The Great Oil Spill

written by Nathan, May 2, 2010

The great oil spill of 2010 that now slickens the coastal fisheries of our home Louisiana looks particularly offensive from the coast of the Atlantic in West Africa. It is, however, easier to make out through the horizon of thickening plots and dying seas just how wealth generated from our seashores of home mimics colonial trespass, management of land purchases, and the like. A long history of exploitation does not even find financial benefits or economic justice in the riches still pouring from the Louisiana purchase 200 years on.

Louisiana, an economic boon for the United States, is still only an afterthought in discussions of economic justice, resource degradation, and oppressed peoples. While all classes of people are affected by the dangerous physical and environmental degradations at place on the Louisiana Gulf Coast wetlands, our political class will make no collective efforts at restitutions and environmental clean-up and reconstruction so long as they are in the pockets of status quo decision making. Other classes have no power. While we laugh at our tongue-in-cheek state motto, “Louisiana - Third World and Proud of it,” we do not seek meaningful change or equity improvement either as a nation or locally.