WDSU Channel 6 News--New Orleans human rights defenders are preparing a gathering Wednesday at BP headquarters for the start of a New Orleans style funeral service and procession for the murdered Gulf of Mexico, organized to coincide with the “Trial of the Century” beginning Monday and the day Occupy has designated for the nation to demand human rights-based democracy.
“We're having a tremendous response for the event Wednesday,” key Gulf region human rights defender, Elizabeth Cook told Deborah Dupré Thursday afternoon.
“People are coming to the funeral from all over, as far away as Florida, saying they’re coming to mourn with us.”
Cook said many local African Americans have been contacting the organizers to learn more and say they’ll be at Wednesday funeral procession.
"So many African Americans are sick from the oil and Corexit," she said.
February 27, 2012, only five days after Mardi Gras, the most complex trial ever in New Orleans, the BP Oil Spill litigation, is to begin with "squadrons of lawyers, journalists, petroleum engineers, and fisher folk scheduled to descend on New Orleans, squeezing into a federal courtroom Monday, according to Environmental Law Guru Robert Verchick.
"Whatever the rest of the century holds, it seems fair to say that this legal dispute, if it does not settle, will be the most complicated environmental trial anyone has ever seen," Verchick says.
"With a thousand plaintiffs, a galaxy of witnesses, and 20,000 exhibits, this spectacular has more moving parts than a Madonna half-time show. As the trial unfolds, I'll provide you with some occasional shrimp-boots-on-the-ground legal blogging," said, with plans to keep the Louisiana Environmental Action Group in the loop that sent Verchicks statements about the trial to its email list Thursday.
Verchicks explained the trial as follows:
"The trial in New Orleans-officially called "Multi-District Litigation-2179" (MDL)-consolidates 535 lawsuits originally filed all over the country. More than 110,000 individuals and businesses have filed notice to take part in the MDL.
Plaintiffs include fishers, seafood processors, restaurants, coastal landowners, individuals who were harmed by dispersants or oil, and many others.
The litigation also includes claims by the federal government, Gulf Coast states, and a few municipalities.
Several states in Mexico have also filed claims. The federal and state government claims generally seek compensation for natural resource damage, response costs, or damage to their economies.
Many of these plaintiffs are at the same time trying to resolve their grievances through BP's Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF), a $20 billion compensation fund administered by Kenneth Feinberg. Plaintiffs who reach a final settlement with the GCCF waive their claims and must withdraw from the MDL.
This trial does not address shareholder suits (which will be handled in Houston) or criminal charges.
Many of these plaintiffs are at the same time trying to resolve their grievances through BP's Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF), a $20 billion compensation fund administered by Kenneth Feinberg. Plaintiffs who reach a final settlement with the GCCF waive their claims and must withdraw from the MDL.
This trial does not address shareholder suits (which will be handled in Houston) or criminal charges."
Gulf of Mexico funeral organizers say they hope BP, Transocean and Halliburton will be called into court for judgment on their roles in the most disastrous industrial incident the State of Louisiana has ever known and the greatest human rights violation the nation has known that many professionals have called a crime against humanity.
It was an “incident, not an accident,” New Orleans rights defenders assert in a written statement Thursday.
“The corporate principle of profit before people led to shortcuts and errors in exploration that killed eleven in the explosion and caused several subsequent deaths as a consequence of chemical poisoning, while leaving thousands ill and dying.”
Two days after the trial begins, from 1:00 t0 4:00 on Wednesday, February 29, 2012, the day designated by Occupy Portland for the nation to demand a democratic government in the United States, a funeral procession with Occupy NOLA’s participation will be held or the Gulf of Mexico.
Amid merriment of Mardi Gras Carnival, it was easy to forget serious matters, the reason Louisianans participate in Carnival.
“It’s good for the soul to forget troubles briefly, though the world continues to turn and the rains to fall and hurricanes to bluster and death to come," funeral organizers said. "On Ash Wednesday, many of us go to work with smudges on our foreheads: ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, remember, man, that you are dust and unto dust you will return.’ We now return to the ashes of the Deepwater Horizon."
New Orleans rights defenders have doubts the trial will even take place, “though it rightly should in order to reveal the roles of corporations and governments in the pain and suffering so widespread along the Gulf after the explosion.
"Corporations have obscene quantities of money to purchase political and legal favors. As the film ‘The Big Fix’ says, Louisiana is a ‘colony of the petroleum industry,’ Cook said.
“Josh Tickell, director of ‘The Big Fix,’ grew up in Mandeville and knows a bit about Louisiana’s corruption, penetrating the state like kudzu ever since the 1940’s, when another movie, ‘The Louisiana Story’, was filmed as petroleum-industry propaganda here.”
"Tickell’s co-director and wife, Rebecca, is herself suffering from chemical poisoning, contracted while filming ‘The Big Fix.’ The film was given a standing ovation in special showing at Cannes Film Festival last spring. After the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans has a copy, it will show the documentary multiple times."
In June of 2011, as if to prove the thesis of ‘The Big Fix,’ both houses of the Louisiana legislature revealed appalling collusion with the petrochemical industry by defeating a Senate bill to outlaw the poisonous Corexit and a House bill to inform Gulf residents of their rights in claiming compensation.
Oil-company lobbyists were seen at private parties with legislators after the votes, high-fiving and drinking in great merriment, according to Cook.
“I was in the Capitol and could not believe that my friends in the legislature were actually voting against our own people,” Cook stated.
She said that the sponsors of those bills -- Sen. Crowe of Slidell and Rep. Connick of Marrero – are due special honor.
“As colonists on the plantation, we have allowed ourselves to become accustomed to 'mastuhs' telling us what to do as though we were slaves.
“No doubt we’ll see corporations try to purchase a pre-trial settlement before February 27, to leave themselves enriched and the people of the Gulf impoverished, incapable of sustaining their traditional lifestyles, incapable of living on the Gulf, perhaps even incapable of living.
"The President, the governors, and authoritative agencies have said the oil is gone, the beaches are clean and the seafood is safe to eat.
"Not all of us trust authorities. We do not trust them because they have lost our trust by so many lies," the human rights defender organizers said. "The NOAA and the FDA have stated that the seafood is safe.
"We all want to believe them, especially those along the Coast and in the tourist industry, including my family and friends."
Cook stated, "At the same time, I will not eat Gulf seafood until I am satisfied with the test results, and I am not satisfied. It grieves me to state that, and it is additional cause to mourn. It is another manifestation of the death of the Gulf."
“For these reasons, we've planned a funeral for the Gulf as symbolic rebellion,” organizers said Thursday in a written statement.
“We invite you all to meet in front of BP headquarters at 1250 Poydras Street to hear from Louisianians impacted by the disaster, then to march to the Federal Building at 500 Poydras. We will carry a coffin and wear costumes according to each person’s Carnival whims.
"I plan to wear a ‘V for Vendetta’ mask and a business suit, and I will carry the Cajun flag,” Cook said.
“Given that actual rebellions, even those as peaceful as the Occupations, are always mocked by corporations and viciously suppressed by their lackey police and politicians, we suspect the world’s movers-and-shakers will not change their ways just yet.
“Still, let us recall that the abolition of slavery in the Western world began in London two hundred years before the movement achieved its goals. We are today’s Abolitionists of unregulated carbon-product exploitation."
Organizers say they will carry the Cajun flag to mourn pain and suffering of the Gulf Coast and its people, so many of them living in small French communities for over 200 years.
“Alongside them have been other cultural communities, all thriving in the bounty of a healthy Gulf. Now it is appropriate for all Louisianians to mourn in ceremonial rebellion because unregulated exploitation has killed the Gulf.
“We hope for resurrection, but it is appropriate first of all to mourn that men in powerful positions have cared so little and even now continue their dangerous refusal to treat either dead or living with respect.
“So come, wear your costumes, carry your signs, and mourn.”
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Thursday, March 1st 2012 at 12:33PM
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