Handing Out Toys in Louisiana

Nearly 200 stress balls and more bad news are what they handed out at last night’s open house in Buras, Louisiana. The open house was meant to provide the community of fishermen with new opportunities to become engaged in the oil recovery effort, but the event fell far short of its expected outcome.

It was standing room only as I walked into the Buras Auditorium last night. People were busy wheeling in more chairs as groups of locals milled about outside in the sweltering heat, talking with local law enforcement and other community members. Sets of blue and yellow balloons were tied to the front and inside of the auditorium, somehow trying to create a festive atmosphere in a town that has seen only devastation recently. Eventually, the crowd quieted down to hear what Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser and U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin had to say about the fate of their community.

Entering the auditorium, there were tables set up along two out of four walls, like a job fair, though no one was actually hiring. Representatives from BP, Vessels Of Opportunity, Coast Guard, the Environmental Protection Agency, Health and Human Services, Plaquemine Parish government, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Office of Emergency Preparation among other agencies were there to offer support or educate the community on opportunities to help with the recovery effort. A group of people also handed out stress balls and a flier on reducing stress to whoever walked by their table. Fishermen and their families carried these objects around with them during most of the event though more than a few of the stress-relievers were eventually left on chairs or on the floor, apparently abandoned.

Surgeon General Regina Benjamin kicked things off by telling the crowd about her connection to the region began when she attended undergraduate school at Xavier University in New Orleans. She talked about stress taking a toll on your health and that she was here to talk with people about how they were dealing with the stress this disaster has caused to the community. Billy went next and had the difficult job of clarifying how people were going to be compensated by BP.

Billy confirmed to the large audience that he may have been told inaccurate information or been misled by BP when he said people who worked on the clean up would be paid on top of any earnings while they were hired by BP. The truth as it currently stands is that if you make $30,000 working for BP right now and you eventually agree to a $100,000 settlement with them, they will only pay you the remaining $70,000. He rhetorically asked the crowd “Is it fair that BP is doing this?” Before Nungesser could respond, the audience did it for him as people shouted a resounding chorus of “No” back to him. Listening to Billy it was clear he felt badly about the information he was delivering and knew it wasn’t going to make people in his community “whole” as BP continues to say they will do for people affected by the disaster they caused.

Much of the crowd seemed pretty skeptical about what Billy and Regina had to say and once the opportunity was presented to make their views known, a few outspoken and visibly angry fishermen went right up to Billy to engage him on the issue of payment. From what I saw Billy tried his best to placate and diffuse the numerous fishermen who wanted to give him a piece of their mind. In many ways it seemed like his hands were tied in how he could help them and the best he could do was listen to their concerns.

It isn’t up to him how BP pays the fishermen or tries to get their lives back to normal, but he sees the people of his community every day and will be the focus of their outrage much longer than BP stays in the area. It seemed that many fishermen considered Billy their advocate and someone they could trust in a crisis situation where they were continually told something different by BP, the government and other authority figures that don’t seem to have the community’s best interest at heart.

Providing the community with a forum to give voice to their concerns and outrage is a step in the right direction and provides a uniting sense of community to a group of people being torn apart by a man-made disaster. I’m not sure how handing out stress balls to a community that currently feels like they’ve been left with nothing and with no sense of normalcy will actually help them get their lives back on track, but the overall message of locals helping locals is a message everyone should get behind.

Photos courtesy @NRDC. More photos from the town hall event can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nrdcpix/sets/72157624426835225/show/with/4814949627/

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