Naomi Klein vis­ited the Gulf coast with a film-crew from Fault Lines, a doc­u­men­tary pro­gramme hosted by Avi Lewis on al-Jazeera Eng­lish Tele­vi­sion.
She was a con­sul­tant on the film

The fol­low­ing arti­cle was entirely pub­lished in The Guardian on Sat­ur­day 19 June 2010. It was writ­ten by Naomi Klein.

The Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon dis­as­ter is not just an indus­trial acci­dent – it is a vio­lent wound inflicted on the Earth itself. In this spe­cial report from the Gulf coast, a lead­ing author and activist shows how it lays bare the hubris at the heart of capitalism

‘Obama can­not order pel­i­cans not to die (no mat­ter whose ass he kicks). And no amount of money – not BP’s $20bn, not $100bn – can replace a cul­ture that’s lost its roots.’ Pho­to­graph: Lee Celano/Reuters
Every­one gath­ered for the town hall meet­ing had been repeat­edly instructed to show civil­ity to the gen­tle­men from BP and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. These fine folks had made time in their busy sched­ules to come to a high school gym­na­sium on a Tues­day night in Plaque­m­ines Parish, Louisiana, one of many coastal com­mu­ni­ties where brown poi­son was slith­er­ing through the marshes, part of what has come to be described as the largest envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter in US history.

“Speak to oth­ers the way you would want to be spo­ken to,” the chair of the meet­ing pleaded one last time before open­ing the floor for questions.

And for a while the crowd, mostly made up of fish­ing fam­i­lies, showed remark­able restraint. They lis­tened patiently to Larry Thomas, a genial BP pub­lic rela­tions flack, as he told them that he was com­mit­ted to “doing bet­ter” to process their claims for lost rev­enue – then passed all the details off to a markedly less friendly sub­con­trac­tor. They heard out the suit from the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency as he informed them that, con­trary to what they have read about the lack of test­ing and the prod­uct being banned in Britain, the chem­i­cal dis­per­sant being sprayed on the oil in mas­sive quan­ti­ties was really per­fectly safe.

But patience started run­ning out by the third time Ed Stan­ton, a coast guard cap­tain, took to the podium to reas­sure them that “the coast guard intends to make sure that BP cleans it up”.

“Put it in writ­ing!” some­one shouted out. By now the air con­di­tion­ing had shut itself off and the cool­ers of Bud­weiser were run­ning low. A shrimper named Matt O’Brien approached the mic. “We don’t need to hear this any­more,” he declared, hands on hips. It didn’t mat­ter what assur­ances they were offered because, he explained, “we just don’t trust you guys!” And with that, such a loud cheer rose up from the floor you’d have thought the Oil­ers (the unfor­tu­nately named school foot­ball team) had scored a touchdown.

The show­down was cathar­tic, if noth­ing else. For weeks res­i­dents had been sub­jected to a bar­rage of pep talks and extrav­a­gant promises com­ing from Wash­ing­ton, Hous­ton and Lon­don. Every time they turned on their TVs, there was the BP boss, Tony Hay­ward, offer­ing his solemn word that he would “make it right”.Or else it was Pres­i­dent Barack Obama express­ing his absolute con­fi­dence that his admin­is­tra­tion would “leave the Gulf coast in bet­ter shape than it was before”, that he was “mak­ing sure” it “comes back even stronger than it was before this crisis”.