100 Days of Outrage gets out at Grand Isle

By Liam Wright from the Emergency Committee to Stop the Gulf Oil Disaster

On Saturday, July 24th a group of 8 people from all over the country, including some residents of New Orleans, packed into two cars and drove out to Grand Isle, the island closest to the Deepwater Horizon Drilling Platform. The huge benefit concert, Island Aid, was scheduled. Thousands of attendees came out, in spite of Tropical Depression Bonnie, to raise money for the people of Grand Isle and to hear live music from a combination of local and big stars. Four of us did work around the 100 Days of Outrage, at different points in the day, and we ended up getting out between 800-900 copies of a double-sided flier that had the call for the 100 Days of Outrage on one side and the Mission Statement of the Emergency Committee on the other.

As we drove into town dark clouds overhead poured rain, with lightning occasionally arching between the clouds. Even with the storm overhead there was a line of cars stretching through the town to where the parking for the concert was. As we waited in line we spotted various signs and art pieces made by the people of Grand Isle that said things like “BP: Cannot Fish or Swim-How the hell are we suppose to feed our kids now?” or pictures of Sponge Bob characters playing in oil. The church message board read, “God hears our prayers. We just have to be persistent.” The storm cleared up almost right after we got into the concert and we started mixing it up among the people.

I found that by and large people at Island Aid were hungry for something that could deal with the crisis. The anger felt by people was almost palpable. Simply by us being there people wanted to know what was up and wanted to speak their minds. Almost every person that would walk by would take a flier; a couple of people took small stacks to get out. And even when we would be taking a break or talking with someone else, often times, someone or a group of people would come up and ask for a flier. At one point a couple of big burly guys with beards walked up to me and asked me what this was about. I laid out the 100 days of Outrage and how we were out to break through the paralyzation of people and send a message to the world that the oil disaster is not over. We had some back and forth about the lies and coverup, as well as how the people of the region were suffering because of the disaster and the response from BP/the government. At the end of the conversation one of the men reached out for a hand shake then pulled me in a shoulder-to-shoulder hug, saying “Thank you. Thanks for coming down here.”

Of course not everyone agreed with the Emergency Committee’s demand to stop oil drilling. But I got a sense of the desperation felt by people directly impacted by the Gulf oil disaster. I came away feeling we really need to out among these communities much more and connect them up with the Emergency Committee and the 100 Days of Outrage. If so, people whose whole way of life has been disrupted or torn apart by this disaster, can play an important role in the 100 Days of Outrage really taking off.