A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [61]
Across the Gulf, I as well as various photographers, journalists, filmmakers, and environmentalists trying to understand and document the spreading oil are now having real problems. We’re getting turned away from public areas affected by the oil—and being threatened with arrest—by private guards, sheriffs, cops, and the Coast Guard.
Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, planned to bring a small group of journalists with him on a trip he was taking through the Gulf on a Coast Guard vessel. The Coast Guard agreed to accommodate the reporters and photographers. At about 10:00 P.M. on the night before the trip, someone from the Department of Homeland Security called the senator’s office to say that no journalists would be allowed.
What lame excuse did they have? “They said it was the Department of Homeland Security’s response-wide policy not to allow elected officials and media on the same ‘federal asset,’ ” said a spokesman for the senator. “No further elaboration.”
A reporter and photographer from New York’s Daily News were told by a BP contractor that they could not access a public beach on Grand Isle, Louisiana, one of the areas most heavily affected by the oil spill. The contractor summoned a local sheriff, who then told the reporter, Matthew Lysiak, that news media persons had to fill out paperwork and then be escorted by a BP official to get access to the public beach. “For the police to tell me I needed to sign paperwork with BP to go to a public beach?” Lysiak said. “It’s just irrational.”
BP is obviously a company with a lot to hide. But how it’s staged a coup of the Gulf and gained control of government—that, I don’t get.
“Our general approach throughout this response,” says yet another of the seemingly dozens of faceless BP spokesmen, “has been to allow as much access as possible to media and other parties without compromising the work we are engaged on or the safety of those to whom we give access.”
They allow? To whom they give access? How did a corporation succeed in suppressing U.S. citizens trying to see and talk about what’s going on, and why are any of our law enforcers, who should be guarding the coast against BP, so thoroughly and sickeningly capitulating, deferring, and letting themselves Be Played? Obama wanted to know “whose ass to kick”? The answer’s so blindingly obvious. How is that even a question?
When CBS News reports that one of its news crews was threatened with arrest for trying to film a public beach where oil had washed ashore, the Coast Guard says it is disappointed to learn of the incident.
Signs announce imaginary lines, but the real landscape changes slowly from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama to Florida. And so does the light. Green fields. Blue skies. Black cows. Red barns. Sentinal mockingbirds. Amber waves of wheat. Hay for sale while the sun shines. Modest houses with wide lawns and the shade of big trees. Chairs on porches. Mimosas in bloom. Spreading palms, tall pines. The proudness of corn. A few unlucky armadillos. The Roadkill Cafe, the Elberta Social Club. Antiques and collectibles. Live bait and crawfish at the hardware store and at the grocery store. At the garden store: “Ten Percent Off All Firearms.” The tank guarding the veterans memorial. Signs directing our attention to pizza, the control of pests, and eternal salvation. A Baptist church advises, “Do Your Work Today As If There Is No Tomorrow.” Dopey advice; all work is about tomorrow. Tomorrow, opposable thumbs, and the ability to ignite oil are what make us human.
But for fishermen and anyone dependent on tourist dollars, perhaps yes, now’s not a time to wreck your head over tomorrow; too many unknowns. Take it one day at a time. On the other hand, to get you through this, the most important thing is to keep imagining a better tomorrow. Another church and a sign a bit more to the point: “Forgive Us, Lord.” That covers the multitude of sins, serves up the Big Prayer.
Nighthawks and chimney swifts. Small bridges. Their rivers and bays lined with emerald summer. Troops of pelicans