Jobs Needed
by Sudhama Ranganathan Saturday, Jun. 05, 2010 at 8:39 AM
uconnharassment@gmail.com

Well here it comes. All across the gulf people worried about oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill and the ramifications for their states, their towns, their way of lives and their livelihoods. For those of us like me we watch the news of oil getting closer, fishermen scared to lose the way they make a living and nervous politicians slowly turning into community leaders. But, we don’t really feel it.

helpwanted.jpg, image/jpeg, 480x318

The pictures move us; keep us glued to our TV’s, radios, papers and internet news sources. We say to each other what will be next? What will they have to go through next? How will they pull themselves together? And, of course why is the cleanup taking so long? But it isn’t our shores.

Giant plumes of flame and acrid smoke burned high and hot. We weren’t there, but it was clear enough. People gave their lives and others were wounded. The rig sunk and it seemed another tragedy had come to an end. We have yet to mourn the loss of those workers, and to properly remember them as we did the miners lost just a short while before. We didn’t have time.

The well the sunken rig tapped spewed oil uncontrollably. The tragedy went from days to weeks and it’s still going. The worst case scenario was oil making its way into fishing grounds, spawning grounds and beaches.

Possibilities turned real and the ailing gulf region is looking at yet another extended recovery. No one knows how long, but they never had the numbers right on the leaking oil. They never knew when it would be fixed. They never knew what the fix would be. They still don’t.

At this point the real fix will be the mitigation regarding damage caused by the spill. Not that it isn’t important to stop the leak because that’s a given. We also need to clean up the shores, the wildlife, the all important breeding and spawning grounds in the wetlands and marshes, clean up fishing grounds and we need to head off whatever oil we can from reaching those areas yet untouched.

People from all over the nation and the world want to help and have expressed as much. Citizens across the nation are in need of work. There’s no reason we can’t coordinate a massive cleanup effort and do so quickly using all the resources we have. Wealth and diversity of potential awaits opportunity, structure and implementation.

Reserves can be called up to manage crews. Professionals can help with information and coordination. Others can be put to work cleaning shores, marshes, laying boom and skimming. Since BP has to pay for the cleanup anyway, why wait years for them to act? Whole communities are going under.

When people can’t find fulltime work they don’t sit by hoping the bills fairy will be paying them a visit. They work part time, temp jobs whatever they can get in the meantime. FDR knew that.

We need leadership and we need to see fast movement in terms of seeing the leak permanently capped. But more than that, we need crisis intervention. The only way things get fixed is by hands getting in there and turning the tools. We need to stop walking around the jumble, taking measurements, theorizing and sensationalizing. We need rakes, shovels, bags, buckets and detergents as fast as possible.

We can’t watch them suffer and do nothing. We can help and the money is there. If BP starts playing games with funds we already know they have - force them to pay. No excuses.

Everyone interviewed except the experts seem to already know this. It is time for the experts to take a breath and dig in. It is time to catch up to this thing before it ruins the gulf. This is more important than the next three or four election cycles.

To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.

www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com

add your comments