been both daunting and liberating to weed out that which has been uselessly taking up space in my life.

Since 2010, I've followed the development of Margaret Brown’s documentary The Great Invisible, which explores the BP disaster with great care, artistry and respect through the eyes of people on many sides of the issues, from survivors of the rig explosion to unemployed seafood workers and representatives of government and industry.

The historical value of Africatown's Hog Bayou was carved in stone long before the Oil Barons of the world discovered Africatown's valuable wetlands. Africatown's Hog Bayou will forever be known as the place in Mobile where the "African" slaves taught the "American" slaves how to feed themselves and their loved ones after slavery had ended. The last recorded shipment of slaves to arrive in America landed aboard the slave ship Clotilde in 1860. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, freeing all slaves.

Brandon Ballengée wears many hats. And, as a visual artist, biologist and environmental activist, he often wears them simultaneously.

According to his website, he, “creates transdisciplinary artworks inspired from his ecological field and laboratory research.”

As Ballengée explains, “I’m kind of a strange hybrid mix between an artist and a biologist.”

Back in the 60's I could always tell when election time was near. First, city equipment would show up to clean the streets and clear out vacant lots. Then the politician would make an appearance at the Elks and buy a round of drinks for everyone in the place. The next day he would sponsor a chicken and fish fry for the community. At the height of the community outing he would make a speech. That speech would always promise everything but deliver nothing.

Undeterred by the blazing sun and high humidity of a mid-August afternoon in Biloxi, Mississippi, Tuat Nguyen and Bien Do moved nimbly around their shrimp boat, making last-minute preparations to leave for Lake Borgne, where the Louisiana shrimp season would open in a few days.

As over 300,000 people took to the streets of New York City for the People's Climate March last Sunday, events across the Gulf Coast brought people together closer to home, in solidarity and support

Originally Posted on Life Support Project. “My husband died of renal failure, my neighbor died of renal failure, my other neighbor behind me died of cancer. The lady over there, her granddaughter’s six months pregnant, and was just diagnosed with breast cancer. They live right here at the pit.”

We’re standing in the parking lot of the Marie K. Young Community Center in the Wedgewood community of Pensacola, Florida, a quiet African-American neighborhood.

On Wednesday, advocates and neighbors protested the plan to build a new school on the site of the former Booker T. Washington High, because of concerns over toxic contamination. The site was home to the Silver City / Clio Street Dump from the 1890s through the 1930s.

“What is being proposed is dumping a problem from one neighborhood to another without actually solving the issue,” says Graham Bosworth of a proposal to move and expand hazardous rail traffic out of Old Metarie and into his Hollygrove Dixon community in New Orleans, Louisiana.