Mumia Abu-Jamal 'Oil on the Waters'

Mumia has long been an ecosocialist, a passionate advocate of a politics that respects the Earth, a friend of John Africa and man who has tapped into the blackness of greenness.

Oil on the Waters
[col. writ. 4/30/10] (c) '10 Mumia Abu-Jamal

As dark blobs of oil seep from the underwater wells of an exploded oil platform, the shoals and shores of the Gulf of Mexico become exhibit A of our doomed petro-economy, and its impact on the natural world.

Not since the infamous spillage of the Exxon Valdez on Alaska's coast in 1989 have we seen such a disaster, and it comes, ironically, within days of the Obama Administration's announcement supporting increased off shore oil drilling along the Atlantic coast.

It's been decades since the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, and the lands despoiled by it are still not clean, and may not be for many a year.

The environmental damage will in turn cause economic damage, as generations of fishing communities on the Southern coast find that fish stocks, shrimp and crab beds have been poisoned by thousands and thousands of gallons of toxic crude. Such sea life, not to mention avian life, will be devastated.

As politicians, paying back their campaign contributors with policies and licenses which cause environmental wreckage, pursue short term interests, the impacts of such policies will last for generations, long beyond their terms.

In time, the leaking well will be forgotten; the oil slicks will be forgotten; the devastation will be forgotten - especially if you don't live in the Gulf coast region.

But the damage will be long lived and profound.

But we'll not think of it -- until it happens again.

--(c) '10 maj
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