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.

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Big news, all: I’m very proud to present the world debut of Oxfam America’s video for the song “Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk” by iconic indie-rockers The New Pornographers.

And this isn’t your ordinary music video. Produced and directed by Oxfam’s Shannon Hart-Reed, it focuses on the aftermath of the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast.

The Gulf Coast oil spill is making headlines right now as one of the biggest stories of the year. But come January 2011, we don’t want the most vulnerable people in this area to be forgotten. Today, over six months after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, coastal communities affected by one of the worst environmental disasters in US history are fighting to make their voices heard loud and clear. Oxfam is working with these communities to ensure that the recovery process doesn’t pass over those most affected by this disaster. (Learn more about Oxfam’s work in the US.)

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