After completing CitizenEffect’s Gulf Mission last month, called #CitizenGulf on Twitter, I returned home to Washington, DC grateful for the chance to have learned about the oil spill first-hand. Yet feelings of overwhelm and strain overshadowed appreciation for that newly gained insight. Processing the spill’s environmental, financial complexity had left my emotions bewildered.
The upside was CitizenEffect’s response to the trip: a National Day of Action on August 25th. People across the country will meetup in their communities and host events to raise funds for children of Gulf fishing families.
Please join us for this Day of Action later this month (…with music, friends, more).
Some context:
Our fact-finding blogger team had spent 4.5 days meeting Gulf fishing families and learning the oil spill’s impact from their viewpoint. Nonprofits including Catholic Charities of New Orleans spent a lot of time introducing us to local areas in need – the fishing families standing in line at community centers awaiting grocery money and the out-of-work deck hands helping to keep oil from entering the inner marshes.
I have not encountered such vulnerability and strength all at once as seen in these communities. The fishing industry in Louisiana parishes is precarious at best. Fishermen that we met would express relief their children were not planning to work on Gulf fishing boats, saying:
“There’s nothing for our kids in this business; it’s gone.”
The thought of one’s profession evaporating overnight finally began to take hold in my mind, launching those feelings of overwhelm. I began to consider what it would be like to have one’s livelihood abruptly not exist (not just the job itself but the entire profession that created it).
What would that look like? What alternatives would exist?
I work online a lot, so the hypothetical equivalent (…as hard as this hypothetical is to imagine) would be to wake up one day to a world without the Internet. My ego would like to think my husband and I would carve out a way and be ok, but we both work heavily on the web. So relocating, re-thinking skill sets, or creating new marketable skills would immediately be required. But how? We shop online. We order food online. We work online. We commune online. What would be sustaining options with immediate, long term income?
It would be a huge paradigm shift that would scare the daylights out of my family.
And many Gulf fishermen and their families are confronting this type of metaphorical severity. But instead of the Internet, it’s the Gulf habitat at stake.
Can we join together and help Gulf families and their children? Yes.
From Mississippi, on the road now:
Pardon this really quick photo essay with limited clarification (more on that coming with links soon…).
Just wanted to share some memories in photos thus far from CitizenEffect’s Gulf Mission and fact finding effort. It’s been one of the most enriched yet toiling journeys.
I traveled to the Grand Isle for the first time this week, expecting to see a community of locals. The goal, along with fellow Washington, DC bloggers on CitizenEffect’s Gulf Mission blogging trip, was to meet and learn from fishing families about the oil disaster – hoping to find ways to help out. Despite beaches being inaccessible due to disaster response, I assumed neighborhoods and eateries would still be active hubs for local folks we could talk to.
But it was all quiet.
Those visions I had of neighborly conversations on porches or in the popular diner or beachfront restaurants were nowhere.
Other things became apparent there though and elsewhere in the state, making me uneasy for the environment here:
Grand Isle beaches are roadways now traveled by huge humvees transporting supplies and staff to cleanup sites. As logical as this scenario may be for response efforts, it brought home this point: containing oil in the Gulf has consequence to not only water life but species from shore environs too;
As for the Grand Isle’s perceived emptiness, that’s the telling factor: according to many I’ve met, that area is a big family vacation spot. The fact the cleanup effort restricts access creates an inevitable drain on the local economy;
teams of local deckhands and fishermen are now working on oil containment in the inner marshes. Our CitizenEffect bloggers and myself enjoyed meeting many of them in St. Bernard’s parish. They showed fantastic pride in their efforts, managing vast amounts of orange booms hoping intensely to protect the inner marshes and surrounding marina. Yet a few entered into side conversations on how vulnerable they see the inner marsh area. They know if efforts don’t succeed, their life as fishing families will evaporate.
What I’ve come to consider is how much the unseen maintains heavy impact here — shore life unseen by beach based rescue vehicles; unseen local populations that normally fuel local summer economies; and Deep Horizon oil absent from inner marshes (but angst of its arrival pervades generational fishing communities).
So far from blogging experience this week, invisible and evident factors both stimulate concern and dread on what comes next.
Hello from Seat 22C, bound for the Gulf.
In the last 24 hours, a chance emerged to join Geoff Livingston and the Citizen Effect’s Gulf Mission trip.
Primary goal: To learn about, interview, and meet fishermen in the area – and how social media, with different nonprofits, can help the fishermen specifically. The blogger team will share all forms of content from the field with hopes to reach Mississippi and Alabama as well.
Thanks to Citizen Effect for this chance to collaborate with your team.
….tray tables and seat backs up, ready for take off.
