=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #101
—October 31, 1988—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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GREAT LOUISIANA TOXICS MARCH SETS THE PACE FOR THE MOVEMENT.
The Great Louisiana Toxics march (November 11-20) has been
organized to celebrate change, and to protest the destruction of
the southern Mississippi region, where the chemical industry has
now created the nation’s largest cancer alley, an industrial
wasteland of enormous chemical factories spewing filth on a
massive scale. The march is an important symbol, at once festive
and deeply serious, a shared celebration and protest that can be
carried on in other states to bring people together in action to
stop the poisoning of America. The Louisiana march begins
November 11 in Baton Rouge and ends November 20 in New Orleans.
All along the way, for a few hours or a few days, everyone is
welcome. Put on your walking shoes and come on down!
The march will cover the 80 miles from Baton Rouge to New
Orleans. Not everyone will walk the whole 80 miles, but thousands
of people will join the march for a day or an hour as it comes
through their community. Food and music will abound. And so will
information. Red beans and rice, jambalaya, gumbo; rhythm and
blues, gospel, jazz, and zydeco; rallies, meetings, reports,
forums, and workshops have been organized at sites along the way.
The march will coincide with the arrival of the Greenpeace ship,
the Beluga–formerly a fire boat, now outfitted with a chemical
laboratory–which has been traveling down the Mississippi River
for the past several months, analyzing water samples along the
way and staging creative local events to focus public attention
on the destruction of the Mighty Mississippi by the international
chemical giants.
The march will begin at Devil’s Swamp, once a bountiful wildlife
area but now one of the most treacherous Superfund sites in the
nation. The march will follow along the Mississippi, where 138
factories produce 25% of the nation’s raw chemicals, where 350
legally-permitted outfalls (pipes) discharge hundreds of
thousands of tons of hazardous chemicals into the river every
year, which people in towns downstream end up drinking. The march
ends November 20 with a massive rally in New Orleans.
The march has been organized by a coalition of environmental
activists, poor black tenant groups, and unionized chemical
workers. The march will demand an end to the destruction of the
Mississippi and of the people of Louisiana, where citizens are
drinking heavily-contaminated water as a matter of course, where
cancer rates are the highest in the nation, where birth defects
and developmental disorders are rising steeply.
Local industry has turned its back on the people. When a local
pharmacist reported a high rate of miscarriages and still births
in the Geismar-St. Gabriel area, the former chairman of the
Louisiana Chemical Association, Fred Loy, was quoted in the
Washington Post saying, “They say the chemical plants are causing
the miscarriages, but they have no proof. I could say they screw
too much and that’s the cause of the miscarriages. But then I
would have no way to prove that.”
Although it remains physically beautiful, Louisiana has been
allowed to become a polluters’ playground. Since World War II,
when the chemical industry moved in en masse, a corrupt state
government, boughtoff local politicians, and do-nothing federal
agencies have turned their backs on workers and citizens as the
corporate poisoners have had their way with the environment. The
result has been wholesale destruction of natural resources and
the poisoning of people.
The organizers of the march aim to forge networks with people
outside Louisiana to mount a coordinated national attack on the
corporations responsible for the damage. This march is
significant in several ways: It is a symbol that the grass roots
toxics movement is growing stronger every moment and can now
stage massive regional events to turn a spotlight of shame onto
industry’s misdeeds; that blacks, whites, workers and local
residents can coordinate their vision and their strength for the
common good; that traditional environmental organizations and the
newer movement for environmental justice can work together,
building bridges to community groups and labor unions to achieve
common purposes; and finally it is becoming recognized everywhere
that the South is under chemical siege–that dumpers and
poisoners from across America, East, Midwest and West, and even
from Europe, are using our southern states as an industrial
toilet, and that this has got to stop.
Hats off to Darryl Malek-Wiley and the Delta Chapter of the
Sierra Club, to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, to
the Gulf Coast Tenant Leadership Development Project, and to the
Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. And, finally, hats off to
Greenpeace and the remarkable crew and staff of the Beluga for
their eyeopening, precedent-setting Mississippi River Project.
For further information, contact the Louisiana Toxics Project,
533 France Street, Baton Rouge, LA 70802; phone (504) 3872305; or
write Darryl Malek-Wiley, 3227 Canal St., New Orleans, LA 70119;
phone (504) 822-8760. Greenpeace can be reached at 1017 West
Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60607; phone (312) 666-3305.
A first-rate video that will give you the flavor of the problems
in Louisiana-and of the possibilities for solutions through
coalition-building and citizen action–is Chris Bedford’s video
tape, LOCKED OUT! THE STORY OF BASF’S ATTACK ON WORKERS, THE
COMMUNITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN LOUISIANA which you can borrow
from Dick Leonard at the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers
International Union (OCAW), P.O. Box 2812, Denver, CO 80201;
phone (303) 987-2229. Or contact Chris Bedford at the Organizing
Media Project, 1801 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009;
phone (202) 387-1000.
This video is very revealing about the formerly Nazi-influenced
company, BASF, which citizens are fighting all across the U.S.,
and about lockouts in general.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: marches; rallies; parades; actions; strikes;
lockouts; labor; ocaw; oil, chemical & atomic workers; louisiana;
basf; greenpeace;