BP protest efforts draw attention to area’s displaced

A small group of human rights advocates made a stop in Houma last Wednesday to rally participants for a road trip to Houston, where they intended to protest at American BP headquarters and call for a public boycott of the petroleum company’s products and services.

Led by actor and activist Dick Gregory, Operation People for Peace Chair Art Rocker and National Congress of Black Women Chair Dr. E. Faye Williams, the traveling group of about 10, wearing T-shirts calling for a BP ban, spoke to reporters briefly at the New Rising Sun Baptist Church.

“We want to send a message to [BP] stockholders,” Gregory said.

This small group of activists was credited by their spokesmen for having turned in approximately 10,000 claims for people that include dishwashers, carpenters, taxi drivers, barbers, teachers and low-income laborers.

Rocker said the intention of the protest is to fight back for a lack of payments made following the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil release of April 20, 2010.

The group is advocating for those who were either directly or indirectly impacted by the spill but are not being compensated for their claimed losses. “[These include] many people. Landscapers, beauticians, and laborers,” he said.

The assembly of activists said they have been at the office of Gulf Coast Claims Facility Administrator Kenneth Feinberg and at BP world headquarters in Great Britain.

“We’ve gone to jail several times and anticipate going again.” Rocker said.

Rocker equated this march on BP to historic civic rights and movements led by Martin Luther King Jr. and by Nelson Mandela. He said BP has refused to pay “hundreds of thousands of people” including shrimpers and other commercial fishermen. “Sometimes we wonder what the $21 billion is personally for,” he said.

Rocker and Gregory said the only way to get people with claims paid is to politically connect with those that control purse strings.

“We just feel that the civil rights movement won a great victory because it was honest,” Gregory said. “It was loving and it was kind. We dealt with an evil system and we defeated it. We feel the same thing is going to happen with British Petroleum. They take their money and their power, but the message they need to understand is [that] they didn’t have money like America had and power like America had and with nonviolence and love and kindness we defeated [opposition to civil rights]. America and the world is a better place today because of what we did.”

Gregory said that BP is a violator of civil rights and is being vicious with poor people by not paying oil spill claims.

“But they couldn’t survive without the people that’s feeding them and the people that have the shops. We’re going to the American [BP] headquarters and we are going to demand an investigation by the [U.S.] Justice Department to check their books and see what kind of fairness they have,” he said.

Gregory called for an investigation into Feinberg to determine if he holds BP stock or other financial interests beyond what he is being paid to administer gulf coast claims.

When asked if a consumer boycott of BP would have an adverse impact on local station owners and lower level employers, Gregory said that is a situation people need to accept.

“Everybody has to call for a fair share,” he said. “When we called for the boycott of a town it shut the whole town down, by [consumers] not spending money. When the unions shut a factory down look at the poor people that work there. This will have to happen in order for us to get over the hill. That is the price you pay.”

“These dealers do have choices,” Williams added. “There are other types of gasoline [and suppliers from whom they can purchase product]. They can get other franchises.”

Williams said that in many cases of claims not being filled it is women and children that are most adversely impacted.

“I’m here because I’m concerned about the women and children and their families,” she said. “We’re looking at people who have become ill. People who have kidney problems, bladder problems, cancer problems, immune and respiratory system problems. All of these are of great concern because ultimately this will affect the woman’s ability to go to church. So that will affect the tithes in the church. It will affect the woman’s ability to take care of children and the children will have to miss school. We’ve had more than 200 people file claims because of illnesses directly related to the toxins and dispersants from the BP oil disaster. Yet, Kenneth Feinberg has been cold hearted and uncaring and has not paid one of those claims.”

“[Claimants] will be paid,” Gregory said. “But they will be paid under our terms. We will continue to protest. We will continue to ask our friends not to buy British Petroleum gasoline or products.”

Rocker said that they have local contacts, including churches and NAACP charters that will be promoting the boycott. “Those are the people that came to work with us to put the hundreds of thousands of claims together.”

Rocker said he did not know how many people would be joining his van ride from the Tri-parish area, but said that other organizations would be meeting them in Houston.

No Tri-parish area officials were available to comment on the BP protest effort, but it was noted that while BP does operate a warehouse facility locally, there is no significant presence of BP retailers in the bayou region.

Actor and human rights activist Dick Gregory joins National Congress of Black Women Chair Dr. E. Faye Williams and a troupe of citizens to promote their planned protest and boycott of BP in Houston. MIKE NIXON