British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward woke up this morning still employed, just days after publicly lamenting that he would love to have the Deepwater Horizon disaster behind him so that he can "get his life back." He resumed his duties at the helm of a company that in recent days has launched a massive PR campaign to do damage control and an image rebuild, while at the same time lamenting that part of the cause for this kind of mishap was that BP "had too many people focused on saving the world" and not enough, apparently, focused on ensuring emergency readiness
At the same time, Transocean, BP's accomplice and oceanic partner in crime, has quietly begun the legal process to "bolster its liability protections" in advance of certain lawsuits from families of deceased oil workers and those whose industries and livlihoods are literally being choked away by the record plumes of oil now clogging shorelines and bays all along the Gulf.
Some 5 weeks after the incident, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is still a mystery to the supposed stewards of our safety and well being. And as a result, with each passing day that pours more and more oil into our environment, Tony Hayward's initial assessment that in essence told us that the spill, when mapped against the "great ocean that is the Gulf", would be a drop in the bucket (who here is shocked that Hayward didn't actually resort to that phrase to minimize the scale of the tragedy). It turns out, actually, that this "drop in the bucket" will now be America's largest environmental disaster, killing nearly a dozen workers on the spot, sickening and potentially killing many more who step in to lend a needed hand, devastating wildlife and entire industries, potentially stripping entire cities and regions of livlihoods and history.
And on the same day that we wait and watch for whatever "fix" is ultimately devised and employed that stems the tide of this disaster and (hopefully) eventually chokes off the flow of oil into the Gulf, I made my way past four BP gas stations on my way to work...
Customers at all of them.
Not a picketer nor protester at a single one.
Business as usual for BP and its patrons, going about their business as if nothing ever happened...
After the banks came and set up insanely risky and complex financial structures, many of which were designed as nothing more than "bets" that our mortgages, our homes, our financial futures, would collapse, we teetered on the brink of world economic collapse. Yet, many of us, far too many, still hold accounts at these very same banks. Still "invest" with these very same brokerage houses. Still borrow from these very same licensed thieves. And not a one, anywhere other than in NYC, faced an angry public and an outraged citizenry. Not a one faced a lethal run on its accounts, nor a repudiation through liquidation from clients. No, in fact many are paying "investors" handsomely, with rebounding stock prices and buoyant profits at each quarterly turn.
So too, it appears we are prepared to travel with happy blinders on into our local BP gas stations, perhaps even taking advantage of aggressive local pricing or shorter lines. We wouldn't, COULDN'T, be bothered to take action, stand up in front of a gas station and be heard. And counted. We seem frozen to the possibility of showing public outrage, or being associated with those who won't accept corporate fraud and lack of accountability. As I drove past those four service stations today, I started to allow myself to wonder what exactly it takes for someone to even consider patronizing a BP station today, and then I stopped myself and shut it down, for allowing yourself to go down that road is as sure a recipe for finding inconsolable misery in yourself as to sit for a day in the oily grease of an Alabama coastline, or Louisiana beach.
During the healthcare debates, on the one year anniversary of the inauguration of this Administration, I left my desk at work during lunchtime and walked down to the major thoroughfare outside of our building and held up a sign that read "50 million of US. Healthcare for all." And I stood there with that sign for the remainder of the day, in some cases hearing honks and getting thumbs up, and in other cases hearing and seeing the other side of the spectrum. I wrote here weeks earlier that I planned to do this, and asked aloud if anyone would be willing to join in, or take me up on an offer to help organize something. And in the end, after six hours of holding that sign, and wondering what it all meant, I couldn't get past one thought that stayed with me for the rest of that day, if not even until this day:
Why do I feel so alone? Where is everyone?
They've taken our homes.
They've shipped away our jobs.
They've bought our government.
They've raped and pillaged our chance at a respectable retirement.
They've anchored us to jobs in the name of access to health care.
They've demonized and minimized unions and fair worker representation.
They've shifted our priorities away from community, quality and fulfilling promises to productivity (which is business code for squeezing every last ounce out of you), profitability and cutting corners.
They've willingly "allowed" the very definition of an acceptable wage, and standard of living, to shift to the point where sleeping on floors, lacking running water, scraping for food scraps, and the like are staples of the average "worker" manufacturing your cell phone, or shoes, or leather jacket, or nearly 2/3's of everything we consume in a given year.
Do me a favor:
Tonight, look at your children. Stare in their eyes. Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine what the road is going to be like for them to have even a portion of the life you have. Allow yourself to take it all seriously.
Is it really just about oil covered birds and dead fish?
Is it really even acceptable to conduct a debate that centers on a tag line of "drill, baby, drill"?
Is it really all we can do to just sit on here and "demand that Obama take real action NOW", as if this country and its future EVER relied solely on one man and the Office to achieve anything or serve as an answer for every question.
What EXACTLY IS IT that wil be required to mobilize US - YOU and ME - to take ownership of our futures, to drive the debate and not simply fall victim to it?
What EXACTLY IS IT that will serve as the 21st century threshhold between acceptable and unacceptable? How desparate will we have to get to understand and internalize that by any reasonable measure we've well crossed that line, but are too busy hiding ourselves away from the spotlight and courage it takes to make a real difference?
When EXACTLY IS IT that we will come to understand that as long as we hide behind our work, and our family commitments, and our fear of losing it all, that those fears are byproducts of what we need to change, and not at all different from what your great grandparents faced during the Civil War, or what your grandparents faced during the World Wars, or what our parents faced when unions became the enemy and unemployment ravaged the country during the 70's.
Who ARE WE?