Climate protestors chase Pete Buttigieg off a stage at Baltimore event

[Carla_Sinclair]

Originally published at: Climate protestors chase Pete Buttigieg off a stage at Baltimore event | Boing Boing

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[gracchus]

Now that is an effective protest. No distractions, no showboating, no alienation of people going about their daily lives. Just confronting a politician directly with the facts of his contribution to the climate emergency and making him run away in shame. More of this, please.

[danimagoo]

I think this is a lot more effective than throwing red dye on glass protecting priceless art, for sure. If nothing else, it will force Buttigieg to have an answer ready the next time he speaks somewhere. I will give him a tiny amount of credit for not just making something up that Biden might later contradict (looking at you Mayorkas).

[BethanyAnne]

This is so weird. So, last month was a story about Texas City, where Dad was from. And this month, it’s Surfside. Mom’s hometown was Freeport … which ends at Surfside beach. If there’s a story about West Columbia next month, I’ma start looking around for a stalker, lol.

More seriously, that area of Texas is the end of “Cancer Alley”, a line of spiking cancer rates tracking with the petrochemical businesses of Louisiana and Texas, down near the coast. It stretches along Interstate 10, and turns south at Houston, towards Texas City and the Brazosport area (Freeport and other small towns near it).

Honestly, even without the climate emergency, good on these people for making some noise. No place deserves the blight of that industry. It’s like capitalism manages to strip human endeavor of what little foresight we can normally scrape together, which isn’t all that much in the first place. In Texas City, I talked about the toxic air.

In Freeport and the surrounding area, it’s toxic water. Rain that bubbles up orange from the ground. Tapwater that stinks of sulfur. The exact dystopia depends on which turn you take on Cancer Alley. Philips 66 bought the entire town of Old Ocean so they could stop paying settlements to the residents they poisoned. And somehow growing up, it was all just normal. Knowing areas that were so lead infested that the residents had a reputation for being damaged people. Seeing agriculture, and only years later wondering “Hey, wait, where did they get the water for that rice?” Petro-capitalism is the geography of southeast Texas, and I couldn’t see it until I left.

[Gyrofrog]

I always thought that a requirement for being inaugurated as Governor of TX should be to swim around for at least an hour (breaks allowed; no wetsuit/covered limbs) in Galveston Bay &/or the Houston Ship Channel.

[BethanyAnne]

Hey, the water’s already got pollution, no need to make it worse.

[MerelyGifted]

It’s beyond understanding why any new fossil fuel projects are being considered, let alone fucking approved.

[moortaktheundea]

There is a particular malice which the petro industry treats the communities it poisons. Whether you are talking about the benzine spills in Titusville (first commercially successful well), the poisoning of the Cuyahoga (first integrated major refinery), to the Gulf today they manage to make the lead paint and nuclear weapons industries look responsible, which is an amazing feat.