On May 14, 2011, residents of Grand Isle, fisherfolk and their allies gathered to burn the BP logo and, in the absence of US Government aid, appeal to the British people to pressure BP to clean up the Gulf and address the health problems they’ve caused. These men and women call themselves “The Boudin Taliban.” The following is excerpted from remarks by Dean Blanchard of Dean Blanchard Seafood, who spoke at the event.
BP got commercials all over television– everybody in the United States who doesn’t live here thinks everything’s alright down here. BP has successfully bought off most of the US press. They’ve taken the news media out of the picture. They’ve successfully bought off all the politicians in Washington– not all of them, but a lot of them– and it’s hard to get any help, because BP knows where the bodies are buried. BP knows who they gave the money to, so the politicians are scared to help us
BP, you know, they buy people. Instead of British Petroleum, it oughta stand for Buys People, because all they ever did was lie to us from day one. They never told us the truth. Now they tricked the American public into thinking they did the right thing, which they never did.
I think BP’s gonna be responsible in the long run for killing more people than Bin Laden killed. We don’t know what the effects over the long term are gonna be on the people of Grand Isle, and the people all along the Gulf Coast.
You got people down here sick with diseases we never had before. There’s a sinus problem down here that all of a sudden everybody got, people that never had sinus problems before got it. They sprayed chemicals on us that weren’t allowed to be sprayed in their own country. The American government allowed them to do it because they all took pay-offs.
So if we can’t get help from the American Government, we ask the British people to ask the British government to force the company that uses the British name to do the right thing.
And as far as BP, if they don’t do the right thing, they need to go back to where they came from. We’re gonna burn the BP logo– the BP logo in our opinion is stained with blood. We got blood stains all over.
We really don’t have nothing against the British people. To the British people, we’re not gonna burn your flag today, but we’re saying, do something, help us. Get to your government– make the company that holds the British name do the right thing. Make them come down here and clean up the mess that they created and make the people whole. Just do what you promised.
We know for sure BP killed more walleyes than any company in the history of the world. We got dead fish washing up on the beaches, people who go in the water are catching sores, we got serious problems over here. So we’re gonna show BP what we think of them and burn their logo. And in 30 days if the British don’t do nothing right, we’re gonna come back and we’re gonna burn their flag next.
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