Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
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BP Still Putting Undocumented Clean-Up Workers At Risk
01 year ago
If it’s not one thing, it’s another. When it comes to cleaning up oil from the nation’s biggest environmental disaster, subcontractors at BP just can’t seem to get it right. The Michigan Messenger‘s reporting that a Texas company that’s been contracted by BP has been hiring undocumented workers and forcing them to work ridiculous amounts of overtime in hazardous conditions:
The Texas company, Halmark, has brought hundreds of workers to Battle Creek, putting them up in hotels and putting them to work cleaning oil-soaked islands and shorelines along the Kalamazoo river. The workers are expected to work 12 to 14 hour shifts, seven days a week, for which they receive $800 a week — in cash — a hotel room, and food while on the job sites.
After receiving an initial tip from a Halmark worker who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, the Michigan Messenger visited the rally site on Saturday where the workers are picked up every morning. While speaking to about two dozen men there, half of them admitted to being undocumented workers. All of them asked not to be identified.
Workers are allegedly forced to use the bathroom in the wooded areas they’re cleaning up because supervisors refuse to install portable toilets on site or ferry workers to nearby restrooms.
Back in June, the oil spill clean up effort became the center of controversy after a Louisiana sherrif called in federal immigration officials to round up workers. St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stephens eventually admitted to requesting the visits by federal agents for “trainings.“
The Environmental Protection Agency is looking into these latest allegations of safety violations.
Here’s Where BP is Dumping Its Oil Spill Waste
01 year ago
As the map below shows, the Environmental Protection Agency has approved nine landfills in the Gulf Coast to receive the waste products from the country’s largest oil spill. Five of those nine landfills are located in communities where a majority of residents are people of color.
The sites are in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi and are regular municipal landfills, not designed for hazardous waste, according to the Miami Herald. That’s because waste management officials claim the debris is not hazardous. So far, the landfills have received 40,000 tons of “oily solids” and waste from the clean up of the disaster, including soiled gloves.
The analysis of the landfill sites and racial data was done by Robert D. Bullard, a prominent figure in the environmental justice movement and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center. Calls to the EPA were not returned.
The only place that has successfully halted dumping at their landfill is Harrison County, Mississippi, where 71 percent of residents are white.
In Florida, white residents were incredulous that their town of Spring Hill was picked for dumping oil waste — until they realized the EPA had printed a typo. The federal agency didn’t mean Spring Hill, where whites make up 94 percent of the town’s residents. They meant the Springhill Regional Landfill in Campbellton, a town of just 221 people, where 60 percent of residents are African American.
The waste is being hauled around the Gulf Coast by three giants in the business of waste management: Heritage Environmental Services in Louisiana; Waste Management Inc. on the Louisiana-Mississippi border and in Florida; and Republic Services in Florida.
As Bullard pointed out in his analysis, the decision about where to dump BP oil waste is no surprise. Black and Latino communities in the South have long been “sacrifice zones.”
An investigation by the Associated Press in June found that “the handling and disposal of oily materials was haphazard at best.” Reporters found a truck leaking tar balls, sand and water on a main beach road and also oily sand sitting in an uncovered waste container in a state park.
BP’s Dumping Oil-Spill Waste in Communities of Color, Study Finds
01 year ago
More than one hundred days into the BP disaster, folks are wondering where all the oil has gone–much of it seems to have crept under the water’s surface, or maybe evaporated into thin air. But, as officials scramble to assess the pending damage, we do know the destination of around 40,000 tons of the spill waste: it’s headed for the families that have been getting dumped on for years. In what may be yet another calm before the storm, BP’s colorfully advertised waste management plan appears to follow a haunting pattern of environmental racism.
The activists tracking the region probably locate the targeted sites without glancing at a map. According to an analysis by Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center of Clark Atlanta University:
More than half (five out of nine) of the landfills receiving BP oil-spill solid waste are located in communities where people of color comprise a majority of residents living within near the waste facilities.
In addition, a significantly large share of the BP oil-spill waste, 24,071 tons out of 39,448 tons (61 percent), is dumped in people of color communities. This is not a small point since African Americans make up just 22 percent of the coastal counties in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, while people of color comprise about 26 percent of the population in coastal counties.
These are communities already pummeled by the a triple-blow of Hurricane Katrina, economic paralysis and racial inequality. Within these populations, the pollution may strike women and children the hardest. Exposures to oil chemicals, such as benzene, along with the mystery cocktail of dispersants, may pose major risks to reproductive and maternal health, though much more research is needed.
On the potential health impacts, Truthout’s Lucinda Marshall notes, “there is little data to go on in large part because the companies responsible have been allowed to keep that data from the public and, in the case of this particular spill, we don’t even know what all the chemicals involved are.”
Are we retracing the trajectory of Hurricane Katrina and Rita’s aftermath, a catastrophe that still cries out for a regulatory response to generations of neglect?
As Kimberly Inez McGuire points out at RH Reality Check, BP’s foulness is now stalking the impoverished stretch along the Mississippi known as “Cancer Alley.” Along this forsaken corridor, families live with the toxic threats flowing from dumps and industrial plants, including developmental disorders, fertility problems and respiratory illness.
Among the poorest local hurricane survivors, the health of mothers and children is further compromised by everything from post-traumatic stress to formaldehyde-laden trailers.
The Gulf Coast mirrors the overlap of reproductive justice and environmental justice struggles among women trapped by failed environmental and economic policies. Toxic exposures during pregnancy are linked to birth defects, while air and water contamination make it hazardous for children to play outside. The lethal synergy between poor health and sick communities deepens the cycle of social disenfranchisement. And with limited access to health care and abortion, many poor women of color risk losing control of both their reproductive and environmental destinies.
Referring to the usual targets as “sacrifice communities,” Bullard explains the intensity of toxic exposures as a measure of the devaluation of human lives:
Although African Americans make up about 32 percent of Louisiana’s population, three of the five approved landfills (60 percent) in the state that received BP oil-spill waste are located in mostly black communities. African American communities in Louisiana’s Gulf Coast were hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina and have experienced the toughest challenge to rebuild and recover after five years. Dumping more disaster waste on them is not a pathway to recovery and long-term sustainability.
So this is what corporate America means by “waste management.” Though Obama’s EPA vows to enhance federal monitoring of local environmental justice issues, we’re left today in anxious expectation of another avoidable crisis of race and health. Like the oil itself, the ultimate consequences are sure to surface down the line, borne out in the next generation to inherit this unconscionable legacy.
If the BP Oil Spill Had Hit Your Hometown…
01 year ago
BP has tried eight different attempts to stop or slow the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf: Undersea robots to trigger the blowout preventer, the large containment dome, the top hat, the top kill, the junk shot…. the list goes on. And we still don’t have any certainty of how much oil has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since the April 20th explosion.
What we do have are estimates — from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), from outside experts, from British Petroleum — of how fast crude oil is flowing out of the remaining leaks. According to NOAA, an estimated 840,000 gallons a day is coming from the remaining ruptures, but BP warns it could be as bad as 2.5 million gallons a day.
But those numbers, while overwhelming, can also feel abstract. So, Ifitwasmyhome.com is helping people visualize how big the spill really is. By taking data released daily from the NOAA that details where the spill is going to be within the next 24 hours, the site illustrates to visitors what the spill would be like if it hit their hometown.
BP Cleanup Worker Health Issues Add Up, And So Do Claims
01 year ago
Underwater efforts to cap the oil leak have been partially successful, but up on the water’s surface, the cleanup effort is being hampered by the many health issues cleanup workers have been dealing with. On top of that, temperatures in the Gulf Coast hit 110 degrees yesterday, prompting fireboats to start spraying water on the oil-slicked surface to combat the toxic fumes that the combined oil and chemical dispersants have created.
There are at least 24,400 people working on the oil disaster response, and ProPublica reports that so far 50 cleanup workers in Louisana have become ill. In Alabama, there have been 15 reported cases of illness.
But people don’t have much faith in BP’s ability to keep workers safe from here on out. Not only has the company threatened to fire cleanup workers who bring their own safety equipment, but lax government regulations mean the company is not required to provide respirators to workers or implement other measures that would ensure the safety of workers.
McClatchy reported that the government doesn’t specify levels at which workers can get sick from exposure to many of the toxins that they are being exposed to and BP is not responsible for evacuating workers or otherwise ensuring the safety of people who do cleanup work. One million gallons of dispersants have been used so far in the cleanup.
Meanwhile, the list of people seeking damages and promised claims from BP continues to grow. BP’s hired 700 insurance folks and claims adjustors, Dan Willis, BP America’s Vice President of Resources, said on Capitol Hill. Fishermen can file claims—captains are allowed $5,000 and deck hands make somewhere between $2,500 and $5,000, and once paperwork clears people who’ve lost wages because of the spill are eligible for more from the company. So far the company’s paid out 18,000 claims and predicted it will spend $84 million on claims through just June.
According to a federal filing made by BP today, the current cost of its response to the oil spill stands at $1.43 billion.
Photo: Getty Images/Win McNamee
In Oil Spill, Bayou Tribes Confront Yet Another Invasion
01 year ago
How many invasions can a community take? The Indians of Pointe-au-Chien in Southern Louisiana have endured centuries of colonization and exploitation–under the French, the Americans, and now, the oil industry. But the tiny Pointe-au-Chien community, which is cut off from critical disaster relief resources due to a lack of federal tribal recognition, has never seen a combination of human and natural catastrophe quite like the BP oil spill.
The Washington Post reports on local efforts to put the disaster in historical perspective:
“I would say it’s probably the worst thing” in the tribe’s history, said chief Verdin. He meant because the oil has shut down the fishing grounds, which had sustained the tribe for decades. “It’s shutting down our way of life. . . . Even during the Depression, during hard times, you grow your garden, you fish. You still eat.”
For members of the Pointe-au-Chien tribe, the question now is whether to take a temporary job laying boom in the marsh for BP’s cleanup contractors. The chief had urged even bitter tribe members to do it.
Not because he thinks the boom works: In fact, the oil seems to be sneaking underneath it. But because he thinks BP’s generosity will eventually run out.
“Whatever you can get, get it now,” the chief said.
The sense of hopelessness is surely deepened by the community’s economic dependency on the faceless corporation that caused the disaster. Reflection will come later; right now, people are just desperate to cobble together whatever help comes their way before the well runs dry.
If the federal government recognized the cultural and economic sovereignty of indigenous peoples, tribes might be able to weather environmental disasters by demanding that compensation take into account the weight of historical injustices. Currently, the Pointe-au-Chien Indians are at the mercy of a multinational company that seems more focused on limiting its liability than compensating victims.
The oil and gas industry has been encroaching on the Bayou habitat for decades now, and the tribes that inhabit the area, including the Houma and the Chitimacha, are oddly accustomed to living in the midst of perpetual crisis. But the fatalistic tone of one Houma tribal member says a lot about how this disaster might be the last they’ll ever face. Jamie Dardar, a crabber of Houma descent told the Miami Herald:
“The oil has locked us in… Everyone is on top of each other now and you can’t even drive a boat through there for all the traps.
“But it’s only a matter of time before they shut it completely down. It’s only a matter of time. This oil is just going to finish us.”
On Democracy Now!, Rosina Philippe of the Atakapa-Ishak community remained determined to hold onto their traditions, in part because the alternative was simply unimaginable:
We’re going to fight to stay here, because this is more than just our place, you know, like on a map, like a geographical location. This is our place in the universe. This is where we belong. This where we connect with nature. We’re part of this natural cycle. And if we weren’t here, we wouldn’t be who we are.
The plight of the indigenous communities magnifies the historical continuity between colonization and energy exploitation. Their identity is rooted in their sheer survival of one existential threat after another. But today, even they don’t know how this chapter of their story will end.
Texas Settlement Could Be Blueprint for Disaster Recovery
01 year ago
While the government struggles to confront the mounting catastrophe on the Gulf Coast, a legal settlement in Texas is set to put hundreds of millions in long overdue relief funds into the hands of disaster victims.
Since the 2008 hurricane season, some of the most vulnerable communities, who suffered displacement and other damage, have been short-changed by the Texas government’s recovery plan. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and Texas-based partner groups announced on Monday that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has approved an agreement with the state that would “assure that federal disaster recovery funds expended in Texas will protect and benefit people with low incomes, African Americans and Latinos as well as elder and disabled populations.”
The groups originally complained that Texas had failed to deliver adequate aid to poorer households and people of color impacted by Hurricane Ike, neglecting their needs for affordable housing and protection from housing discrimination—a pattern bearing an eerie resemblance to the post-hurricane housing crises still afflicting New Orleans.
In Texas, someone has apparently gotten the message. The new recovery plan, according to NLIHC’s announcement, provides about $417 million to be invested in housing for low- and moderate-income survivors. Another $300 million in aid will go to “some of the hardest hit regions in the state whose housing needs were not addressed in Texas’s original disaster action plan.” Another feature of the new plan is a housing voucher initiative, known as “move to opportunity,” which will enable survivor families to secure affordable housing in other communities within the state that have better job prospects and stronger schools.
According to the Houston Chronicle, “The state did not acknowledge any discrimination,” but agreed to reallocate funds in response to the groups’ complaint.
The settlement could serve as a roadmap for advocates pushing for policy changes in the response to other disasters.
Advocates from across the Gulf Coast want HUD to extend its commitment evidenced in this historic victory in Texas to states affected by Hurricane Katrina by ensuring federal housing dollars are not diverted to unnecessary or discriminatory projects that will not benefit the most vulnerable populations. Advocates urge HUD to seek equitable resolution of cases pending in Louisiana and Mississippi in ways that similarly benefit families with low and moderate incomes and people of color.
But just when it seems like racial and economic justice activists are finally making headway in their pursuit of accountability in the government’s disaster response, a new crisis hits. The horrors of the Gulf Coast oil spill are just starting to surface, and the human toll will surely deepen as more communities and workers are exposed to toxic hazards and cut off from their economic lifeblood. And many are still reeling from Katrina’s fury, not to mention the economic collapse.
Both the impact and the recovery effort for the spill are likely to drag on for years longer than they did for recent hurricanes. These are uncharted waters for state and federal authorities, but if they’ve learned anything from their experiences in the Gulf Coast, they’ll make sure the survivors of BP’s nightmare are spared the devastating wait that communities endured in the wake of past storms.
Image: Frank Franklin II / AP
Friday Twitter Break: Arizona Just Can’t Give Racism A Rest
01 year ago
by Julianne Hing
in Arizona, bp, gaza, ice, Immigration, mia, nbafinals, Pop Culture, sb1070, tonyhayward
What is going on? As if the ongoing BP disaster at the Gulf Coast weren’t enough, Arizona decided it couldn’t let the weekend get started without reminding us exactly how small-minded and backwards it can be. The Onion could not make up better headlines than the ones Arizona gives out for free.
Elsewhere this week we dealt with truffle fries, BP CEO Tony Hayward’s foot-in-mouth disease, Artur Davis (remember him?), flotilla raids. More than enough news for the Twitterverse. And! It’s the NBA finals.
As always, you can find us on Twitter at @racialjustice.
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BREAKING: Feds Target Oil Spill Workers in Immigration Probe
01 year ago
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have been targeting BP’s job sites in Louisiana in a hunt for undocumented workers who are risking their lives to clean up the disastrous oil spill. El Diario/La Prensa and Feet in 2 Worlds, a public radio investigative journalism project, broke the shocking story today. ICE spokesperson Temple H. Black confirmed the report (via Erin Polgreen):
ICE, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, visited two command centers, one in Venice and the other in Hopedale, twice in May. ICE agents arrived at the staging areas without prior notice, rounded up workers, and asked for documentation of their legal status, according to Black.
The command centers, located in the marshes a few hours east of New Orleans, are among the largest, with hundreds of workers employed at each site.
“We don’t normally go and check people’s papers—we’re mostly focused on transnational gangs, predators, drugs. This was a special circumstance because of the oil spill,” said Black.
[snip]
There were no arrests at either site, according to the ICE spokesman. But he said if undocumented workers had been discovered, they “would have been detained on the spot and taken to Orleans Parish Prison.”
Workers report that federal officials showed up in unmarked cars and out of uniform. Black insisted, “These weren’t raids—they were investigations.”
They certainly weren’t investigations into worker safety, though. As ColorLines’ Julianne Hing reported Tuesday, BP has not only failed to provide proper training and haz-mat gear for workers braving its toxic stew; it has also threatened to fire workers who use their own protective gear, provided by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.
But if ICE spokesperson Black is to be believed, federal oversight is more concerned with scapegoating immigrant workers for the region’s downward-spiralling economy. El Dairo/La Prensa and Feet in 2 Worlds report:
“We visited just to ensure that people who are legally here can compete for those jobs—those people who are having so many problems,” said Temple H. Black, a spokesman for ICE in Louisiana.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, thousands of Hispanic workers, many of them undocumented, flocked to the region to help in the reconstruction of Louisiana’s coastal towns. Many stayed, building communities on the outskirts of New Orleans or finding employment outside the city in oil refineries and in the fishing industry.
These Hispanic workers have been accused of taking away jobs from longtime Louisiana residents, and the tension has grown as fishing and tourism jobs dry up, leaving idle workers to compete for jobs on the oil spill clean-up effort.
We’ll have more on this story next week.
Photo: Reuters/Sean Gardner
Obama: BP Does What We Say, & You Can Hit the Local Beaches
01 year ago
President Obama said today that BP is responsible for what’s estimated to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history, but the federal government is telling the company how to fix the situation. It’s the feds who approved the so-called “Top Kill” approach yesterday that engineers now say is working to stop the oil spill that began April 20 and has killed 11 workers.
Why work with BP at all? Obama said the very folks who created the problem have the technology and expertise to fix it and the government doesn’t.
In one of those politicians-say-the-most-obvious-things moments, Obama acknowledged the special place oil corporations have in DC: “The oil industry’s cozy and sometimes corrupt relationship with government regulators meant little or no regulation at all.” He said he’ll separate the folks who give oil companies permits from those who oversee the industry’s safety issues. The top oil regulator Elizabeth Birnbaum already got the ax.
Obama’s hitting pause on exploratory deep-water rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for the next six months and also in Alaska, where Shell is arguing (we’re not kidding) that they should be ok’d for drilling because they’re going in shallow waters.
As a friendly business service reminder, Obama said all but three beaches in the Gulf Coast are open for tourists and their dolares. But we’ll recommend you check out Julianne Ong Hing’s report on what the Vietnamese families are experiencing in the area and put your money with the community groups making a difference on the ground.