All photos from Gulf South Rising.
The Katrina 10 Week of Action Brings Focus to Global Climate Crisis in the Gulf South Region of the United States
Gulf South Rising is collaborating with local and regional organizers coordinated and supported over 13 events from August 21-30 in multiple locations from Gulfport to New Orleans. The Katrina 10 Week of Action represents a powerful coming together of many organizations dedicated to lifting up the leadership and resistance of the people on the frontlines.
Gulf South Rising (GSR) is a coordinated regional movement created to highlight the impact of the global climate crisis on the Gulf South region (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida). Through collaborative actions and events around strategic dates in 2015, like the 5-year commemoration of the BP Oil Crisis and the 10-year commemoration of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, GSR demands a just transition away from extractive industries, discriminatory policies, and unjust practices that hinder equitable disaster recovery and impede the development of sustainable communities.
Gulf South Rising recognizes the roots of the environmental and climate crisis, it “acknowledges that the global climate crisis is rooted in economic theories that promote mass consumption of limited resources, laws that maintain inequity, and social hierarchies and governance processes that limit civic participation.”
Their year-long initiative will:
- Build regional movement infrastructure
- Convene frontline communities around collective healing and ecological equity
- Advance regional efforts of indigenous tribal and land sovereignty
- Shift the regional narrative from resilience to resistance
From 10 years of challenges and triumphs working in the Gulf South, they have established the following values:
- The honoring of local frontline leadership
- Full transparency and accountability of processes
- Shared liberation
They do not describe themselves as an organization or a coalition intead they are frontline communities in the Gulf South rising together for justice and equity. They are:
– Residents of coastal areas
– Neighborhoods near fossil-fuel refining and toxic pollution
– Marginalized communities that continually have opportunity, democracy, and natural resources extracted
The extreme extraction of limited resources and associated pollution, the lack of corporate accountability, and the subsequent lack of government responsibility have damaged the land, people, and democratic systems of the Gulf South.
They are organizing around decades of environmental racism and injustice:
FROM THE EXTREME EXTRACTION OF FOSSIL FUELS TO THE POLLUTION AND SEVERE WEATHER THAT FOLLOWS…
The Gulf South is on the frontline of climate change in the United States and has been a sacrifice zone for generations. While extreme extraction may provide national benefit, immense local pollution has led to irreparable harm within our communities and exceptional climate-related risks.