Dear friends,
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we take care of the people who take care of the rest of us. A friend spent several days looking after her elderly grandma, who needed to have a medical procedure. Meanwhile, her partner worked and held things down at home with their young child. She’s taking a day off from work today, and I’m sure it’s not enough.
Contact your Congressional rep to call for paid family and medical leave. This quick action is from Moms Rising.
Care work includes the cleaning up of messes. Sometimes, we can’t clean up our own messes and we need help. But some folks seem content to leave their messes for others to clean, without taking any responsibility for protecting them from toxic exposure.
One of the many categories of injustice that industrial activity generates is the harm to workers engaged in the cleanup of industrial pollutants. There are close to 5,000 lawsuits filed against BP by people who claim that their long-term health has been adversely affected by their participation in
the dirty work of cleaning up BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill 13 years ago. The explosion marked the biggest industrial disaster in US history, which saw thousands of Gulf coast residents, many from poor fishing communities, take part in the clean-up effort.
They boated out into the Gulf to try to block the oil from coming ashore with floating barriers, called booms. They worked 12-hour shifts in the middle of the summer to save the wetlands and say they got sick as a result.
Successfully suing large corporations is not easy. From the beginning of the spill, BP was mindful of liability and took a number of steps to protect itself.
In a chain of emails among BP’s occupational hygiene team from 31 July 2010, the company discussed why it was continuing its air monitoring efforts. “Although we are documenting zero exposures in most monitoring efforts, the monitoring itself adds value in the eyes of public perception, and zeros add value in defending potential litigation,” wrote John Fink, a BP industrial hygienist.
BP did not follow guidance from federal agencies which urged the company to collect samples of urine, blood, and skin cells. Those samples would have been a far better indication of toxic exposure than air monitoring.
The federal government has an obligation to ensure that workers have access to funds for treatment. The model of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund is appropriate; in this case, BP should be held accountable for the money to care for the workers. That would make the US government the plaintiff, instead of requiring individual Davids to go up against Goliath on their own.
Call on Congress to take on BP and create a Victim Compensation Fund for workers who are suffering long-term health impacts from the Deepwater Horizon cleanup.
Last week, I wrote about nuns who are challenging Citibank because of its funding of the Canadian company Enbridge.
The folks at Earth Justice estimate that the 70-year-old Enbridge Line 5 pipeline —which pumps about half a million barrels of petroleum per day through Tribal territories in Wisconsin and Michigan and the Great Lakes — has spilled more than 1 million gallons of oil over 33 incidents.
Tell Biden to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline. This quick action is from Earth Justice.
One way to limit the cleanups is to divest from the mess.
The good people at New York Communities for Change, Th!rd Act, and 350.org, among others, are meeting in the streets today ahead of Citi's annual shareholder meeting to stand against continued destruction by fossil fuel projects.
Join the rally against fossil fuel finance on this afternoon in Tribeca!
In NYS, the budget wrangling continues. We need to keep the pressure on for environmental legislation that moves us away from fossil fuels. I serve on the Board of my coop; we take action when we have to, but usually not before. We need legislative mandates to overcome inertia and get buildings to decarbonize.
Tell NYS legislators to pass the All Electric Building Act and the NY HEAT Act. This quick action is from Earth Justice.
I also want you to make a call to the governor on behalf of care workers and the people who depend on them. This takes two minutes.
Call the Governor and tell her we need Fair Pay for Home Care this year!
with love,
L