Telley Madina, Oxfam America’s coastal communities program officer, just returned from Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, where he visited with Oxfam America’s partner organization Zion Travelers Cooperative Center (ZTCC).

Reverend Tyrone Edwards, Founding Executive Director of ZTCC, is a lifelong community organizer and a tireless advocate for coastal communities affected by hurricanes and last year’s BP oil spill. Edwards often says that if coastal erosion and the emission of gas and other toxins are allowed to continue, our children’s future will be robbed. That’s one reason that his organization started a program to educate and involve Louisiana youth in coastal restoration, hurricane protection, and the broader environmental movement.

Rose Butler of the Bayou Rebirth Wetlands Education Program shows children from Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana how to do water quality tests. Photo by: Rev. Tyrone Edwards / Zion Travelers Cooperative Center.

I saw firsthand how the kids ZTTC works with feel connected to the environment. Since most of them are teenagers, they remember what Katrina did to their lives. When I visited with them, they were preparing to plant seed grass on the side of levees. This work is vital to coastal restoration because the overall objective is to rebuild land, and their work is the starting block for that to happen. The kids seem to be conscious that by fighting to protect and rebuild this land, they are protecting their very futures.  As one of the kids jokingly said, “If we don’t fix this place then we won’t live here soon.”

Participating in this work seems to build up their self-esteem as well.  One said, “Rev. Edwards is the man because he listens to us.  Our opinions are important, and he wants us to back them up with work.  If we think of something to do, he’ll say let’s go do it and see what happens.”

Edwards has been doing community organizing and youth empowerment for 41 years.  He makes sure these young people have a place at the table for whatever he’s working on because he realizes that coastal restoration may not be completed in his lifetime, so he wants to make sure he can hand the mantle off to the next generation to make sure the work gets done.

These kids’ energy and capacity to understand the magnitude of what’s happening in Plaquemines Parish continues to inspire me.  Edwards would assert that he could fix Plaquemines with enough money and the kids in his program.

Somewhere in Grand Isle, Louisiana, on a road so remote that our GPS thought we were now in a boat on the Gulf of Mexico, it started raining. And then it rained some more. It rained so hard that our small Oxfam film crew of myself, Shannon Hart-Reed, Sarah Livingston, and Michael Prince had to pull over. After several days and hundreds of miles shooting footage for a music video Oxfam was doing in partnership with The New Pornographers, all of us were ready to go home. We were exhausted, drenched, and hungry with nowhere to go – literally. The road ahead of us was flooded, and the road to our right was closed, by British Petroleum, which created the largest environmental disaster in US history, bungled the clean-up process, and somehow managed to dispossess the authorities of the power to manage their own beaches as evidenced by their hand-drawn cardboard “Beach Closed” sign tacked to the telephone pole behind us.

That forced pit stop was a long way from the Saturday night party where Oxfam received an Emmy for the music video. When our music outreach specialist Bob Ferguson stood up to say a few words of thanks after receiving the award he said what I think we all felt in that car in the middle of the rainstorm – and throughout the filming: the video, the award, the music and the work are all part of our effort to “raise awareness that the situation in the Gulf is far from over,” and make sure the people of the Gulf Coast, and in particular those most affected by the oil spill and Hurricane Katrina, are heard.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a fan of Oxfam America on Facebook, you might have seen our album of recent photos from the 2010 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, TN.

Over 80,000 people attended Bonnaroo this year, and our dedicated group of Oxfam volunteers and staffers set out to reach as many of those concert-goers as possible. Together, we collected 3,000 signatures for a petition calling on our leaders to take action on climate change; screened Oxfam films in the video tent; canvassed during shows by Oxfam supporting artists LCD Soundsystem, Aziz Ansari, OK Go, and more; and organized group activities, like our famous water bucket carrying contest, to raise awareness of poverty and hunger issues.  At the end, we celebrated with a dip in the infamous “hippie fountain” (don’t ask).

Here’s a quick look at three photos that I think best capture the spirit of our efforts:

Photo: Bob Ferguson/Oxfam America

Members of our crew—left to right: Oxfam Action Corps volunteer Mark Fangmeier of Minnesota; Oxfam Boston staffer Katie Stuart; former Oxfam America CHANGE Leader Paul Gallegos of Wyoming; and Oxfam’s Clara Herrero—get ready to go out and start another day of canvassing. Read on for more photos…

Read the rest of this entry »

The oil-soaked marshes were silent when Rhonda Jackson toured them recently. Photo by Audra Melton/Oxfam America

Rhonda Jackson is an Oxfam America Gulf Coast program manager. Here is her account of what she saw on a recent field visit through Louisiana’s marshes.

I have often said that—unlike most folks in my line of work—I’m no tree-hugger. I love people. I do this work because I want people to have the best. Yet, on a recent tour of the oil-soaked coast of Louisiana, I couldn’t help but want to hug each and every blade of marsh grass, to apologize on behalf of all humankind for this huge mess. I was saddened, angry, and hurt. I knew that what I was seeing was the end of something.

As a life-long resident of New Orleans and having survived Katrina, I know what the end of something beautiful and wonderful looks and feels like. I know that while things can and will eventually get better, they will never quite be the same and that those with the least will suffer and struggle the most. I know this because up until this oil spill, I had personally survived what had been called the worst disaster in America. I know this because while many of my own friends and family members survived, we are all different. I know this because while it is five years since Katrina, I am still in my own private battle with the state of Louisiana over its recovery and homeowner assistance program known as the Road Home. I know this because my grandmother, like many other elders in the area, died heartbroken soon after the storm. Read the rest of this entry »