PHOTO/DUBINSKY PHOTOGRAPHY FOR LEANWEB.ORG
Editor’s note: Cathy Talbott interviewed Lori Borsage, a member of Alabama Coast United, a grassroots organization formed to fight Big Oil. Government officials are not confronting the real issues affecting the Gulf residents because over 35% of the revenue for just Alabama comes from tourism in Mobile and Baldwin counties alone. Meanwhile, residents are ill, homeless, and jobless. And the water and beaches are still damaged.
People’s Tribune: Can you tell me how you were affected by the BP oil catastrophe?
Lori Borsage: I live one quarter mile from Portersville Bay, off the Alabama coast. One morning after the spill, I heard air boats going up and down and crisscrossing the water so I went out to see what was going on. As one of the boats passed by, I was sprayed with a substance; a chemical I later learned was Corexit (a dispersant used to sink the oil below the surface). Not long after I developed severe lung disorders, asthma and then pneumonia. I got hypertension. I coughed up bloody phlegm. I also had swelling in my legs and sores on my skin. I know at least 50 to 60 in my community who are ill. Many of them are fishermen, crabbers, and shrimpers. They’re sick and out of work. Kids are having seizures. People are dying. We were not told about the dangers of this chemical.
PT: How has BP treated the Gulf Coast residents?
Lori: Well, people who do not live here see us here as not educated. These are some of the hardest working people you’ll ever meet. They keep to themselves and don’t complain. They don’t go to the doctor. BP gave millions of dollars for a Gulf study. The working people here thought they were going to help us. But the lawyers, doctors, clinics, and universities are getting paid, but those of us affected haven’t been compensated enough. $25,000 paid to a small fisherman doesn’t get him back to work and doesn’t pay for health care. And many who are sick don’t qualify.
PT: What about the workers who worked for BP on the clean up?
Lori: This is what happens. They were sent to a BP clinic. And if they complained about anything, BP would tell them we don’t need you anymore. So they need a job and don’t speak out.
PT: What are you doing to organize?
Lori: My main focus is to stop the dispersants. A lot of the people here in my community, which is not a tourist area, don’t have cell phones or computers; some don’t have televisions. The ones who are ill have not gotten the right medical treatment. They’re being treated for the symptoms and not the cause. I try to educate. I had a biometrics test done to see what chemicals I was exposed to so I can help others. My goal is to get funding for a clinic that really wants to help us. There’s a doctor but he needs the funding to do it. We’re also working with Riki Ott and her Ultimate Civics Campaign. (http://www.ultimatecivics.org/)
The tragedy beginning with BP’s unrestrained oil gushing explosion that spewed millions of gallons of crude oil into our Gulf of Mexico, to the unrestrained use of a carcinogen chemical, also from BP, Corexit, to years of illness, poverty, and disrespect from the oil giant, must be made right. The horrific effects of allowing british petroleum to work within 1000 miles of any US land will be felt by American citizens for decades.
I spent that summer watching, in horror, the completely out of control destruction of our southern shores and gulf. BP’s attitude of negligence, greed, disrespect, and ignorance caused oil release. The addition of corexit, an unproven method of a massive clean-up was even more terrifying. Corexit is a carcinogen, meaning it causes cancer. Millions and millions of gallons of corexit were dumped into our Gulf. Anyone with any chemistry education would know this is a deadly combination. Anyone with any biology education can plainly see the danger. There is a “food chain” among sea-life to spread bp’s poison even further. But big oil money and influence has protected bp from the true responsibility of their actions. Enough!
BP is 100% to blame and responsible in every aspect of destruction to complete clean-up and repair. Every southern coastal resident has been negatively affected, either directly by use and love of our coast and gulf or by eating the contaminated seafood, which with every bite, is a gamble in health and possible cancer. Now, we see the appearance of the flesh-eating bacteria. I have seen those results, it is an unimaginable nightmare.
Lengthy prison sentences, here, in our southern state prisons for bp’s CEO, board of directors, executives, management, down to their crew bosses, starting with those in-charge then and up to now, will be a start. Taking the personal fortunes from these people, even if hidden, given to family, or in secret separate bank accounts. Demolishing BP after taking every pound or dollar, whatever the currency, buildings, stocks, platforms, ounces of oil, taking over all their satellite companies and selling every scrap and giving 100% of the money to people of our southern states, is only a small start.
On a personal note, I believe all these “to big to fail” businesses, oil execs, CEOs, and down, should be imprisoned here and forced to work, not as administrators or in any offices overseeing the clean-up and repair, but down in the lowlands, swamps, on the gulf, as labor, as grunts. Maybe, just maybe, these Brits who think so little of US citizens can get a mouthful, lungs filled, contaminated arms, legs, faces, manually pick-up those thousands of tar-balls and face-up to what their greed has done to our good people. I’ll step-up and make weekly fish, oyster, fish, crab, shrimp, and other seafood dinners for these people. With help, we, Louisianians, could force BP hierarchy into a daily diet of the poison their negligence forced upon us. Maybe some can be on bath and bed-pan duty for the ill and/or hospitalized, those who contracted the flesh-eating disease, skin ulcers, respiratory impairments, and cancer, as prison-work-furlough programs. It is only when ALL of the actual people, top-down, from that summer to the present time, of this deadly company are forced to face the results of their greed and crimes will any real change in their operation occur.
We, the Americans, of the southern coastal states deserve no less than equal justice for the widespread, long range damage caused by negligence, greed, and arrogance practiced by BP.
Very well said. Cancer has elevated and seizures. So much neurological damage. I am currently in contact with fishermen that are so very ill and out of work.
The vibrio is usually found in brackish water but I know shrimpers on deep water boats that have contracted the vibrio due to getting stabbed by a shrimp. It went under his nail and he almost lost his thumb. And not one warning sign. An 11 year old girl Mobile Bay 9 days in the hospital, vibrio on her leg. A women from Ohio fishing with bait shrimp, wasn’t sure if it was caused by bait water or shrimp. Actually, it is all the same. I keep warning people to stay out of the gulf.