Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer...
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer...
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more...
from Mississippi Goddamn
**These words are from the lyrics of Mississippi Goddam, as performed in the video above by Nina Simone. It was written in response to how long it too for African Americans to gain civil rights. (Hopefully Ms. Simone wouldn't mind me borrowing part of her brilliant song in light of the current situation.)
America, are we done?
It's day 66 of the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe and today the oil has made its way into the Mississippi Sound, an area which had somehow avoided much of the oily assault the rest of the gulf coast has seen. The oil will make land on the beaches in the next two-three days unless an encroaching storm in the gulf builds to hurricane strength and helps it come faster. After hitting the beaches it will also began to seep into Mississippi's wetlands and marshes. It will finish off what Katrina started.
I hesitate to post this because as Chris said, "If you're giving up hope, then it must really be hopeless". I am the eternal optimist and I always hold out hope for the positive, the love and the light to shine through situations but today I have had enough. All the information I have gathered over the last few months has started to meld together like the oil mixing with the dispersants into a sickly, toxic stew. What I am hearing doesn't make sense to me and I have to face that perhaps this is it, maybe we're done.
From the beginning of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout, I knew it was ugly. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I first heard they couldn't get through the horrible weather to attempt to rescue the 11 missing workers that day. I had a visceral, almost electric response again when I heard about the oil coming in to shore with no plan to handle it. Then again, I felt a similar response when I heard about the use of the dispersant Corexit, the one that had been banned in the UK.
In the beginning, friends tried to comfort me saying I shouldn't let things like this get me down, that the oceans would repair themselves, that we'd had far worse leaks than this in the world. I remember sitting in a restaurant the night the first oil made land. I was surrounded by friends yet felt completely alone and helpless. I tried to listen to their comforting words but everything inside me wanted to get on a plane, fly home and mobilize forces to take care of this mess that was about to usurp my native soil. I felt like a canary, the only one who could smell the gasses. I'm sure that's how people on the coast are feeling right now as they dose themselves with yet another round of antibiotics to deal with yet another mysterious respiratory illness and try to ignore the stench of oil and the haze thickening their air supply.
"I am not an abandoner", I wrote to a friend today. But this morning I woke with an urgent desire to flee our beloved country. As the fish and mammals of the gulf are swimming to find more oxygenated water or preen oil off their wings, I too want to run away from what is making no sense. The hairs on my neck/intuitional responses have started to combine with a sinking pit-in-my-stomach feeling that something is very very wrong. First came the "Oh shit, this is bad" knowledge but now the "this is rotten and not making a lick of sense" feelings have made themselves known.
How is it that BP is running this show and we have no authority of what happens in our waters? Our EPA (finally) told BP to stop using dispersants and BP simply refused. How is that possible? BP is buying our media, controlling access to OUR beaches, waterways and fly space and we allow it? They are choosing what they think is important to have cleaned (for the public & press to see). They are also putting American workers at extreme risk by making them jump through hoops to use respirators or potentially denying them access to them because they don't want it to "appear" there is a problem? And the coastal towns having dispersants sprayed over them at night who are suffering --how is THAT being allowed? If we can't control what chemicals they spew into our water and we can't protect our citizens isn't something terribly wrong?
Something is indeed wrong, or dare I say sick in America. Some say it's religiously motivated, others politically and others financially -- that the payoffs are keeping us from acting outright as a country. There are conspiracy theories out there to beat the band and usually I don't fall prey to them but I am starting to wonder. There must be some reason our own country isn't protecting itself, its assets and its people, right?
So the hairs on my neck continue to stand on end with the use of the dispersants, the knowledge of high concentrations of methane gasses pumping out of the well, and the fact this well is sitting on a huge cavernous reservoir and perhaps seismic faults. I am concerned about people swimming and having their children swim in oil and chemically concentrated water, breathing gasses and fumes, the potential of gasses evaporating into the clouds and bringing toxic rain, our water supplies being tainted and eating what may or may not be ultimately safe to consume. And of course my heart is on the floor when I think about the massive killings of the animals. Those horrific images that make so many of us cry really do speak for the micro-organisms, birds, fish, reptiles and mammals better than we can.
No, I am not an abandoner but when I feel unsafe and like my country and my government either don't have the power, don't have the smarts or the desire to act in my and others' best interest, I wonder if I want to be here.
The initial disaster is one thing. Not being able to plug it another. But not protecting American citizens, not getting the real information out to them, letting BP continue to spray toxic chemicals even though our primary government agency for environmental health has demanded they stop, letting them rule the waterways and airspace, not giving respirators to our fisherman and other workers, & BP cleaning up only what they see fit is simply beyond comprehension. What have we come to?!
American is already in a tentative place financially between bailouts, the housing market crash, our wars and inflation. We have another round of mortgage defaults coming down the pipe, wall street is wobbling, credit card and student loan defaults are still on the horizon and we're just waiting for N. Korea to get any itchier so we can, as promised, defend S. Korea. Not to mention our borders are heating up to boiling with Mexico's drug wars.
And now the most dangerous thing has happened of all, we as a country are turning against ourselves. We are all so busy fighting for one side or another and polarizing, we've forgotten we're all in this together. If we don't stop pointing fingers and start finding holistic solutions, it truly will be too late. Somehow we must find the internal fortitude to protect and harbor our own.
If I were a country who hated America, I would look at the state we are in and use it against us. We are crawling on our knees and it won't take much more to strike us down entirely physically or financially. We need leadership, we need answers and we need to pull together.
My History: I was born in Louisiana and raised between there and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi in Ocean Springs. I lost a house to Katrina and have a coastal property that will undoubtedly have oil throughout its marshlands in the near future. My heart pours out to my homeland in this tragedy.
