It Begins! Life Support Gulf Coast Summer Tour

Aliceville, AL, fuel by rail explosion still in need of clean-up.

When the idea of the Life Support Project was first conceived, we knew we would meet some incredibly dedicated folks fighting to protect front line and environmental justice communities who are being affected by wasteful and destructive practices, but WOW! - over the course of the last week, we've been inspired and awed at each stop, by the ways in which regular people - folks like you and me, are stepping up to say "enough is enough!".

On the first day out, our good friend, David Underhill, suggested we swing by the Mobile City Council Meeting. It had been rumored that Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, in response to a growing citizen resistance to a fossil fuel invasion, might replace several like-minded members of the City Planning Commission (the board charged with studying several proposals by industry to continue their expansion) with more industry friendly representatives. So we left Rayne, Lousiana, before sunrise in order to make it to Mobile by 10:30 am.

Although the topic never came up, we were treated to a delicious bar-b-cue lunch by David, who is Secretary of the Alabama Sierra Club and a member of the Mobile Environmental Justice Action Network (MEJAC), before heading to Africatown/Plateau.

Africatown is a quaint community along the Mobile River, on the northern edge of the city of Mobile. In 1859 - nearly 50 years after the trans-Atlantic slave trade had been outlawed, the slave ship Clotilde arrived in Mobile Bay with more than one hundred Africans. When slavery ended only five years later, it was these individuals who founded Africatown, which was modeled after the villages of their homeland.

Today, Africatown and its descendants are under attack by the fossil fuel industry. A pipeline was recently constructed under the grounds of their historic school, industry is proposing building a massive oil tank storage facility on land across from the community, and trains carrying bitumen (tar sand oil) and highly explosive Bakken crude run only feet from many homes.

But residents are fighting back. As part of regional efforts against the extraction, transport, storage and refining of tar sands in Africatown and other Gulf Coast communities, residents Mae Jones and Louise Moorer recently joined national and international allies at the 2014 Healing Walk at Fort MacMurray in Canada. Moved by what they witnessed, and with parts of Africatown already listed on the National Register of Historic Places, residents are currently working to develop a healthy and robust community plan - their plan for the their future.

This poster was used as a point of education during the last Earth Day festivities in historic Africatown.

The next morning, after a good night's sleep and plenty of good coffee at Kimberly McCuiston's house, we started the five-hour journey to the northwest corner of Alabama, where industry is plotting to literally take the land from beneath the feet of families who have occupied it for generations.

MS Industries - using some of the same old tricks used in communities across the nation and highlighted in the movie, The Promised Land - is trying to "woo" landowners into leasing or selling their property for tar sand mining (although MS Industries has repackaged the process, calling it "surface oil sand mining").

But many community members, those who understand you can't assign a monetary price on clean air, land and water, aren't buying it.

The company is digging in, however, residents say even going so far as to tell folks they would be better off once MS Industries mines the bitumen out of the ground, blaming the buried fossil fuel for causing cancer. According to that fairy tale, the company is doing the communites a favor by taking the cancer-causing rocks out of the ground and then return the rest - "better than ever."

Cline Borden of Leighton, AL, feeds an orphan calf on property being actively sought by MS Industries for tar sands mining.

The next morning, we caught up with Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen in Tuscaloosa, AL. This is somewhat of a miracle, because that guy is always moving!

First he took us to meet Ms. Virginia Anthony, whose dining room table sits literally feet from the small street where more than 400 heavy truckloads of toxin infused debris rumble by on their way to a nearby landfill.

Her house, rebuilt just two years ago after tornadoes tore through her neighborhood of South Holt - also a freed slave established community, is stained with oily exhaust from the trucks and dust, which she says is making her and her neighbors sick. The concern was echoed by many at a recent commissioner's meeting.

So, what did the city do in response to her community's concerns? With the help of the community's State Representative, Bill Poole (R), who also the landfill's lawyer, a request was just granted to the landfill's owner to allow truck traffic to double!

Yet in spite of the apparent conflict of interest and lack of concern for her and her neighbors, Ms. Virginia is not giving up, and is already making plans to fight back.

The historic community of South Holt in Tuscaloosa, AL, must deal with over 400 trucks per day, hauling toxic dust and debris to this landfill several yards away from their homes.

Afterward, John drove us to a rail bridge that passes over the heart of metro Tuscaloosa. Just feet away from an amphitheater, where crowds gather and children play during community concerts and other events, the bridge is literally falling apart!

We witnessed bolts, beams and other parts of the bridge falling off and littering the ground underneath of the 121-year-old structure. Rotten beams, poorly-done repairs and rusted-through iron appear to be the norm as trains filled with tar sand oil and Bakken crude regularly pass over (and sometimes park for hours) on the bridge.

Tuscaloosa's mayor, Walter Maddox, recently declined John's offer to show him why the bridge is a hazard to everyone and everything in the vicinity. Meanwhile, we saw children playing under and in the area of the bridge, along with the many critters that live in the woods and river that flows nearby.

Bridge in Tuscaloosa, AL, which was built in 1893 and carries trains of oil cars over head daily. Each barrel is a patch job made by the railroad in an attempt to repair the crumbling wood.

Leaving John behind, and with what we had witnessed fresh in our minds, we went along our way to Aliceville - a sobering example of why the safety concerns of the decaying bridge is so worrisome. Last year a Genessee & Wyoming "bomb train" carrying Bakken crude exploded and derailed at the spot we visited.

Honestly, if not for John's tireless aerial documentation of the disaster - with flights made possible by pilot Tom Hutchings, the world might still believe that oil from the largest train derailment and spill in North America was contained by a beaver dam (you can't make this stuff up!).

Again, thanks to John's pictures - which have been picked up by media from across the globe, we know this disaster had a huge blast zone and would likely have included a huge number of human fatalities if it had occurred in a populated area (such as on top of a rotting, rickety bridge in downtown Tuscaloosa).

Our initial fears of being ejected from the site were quickly laid to rest when we found absolutely no one present at the scene the wreck. In fact, not only were there no clean-up workers in sight, but by the looks of the oily boom, it looked like there hadn't been any active clean up in recent days.

Words cannot describe the destruction or the smell that filtered up through the thick, humid Alabama air, confirming our position that there is really no way to clean-up an oil release - cover up, maybe, but not "clean-up."

No clean-up workers at Aliceville, AL, site of last year's Bakken crude oil train explosion, yet the smell and the mess was unavoidable.

Later that night, we made our way to Brandon, MS, where we had been invited to speak the next morning at the Sierra Club SPROG - a week-long gathering designed to help young leaders from across the Gulf Coast, and beyond, learn valuable organizing skills that they can take back and share with their own communities. They were welcoming, attentive and utterly inspiring, and we left wishing we had more time to spend, but promised to keep in touch.

Our last stop for this leg of the tour was in mighty St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, where what started as a few concerned people fighting a proposal by Helis Oil and Gas to frack in the area, has quickly grown to a full-blown movement.

Folks we met with and interviewed have spent the last few months learning all they can about the hazards of fracking, talking to neighbor after neighbor, and attending meetings with hopes to convince elected officials that in St. Tammany Parish - where communities like Abita Springs rely on clean air and water, fracking is bad for business.

Property in St. Tammany Parish where fracking activities have been slated to begin.

After an afternoon of great conversation (and some delicious food!), we headed back to Rayne, inspired and motivated by what can be accomplished by regular citizens who simply use the skills and talents they already have, to defend our communities and our planet. Exhausted but invigorated, we found ourselves honored to have been able to witness first hand the energy, dedication and straight up love, that these regular people perform daily. These folks - all who didn't plan on fighting this epic battle, who were going about their lives raising kids, serving our country, pursuing their passions, ect - did not choose this life devoted to clean air, water and land. On the contrary, it was imposed upon them when extreme extraction industries and other big polluters invaded and threatened their communities, their bodies, and their families. Yet, they have stepped up, dug in, and fought back - for all of us.