"I Thought We Were Supposed To Be Telling The Truth"

Project Gulf Impact is in between. Floating somewhere in a venn diagram between activism, journalism, documentary filmmaking, socialmedia, and trying to accurately convey what's actually going on in the Gulf of Mexico. "It would be adding a crime to a crime," Thad Allen said, "if we didn't make this one of the great learning laboratories in the history of this country." And indeed we are. PGI has been told, interview after interview, that this is "the grand experiment." I don't find "grand" to be the choice word, but you get the idea.

One of the pleasures of operating the way we do - on a shoestring budget that barely affords us two meals a day and the gas to get from one interview to the next and not much else - is that we get the opportunity, the privilege, of staying in the homes of Gulf coast residents that we have met along the way. These homes - warm environments where "home cooking" still means something (especially to the Cajuns!) - make me miss the trips to my grandparent's homes in the midwest and southern Texas more than anything else.

Not stuffed in a hotel, we're given a much better window into how people's lives are affected. Some more than others, yes, but from ship to shore, families are being hit by the thousands. One morning I was browsing through an old bookcase in one of our friend's living rooms, and I stopped on a book, "Bias - A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News." I sped through a few chapters, and fell on a passage that resonated and shed a little light:

"Image is what the TV producers in New York were concerned about. Let's not make it look like it really is. That might cause problems. That might make us look insensitive and short on compassion. Distort the images... Being compassionate in television news these days means never having to get your hands dirty."

Maybe obvious to some. I would hope obvious to many. But it isn't. Not on the scale necessary. Members of alternative media have split the public into two groups: those who are "awake" and those who are "asleep," or "sleepers." Those who are waiting to be unplugged from our life in "the Matrix". Sounds intense.

The way the media has handled the last 100+ days of the Gulf of Mexico incident, how the mass audiences have responded, has re-defined "sheeple," for me. For those who don't know, "sheeple," a portmanteau of "sheep" and "people," according to it's Wiki, is "used to denote persons who voluntarily acquiesce to a perceived authority or suggestion without sufficient research to understand fully the ramifications involved." If it is not on the news it isn't real. Even, regrettably, for many who live here.

So where do we go from here? Are there cancer-causing petrochemicals and chemical components of Corexit 9500 in the air and ground water? Is the well really capped? Does anyone really care? Is everyone down here going to die of cancer in ten to twenty years? Can we eat the fish? We don't have the budget, the research studies, the analytical equipment, and the ability to pay those who are pivotal opinion makers to tell you.

But we can continue to tell the people's story as we uncover it. And that is exactly what we will do.

-Gavin

We need financial contributions to keep shedding light on the human health hazards that  the people of the Gulf are being exposed to on a daily basis.

Project Gulf Impact's mission is to document the economic, environmental and human health impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This project seeks to provide a voice for residents of the Gulf and hopes to capture the social, political and environmental climate surrounding one of the greatest environmental disasters of our time.

Please donate today or sign up to volunteer. You can visit our website at projectgulfimpact.org.

Gulf Recovery Blogathon Calendar (All times Pacific)

Wednesday August 11

1pm noweasels

2pm boatsie

3pm  Daniel Kessler (Greenpeace)

4pm mogmaar

5pm  Patriot Daily

6pm Project Gulf Impact

Thursday August 12

1pm pico

2pm  Fishgrease

3pm  citisven

4pm Bill Mckibben

5pm  oke

6pm Project Gulf Impact

7pm JekyllnHyde

Friday August 13

1pm  La Feminista

2pm   Pam La Pier

3pm rb137

4pm  Meteor Blades

5pm  Laurence Lewis

6pm Project Gulf Impact