Edgar J. Mouton, MEAN Co-Founder, Passes at 76

Mr. Edgar Mouton speaking to Sarah Lawrence College Health Advocacy Students

I have been reluctant to write this post.  Death, of course, is a part of that wheel of stress we trudge, and old men die all the time.  So that's not the issue. Black men die of unnatural causes with disturbing frequency, as this blog has sometimes documented.  To live to be 76 can be a blessing.  But Mr. Mouton was not an ordinary man and his death probably not natural.

Edgar Mouton, co-founder of Mossville Environmental Action Now, passed away last Thursday.  He was 76 years old. I only knew Mr. Mouton for four years. I met him post-Katrina (how I still count time in Louisiana) in my role as a trainer with the Environmental Support Center (also of happy memory).  He had worked in the refinery zone in a number of different plants.  I remember him telling me he had handled benzine and sulphuric acid.  His age was a mystery to me as exposure to all those chemicals brings illnesses and conditions that wear a body away.  Mr. Mouton had dedicated 30 years of his life to revealing the injustice of favoring the interests of industry over humanity.  The people of Mossville were being sacrificed to our consumption and the profits of the oil and chemical industries.  He worked tirelessly to hold them accountable, for federal Superfund designation for the land, owned by black folk since the end of the Civil War (another way to count time), now lost to pollution and to reclaim the health of his people.  

Like most of the people I have had the privilege to work with in Mossville, Mr. Mouton had a mordant sense of humor and infinite patience.  One of my last memories is of him, Dorothy Felix (MEAN's other co-founder), Wilma Subra and Sanjay Gupta of CNN being stood up by the head of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.  It was spring, it was hot, they wouldn't let these two elderly people into the state office building in Baton Rouge.  (I suppose the CNN cameraman was a problem for them). They were standing around cracking jokes.  They knew that in some fundamental way, LADEQ had already lost the war.


Goodbye Mr. Mouton.  I'm happy to know you have joined the ancestors in a high, and much less toxic, place.

Environmental Justice News and Actions

I'm back in Ohio looking forward to a summer of writing, tweaking my History of Health Care course for the Sarah Lawrence College Health Advocacy Program and clearing vast amounts of undergrowth in my woods (my woods! I hadn't thought about it this way until now) as construction continues on my land.  I will also be tracking EJ developments. 

Potential Fracking Areas in OH (ecowatch.org)

As many of you know, Ohio passed one of the most regressive pieces of environmental legislation in it's recent worst in the country Fracking law, allowing health and safety loopholes, the gas industry will pay very little and, according to EcoWatch.org "Doctors will be prevented from talking openly about the sickness they see in their patients, and the gas industry will keep profits flowing out of our communities."

Marie Gunnoe Contemplates A Mountaintop Removal Site (ohvec.org)

Mountaintop Removal is the topic at the Natural Resources  Committee of the House of Representatives.  OVEC's Marie Gunnoe is testifying before a rather hostile Republican committee.  This is in anticipation of the upcoming End Mountaintop Removal Week in DC.  Be prepared to call your Senators and Representatives on June 6. 

The Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Department, Part 2

This is what happened next:

We left the Sonic Drive In having lost our appetites.  We went back to the retreat center to find the most aggressive of the cops leaving the parking lot in front of our humble bunk house.  Most of the students seemed fairly upset -- wigged out might be a more apt description.  I knew I had to call the college and I knew we had to leave the retreat center.  It was fairly isolated.  I didn't expect anyone would try to do physical harm to us but remembered all the ways emotional distress could be inflicted when someone had decided a boundary had been crossed.

So we packed a few things and left for the safety of Sulphur and real, adult queen size beds. Mossville folk kept checking in with us, making sure we were ok.  They had tried to mount a rescue mission, complete with video camera to document our treatment.  We were allowed to leave before they could get to us.  Their motives were two fold -- to protect us and to use our treatment for organizing.  And that is how it should be.  We had been invited in, to join Mossville Environmental Action Now in their struggle.  Police harassment comes with the environmental justice organizing territory.  The refineries are an important part of the local, state and regional economy.  Their products are a key indicator in our nation's gross domestic product and cost of living indicator.  Their profits are astronomical.  Grassroots communities from many countries and on every continent have tried to force oil companies to clean up their act (and the air and the water and the soil)  and those companies have successfully resisted most of their efforts. Local officials have a vested interest to aid that resistance.  MEAN knew this, and now we knew it too.

There wasn't time to feel sorry for ourselves but we did take precautions.  No more photography on PPG Road.  We took extra care to make sure our interview teams were structured in ways that would not expose anyone to scrutiny or harassment.  We had to be on our way back to Sulphur before dark.

But no worries.  On our last day two interview teams still managed to get kicked out of a trailer park.