Who Decides if a BP Spill Claim Is Legitimate?

By Bryan Walsh, TIME, June 11, 2010

Legitimate. It's the word that could come to define the extremely expensive, extremely litigious aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Almost from the beginning, BP has promised to pay what it calls all "legitimate" claims by people and businesses affected by the spill. But legitimate, when it's contained in a print ad as part of BP's new multimillion-dollar campaign or poshly pronounced by CEO Tony Hayward in one of the accompanying TV commercials, sounds very different from the way it sounds coming out of the mouth of a bayou shrimper in Venice, La. What constitutes legitimate is still an open question.

At the very least though, it looks like BP won't be the only one who gets to decide. A day after demanding that the company turn over data about its financial-claim payment process, the Coast Guard reported that BP had pledged to expedite payment to affected businesses in the Gulf. "BP recognized that its previous approach of waiting until after the books have closed for each month to calculate losses will not work," Tracy Wareing of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said at a news conference Thursday. "It won't get dollars quickly enough to the businesses that are struggling on the ground." (See pictures of people protesting against BP.)

And reports are filtering back from Louisiana that BP's lost oil seems to be flowing a lot faster than its cash. David Camardelle, the mayor of Grand Isle in southeastern Louisiana, told a hearing of a subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that he knew of 37 applications from his community still waiting for their $5,000 claims check from BP. "Every day, I have a mom that comes in front of me and asks me, 'Mr. David, how am I going to get food for my kids,'" Camardelle said. "Please, please send us some help." (See photos of victims of the BP oil spill.)

BP has said that it has already paid over $80 million in claims to more than 10,000 individuals in Louisiana, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, with more coming soon. The company also says that it has opened scores of claims centers around the affected coastline, and that it is trying to process claims in a few days at most. "We'll do this until it's finished," said Darryl Willis, vice president of resources for BP America, in a teleconference with reporters over the weekend.

To aid the company in speeding the payment process, Alabama is considering assigning National Guard troops to work at claims centers — a uniquely effective lever only the government can use. But the very nature of how many people work on the Gulf Coast is going to trump the number that will be answering phones and processing documents. And the very nature of the fishing industry won't help either. Fishing can bring in a lot of money in a very short period of time during the right season, but fishermen might be hard-pressed to provide evidence — bank statements, pay stubs — that can back that up. The same goes for many other businesses: if receipts are dwindling at a restaurant, or guests are cancelling at a resort, how is it possible to prove that the spill alone is responsible? "We're stuck in the middle," says Chris Camardelle, whose seafood restaurant in Grand Isle has been badly hurt by the oil spill. "So it's a tricky situation." (See a brief history of BP.)

The government has insisted repeatedly that BP will pay all the costs of the cleanup and all damages as well — and Washington seems willing to push the oil company as far as it can. But there will surely be limits. President Obama has said that he will push BP to compensate rig workers who have been laid off because of the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling he instituted to fix the industry's safety standards, but there's skepticism that claim could hold. As BP comes under greater pressure politically in Washington, a backlash is beginning to build in Britain, especially over the question of whether BP will be able to make billions in expected dividend payments to shareholders even as the spill is continuing. "I do think it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on international airwaves," London Mayor Boris Johnson told the BBC Thursday.

As the spill worsens, though, the pressure will only increase — and a new scientific estimate of the leak rate shows that Gulf catastrophe could be even worse than we ever imagined. After reviewing better video from the underwater leak, the government's Flow Rate Technical Group estimated on Thursday that the oil was escaping at a rate between 20,000 bbl. and 40,000 bbl. a day, and that was before robots severed the broken riser at the wellhead a week ago, which may have increased the flow by as much as another 20%. That's up from an earlier estimate of between 12,000 bbl. and 19,000 bbl., and an initial number of about 5,000 bbl. a day, though some independent scientists were arguing weeks ago that the flow was far higher than that. And it's still not certain. "Our scientific analysis is still a work in progress," said U.S. geological-survey director Marcia McNutt, the head of the flow-rate team. "In coming days we'll be refining our estimates further. (Read a Q&A on who's liable for the Gulf oil spill.)

The total amount of oil spilled into the Gulf will have an impact on the kind of damages claims the government — and private individuals — can bring against BP. But while it's important to get a fix on the leak, it won't be the final determination of the damage. "Even if we can't be precise about the amount of oil spilled, we can make conservative estimates of the losses suffered here, and they'll be huge," says David Uhlmann, the director of the environmental law and policy program at the University of Michigan Law School and a former prosecutor for the EPA. "But the easy part is going to involve the financial penalties and the civil penalties — the hard part will be restoring the region and making the victims whole."

Indeed, although BP's ubiquitous ads have said repeatedly that the company will "make things right," given the scale of the damages, that might prove impossible. And like with legitimate, the definition of the word right will be up for grabs. It will be defined, ultimately, by the courts; there have already been countless suits filed against BP by private individuals and businesses, and the government is pursuing an investigation of the spill too. "It's gearing up to be the most heavily fought legal battle in history," says Jody Freeman, founding director of the environmental law and policy program at Harvard Law School. So we know that one group will end up better off than when the spill started: the lawyers.

Congress Fights to Make Sure BP Pays for Oil Spill

Several Democrats have put forward a bill to get rid of the liability cap
By Kent Garber, U.S. News & World Report, June 15, 2010

BP says that it's already spent $1.5 billion on its response effort to the Gulf of Mexico spill, and it's repeatedly promised to pay "all legitimate claims" related to the disaster. But that promise has done little to calm fears that it will try to fight tooth and nail, much as Exxon did after the terrible Valdez tanker spill, to limit how much it has to pay out in the future.. [See which members of Congress get the most from the oil industry.]

Those fears have prompted a burst of activity on Capitol Hill, much of it focused on raising—or eliminating—what's known as the "liability cap." According to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, if a spill occurs, the responsible company has to pay for all cleanup costs, no exceptions. But, in most cases, a company's liability is limited to $75 million for the long-term damage to the local economy, natural resources, and people's livelihoods. The cost of the Gulf spill will vastly exceed that number. [See photos of the Gulf oil spill.]

Last week, the White House voiced support for chucking the cap, saying it wants to make sure BP pays to help states rebuild their coasts and to allow fishermen and businesses to recover. Several Democratic senators agree and have put forward a bill that would get rid of the cap. Over in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she also favors the cap's removal and wants her chamber to produce legislation by July 4. On a separate track, the White House is now pushing BP to create an escrow account that would cover environmental and economic damages.

But striking the cap, it turns out, isn't going to be a slam-dunk, even amid the populist anger against BP. Several Republicans have argued that removing the cap altogether—which is to say, making oil companies fully liable for the entire cost of a spill—would make it close to impossible for all but the biggest oil companies to drill offshore because the potential financial risks from an accident would be too great. "It would appear to me that if we were to take the cap off altogether, it would institute a de facto ban on offshore drilling," Sen. Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican, said recently.

Democrats say their goal is not to stop offshore drilling but to make it safer. As Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar noted, a $75 million cap seems pretty minor compared to the billions in profits oil companies make each year. "How is that an incentive to take safety measures?" she asked in a recent hearing.

In the current situation, these arguments may matter only so much. According to the 1990 law, the $75 million cap doesn't apply if the company is found guilty of "gross negligence or willful misconduct" or of violating "federal safety, construction, or operating regulations." No formal charges of wrongdoing have been leveled against BP yet, but the Justice Department has launched both civil and criminal investigations. With the Exxon Valdez incident, says Lloyd Miller, a lead plaintiffs' attorney in that case, the criminal charges hinged on being able to show that upper management was aware that the skipper of the vessel had a history of drinking on the job. "Once you have the upper management aware," Miller says, the court "can hold the company responsible."

BP, for its part, says that it's acting as if the cap isn't there. Testifying before a House committee this morning, BP America CEO Lamar McKay noted that BP expects to far exceed--and in fact already has exceeded--the cap. But that's providing little reassurance. Exxon has fought the penalties against it for much of the past two decades, and BP may do the same. The Obama administration is clearly hoping otherwise and is having the Coast Guard pressure BP to process claims from fishermen and affected businesses more quickly. That might bring some temporary relief. But the question of how much BP is going to have to pay surely is going to be around for years, if not decades, to come.

* See photos of the Gulf oil spill disaster.
* Check out our editorial cartoons on the Gulf oil spill.
* See who gets the most from the oil industry.

Coast Guard rejects BP oil leak plan as too little, too late

By Mark Seibel, McClatchy Newspapers, June 12, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Coast Guard has told oil giant BP that its proposed plan for containing the runaway Deepwater Horizon well does not take into account new higher estimates of how much oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and demanded that the company provide a more aggressive plan within 48 hours.

In a letter dated Friday and released Saturday, Coast Guard Rear Adm. James A. Watson also said that BP was taking too much time to ready ships to capture oil spewing from the well.

"You indicate that some of the systems you have planned to deploy may take a month or more to bring online," Watson, who is the federal on-scene coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, wrote Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer. "Every effort must be expended to speed up the process."

The 48-hour deadline is the second the Coast Guard has given BP in the past week and indicates a growing recognition on the part of the Coast Guard that both BP and the Obama administration underestimated for weeks the amount of oil pouring from the well, which began leaking when an April 20 explosion shattered the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killing 11 workers. The rig sank two days later, taking a mile of well pipeline with it.

For weeks, the Obama administration and BP said the spill was leaking 5,000 barrels a day — about 210,000 gallons. On May 27, a government task force of scientists revised that estimate to a minimum of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day, and possibly much more. Then on Thursday, the government doubled those estimates to between 20,000 and 50,000 barrels a day, saying those, too, may understate the size of the leak because a decision to shear off the well's riser pipe to add a "top hat" containment device may have unleashed more oil.

The intervention by the Coast Guard comes as the oil continues to spread across the Gulf. Alabama advised residents not to swim in areas near the Florida border and in the Mississippi Sound. An access route to the Inter-Coastal Waterway, the Pensacola Pass, was closed Saturday evening during flood tide until further notice to keep oil from entering the bay. And tar-ball fields detected in the Gulf appear to be headed toward the Florida Straits.

Watson said the new estimates were the reason for the new deadline, saying the plan Suttles outlined was only "consistent with previous flow rate estimates."

"Because those estimates have now been revised . . . it is clear that additional capacity is urgently needed," he said.

BP said it would respond to Watson's letter "as soon as possible."

The White House was asked Saturday what action it would take if BP doesn’t speed up its effort to containment.

”This isn’t open for discussion,” a senior administration official said. “BP must do better to plan a more aggressive response. In the same way we pushed for second relief well, additional redundancy, more transparency, paying for the berms, etc…we will push them to find better answers to contain the oil.”

The official, who asked not be named as a matter of policy, said the letter to BP was “a unanimous Obama team decision.”

BP and Coast Guard representatives have been meeting throughout the week, Coast Guard officials have said, to refine the plan, which Suttles outlined in a letter to Watson dated Wednesday — before the new flow rate estimates were released. In his letter, Suttles said the plan had been outlined on Tuesday to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "No objections were raised," he wrote.

Under that proposal, BP outlined two phases — a temporary one involving three recovery ships and a jerry-rigged system combining the "top hat" containment device with hoses already in place from the "top kill" procedure that failed to stanch the well last month, and a more permanent one that involves construction of two new risers from the well that would be serviced by two large recovery ships that are en route to the site now.

BP said that the temporary phase would bring the amount of oil captured to 20,000 to 28,000 barrels a day by the end of next week. Most of that oil would be recovered by the Discoverer Enterprise drilling ship, which has been collecting around its stated 15,000-barrels-per-day capacity through the "top hat" but that Coast Guard officials believe can be pushed to 18,000 barrels a day. The remaining 5,000 to 10,000 barrels per day would be taken up by a second vessel, the Q4000 drilling platform, which would burn the oil in a rarely used, if not unprecedented, procedure. BP vice president Kent Wells said Friday that burning could begin as soon as Monday.

The burning idea has provoked some experts to raise questions about the health and environmental effects of the process.

Containment capacity would be pushed further during the temporary phase by the addition of a third vessel, the drill ship Discoverer Clear Leader, which would take on an additional 5,000 to 10,000 barrels a day when it is operational in mid July, Suttle wrote.

In the second, more permanent phase, Suttles said BP was building two permanent floating risers to provide oil to the Taisa Pisces and the Helix Producer recovery ships. Each riser takes about a month to complete, Suttles said. One is expected to be finished next week. Work on the second began Monday, June 7. Once operational, the new risers and ships would have capacity to receive between 40,000 and 50,000 barrels per day, BP said.

The plan foresees both the Q4000 and the Discoverer Clear Leader discontinuing operations once the new floating risers are operational, but says the Discoverer Enterprise would remain on site and could provide additional capacity, if needed.

In offering an estimate of the total capacity of the temporary phase, BP's plan is more cautious than numbers Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen used in press briefings with reporters. On Friday, Allen said capacity would reach 38,000 barrels a day once the Discoverer Clear Leader is operational.

BP's numbers may be more realistic, however. While Allen has said that the Discoverer Enterprise could be pushed to receive 18,000 barrels per day, the actual amount it's recovered has declined by a few hundred barrels since it peaked at 15,800 barrels on Wednesday. On Thursday, the ship recovered 15,400 barrels and on Friday, it recovered 15,500 barrels, BP reported Saturday.

How much oil will flow to the Q4000 and the Discoverer Clear Leader is also uncertain. Neither vessel will be "pumping" the oil up from the sea, but instead will rely on the oil's natural pressure to push it up through hoses that were originally used to push drilling mud into the well's dysfunctional blowout preventer during the "top kill" effort. Based on the size of the hoses, the maximum amount likely to flow through to those ships would be 10,000 barrels per day, but could be less, depending on the oil reservoir's pressure.

Both Suttles and Wells warned that there could be additional delays in the plans because of adverse weather and conditions at the drill site, which officials describe as crowded with dozens of ships.

It was also unclear how soon additional equipment could be made available. The Q4000 was under contract to another oil company and only began working the Deepwater Horizon spill after that company agreed to release it. A tanker that will work with the Taisa Pisces to shuttle the captured oil ashore, the Loch Rannoch, is available only because BP has shut down for maintenance the North Sea well it was working, oil industry publications said. BP has yet to identify a second tanker needed to work with the Helix Producer.

A Coup is a Coup is a Coup: March on Southern Command in Solidarity with the People of Honduras

by Ray Del Papa & Linda Belgrave, SOA Watch, July 27, 2009

When Your Only Tool is a Hammer, Every Problem Looks Like a Nail

Those who have supported the SOA Watch over the years know that Fort Benning and the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom, the command and control facility for the US military in Latin America and the Caribbean) go hand in hand. Saturday morning, July 25, 60 people (two-thirds of them Latino) gathered in the pouring rain to march to the gates of SouthCom in solidarity with the people of Honduras.

Our demands, directed at the U.S. military, were straightforward:

1. Withdraw all US forces from Honduras (there are 600 troops stationed there)
2. Close all US military bases in Honduras.
3. Cut off all military aid to Honduras.
4. Return all Honduran military personal now being trained at the SOA (WHINSEC)
5. Close the School Of the Americas now.

Directly in front of the main gate participants gave testimony as to why these demands needed to be implemented. People made the trip from as far away as Maryland, as well as many locations in Florida, to be there for this important event; a vacationer from New York City joined the action.

Whole families from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers traveled from central Florida to stand with their brothers and sisters in Honduras; many of this party of twenty-five had had their own experiences at the hands of oppressive regimes in Central America. A mother (name withheld for safety) explained that it was especially important for women and children to march in opposition to the coup, as women, mothers, and children suffer disproportionately under oppression; her family back in Honduras is strongly opposed to the coup.

Isabella Gomez, of the U.S.—Latin American Solidarity Network and a member of SEIU, told of people being killed in her region of Honduras, as well as reports of other deaths in the north, reports that are not making into the stories put out by the U.S. media. Ms. Gomez fled Honduras twenty-five years ago to escape the death squads. At that time Micheletti was busy putting down a teachers’ strike in which she was involved. She also gave a telling critique of the current Honduran constitution—it doesn’t mention women at all! It might be worth noting that the U.S. Constitution, which also initially failed to mention women or minorities, has been amended many, many times. Amendments ending slavery and giving women the right to vote were especially hard fought. Opposition to progressive constitutional changes elsewhere in the world should not surprise Americans; military coups in response to efforts at change should shock us.

Pat McCann, of Veterans for Peace, pointed out to the crowd that members of the military, ordinary soldiers, not officers, are drawn from the poor, who often have few options. He vowed that the next time we come out to SouthCom, we will know some of the ordinary U.S. soldiers stationed there and we will talk to them.

Katherine Kean, of Crowing Rooster Production, talked about a documentary she made twenty years ago about the exploitation of poor workers in Honduras by U.S. Corporations. A dedicated activist for the Haitian people, she pointed out the parallels between the coup in Haiti in 2004 and the coup in Honduras, how both presidents were awakened in the early morning hours, put on planes, and flown out of the countries they had been elected to lead. Aristide has never returned to Haiti, much less to his Presidency.

Organizers of the action pointed out the connection between SouthCom and the SOA (WHINSEC), specifically that SouthCom approves curriculum for the School and directs military actions in all of Latin America. Secondly, they called on Obama to call the coup a coup and cut off all U.S. aid to Honduras so that Zelaya can return to his rightful office with no conditions.

Saturday’s action did have its trying moments. Thursday evening saw the beginning of a flurry of (unconfirmed) e-mail rumors that General Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez, the commanding general of the coup, would appear for a speaking engagement at the Miami Beach Convention Center Saturday at the same time as the action at SouthCom. This brought suggestions for a change of venue for the protest, a change of date, and plain demands that folks go out to South Beach. Mostly what these rumors wrought was distraction and confusion. When that failed to derail our action, we learned that Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen had called a press conference at her office with a former president of Honduras at the same time our event was taking place. This had a media effect. Saturday morning those media that arrived to cover the protest had to leave before it got going, in order to cover the Congresswoman’s event. Despite their hopes of getting back in time for our march, that simply was not logistically possible. If this were not enough, there was the Florida weather. It rained over most of Florida and just poured in South Florida.

One reporter caught a photo of a few hardy souls with soggy signs before leaving. While he missed our eventual numbers, he captured our determination to show that there is significant local opposition to the coup. Motorists’ favorable responses to our rally were unexpected. Many driving in the miserable weather took the time and effort to slow down and read our signs, honk, wave, and give us the thumbs-up. This, more than anything, illustrates a deep current of opposition to the coup, even in Miami, a bastion of the Latin right-wing.

Troubled prison firm's deal for new psychiatric hospital raises questions

By EMILY RAMSHAW, The Dallas Morning News, July 11, 2009

AUSTIN – A private prison company's history of filthy conditions, sexual abuse, suicides and riots in some of its Texas lockups isn't stopping the state from paying it $7.5 million to run a new psychiatric hospital near Houston.

Lawmakers inserted an earmark into the state budget to fund the future Montgomery County facility starting in 2011. But they said they didn't know until this week that the county had selected the GEO Group to operate it, although GEO lobbyists were pushing for it as early as February.

The new facility came as a post-session shock to mental health advocates, who acknowledge the need for it. But they say they weren't informed about it and never would have signed off if they knew Florida-based GEO was operating it.

"Why would we want to use an entity that hasn't had a stellar reputation?" asked Monica Thyssen, children's mental health policy specialist with Advocacy Inc. "If the process had been more transparent, there probably would have been other state officials who would've said, 'I don't know if GEO is the best use of state dollars.' "

GEO officials, who run more than 50 facilities in the United States, including five mental health facilities in Florida, declined to comment, saying in an e-mail that they don't discuss "specific business development efforts and/or contracts."

But state lawmakers say the psychiatric facility, which by 2011 is expected to house more than 100 criminal offenders awaiting trials or competency findings, will solve a major backlog. The Montgomery County jail has hundreds of inmates awaiting mental health treatment. The nearest state forensic mental hospital is more than 100 miles away, and when a bed opens up, it takes at least two deputies to take an offender there.

"It's a problem we sorely need to address, instead of leaving people who need mental health care in prison," said Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, one of the Senate's budget writers.

But the budgeting process and the choice of contractor have raised some eyebrows.

Department of State Health Services officials, who oversee psychiatric care in Texas, say the Montgomery County facility was not something they requested funding for in the budget. It was added to the budget in conference committee.

Mental health advocates, who track psychiatric hospital legislation closely, say they never heard any public discussion about it.

And neither Deuell nor Sen. Tommy Williams, who represents Montgomery County, knew until a reporter's phone call that county officials had selected GEO subsidiary GEO Care to run the facility – though legislative documents indicate the company was pushing for it as early as February.

"I know [GEO] has had problems," said Williams, R-The Woodlands. "Certainly I would expect them to run it in accordance with our state guidelines. I'll insist on that."

GEO's track record in Texas has been rocky.

In the midst of the Texas Youth Commission's 2007 sexual abuse scandal, agency officials shuttered the company's Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, saying they had found atrocious conditions – including feces on the walls – at the facility. They also fired a GEO prison worker after learning he was a convicted sex offender.

Earlier that year, an inmate in isolation at GEO's Dickens County facility slashed his throat, leaving letters complaining of blood-coated blankets and pillows, and floors and walls covered in mold.

And in 2006, a woman committed suicide at a GEO jail in Val Verde County, after complaining that she had been raped by another inmate and sexually harassed by a guard.

As recently as this winter, inmates at GEO's Reeves County Detention Center rioted, starting fires and taking hostages, to demand better health care. And in April, a Texas appeals court upheld a $42.5 million verdict against the company for the 2001 death of an inmate who was four days from finishing his sentence at a Willacy County facility. The man was beaten to death by other inmates using padlocks stuffed in socks.

Montgomery County officials, who selected GEO to operate the psychiatric facility late last month, say that the company has a good track record with its other mental health hospitals and that they're not "overly concerned" with the problems that have been documented in a few of Texas' 17 GEO lockups.

A presentation that GEO prepared for Texas lawmakers in February boasts of improved clinical programming, shortened waiting lists, and the elimination of the use of restraints and seclusion in its Florida psychiatric facilities. Company executives say they won the support of wary mental health advocates in that state.

The GEO prison incidents "obviously shouldn't have happened," Montgomery County Commissioner Ed Chance said. "But when you're dealing with inmates, you're going to have problems. You're going to have some headlines."

After the 2007 TYC scandal, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised serious concerns with GEO. Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen, said "a simple Internet search" should have made GEO a bad contractor choice for the state. And Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, told lobbyists for the firm it was best if they didn't contribute to his campaign at that time.

But GEO has continued its full-court press in Texas. Within months, these lawmakers and 13 others had accepted campaign contributions from the company.

"Some of their facilities are pretty darn good, and some are not as good as the others," Madden said. "But that's the exact same problem we have with the state-run facilities."

GEO PROBLEMS IN TEXAS

2001: Inmates at a Willacy County lockup beat a man to death four days before his release date, using padlocks stuffed into socks.

2006: A female inmate commits suicide at a GEO jail in Val Verde County after alleging she was raped by another inmate and sexually harassed by a guard.

2007: An inmate in isolation at GEO's Dickens County facility commits suicide, leaving letters complaining of blood-coated blankets and pillows.

2007: The Texas Youth Commission shutters GEO's Coke County Juvenile Justice Center after finding horrific conditions and learning that the company hired a convicted sex offender as a guard.

2009: Inmates at GEO's Reeves County Detention Center riot, starting fires and taking hostages, to demand better health care.

Future Montgomery County Forensic Mental Hospital

Price tag: $35 million

Location: On a 61-acre plot in Conroe, next to 1,100-inmate detention center

Capacity: 110 beds, with potential to add 130

Completion date: 2011

Current waiting list: For mental health care at the Montgomery County Jail, about 200 inmates

eramshaw@dallasnews.com

Across the country: Thousands in streets defend same-sex rights

Right-wing churches bankrolled Prop. 8 in Calif.
Imani Henry, Workers World, Nov. 14, 2008

The election victory of Barack Obama will go down in history as a triumphant step forward in the struggle against racism and national oppression in the U.S. Unfortunately, it was also an election where more than 10 million voters in Florida, Arizona and California supported right-wing ballot initiatives to deny marriage rights to lesbian, gay, bi and trans people.

Thirty states now have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. A proposal in Arkansas was also passed to stop gay men and lesbians from adopting children.

The struggle around California’s Proposition 8, which amends the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry, garnered national attention. Prop. 8 was the highest-funded campaign in any state and exceeded every other electoral campaign in spending except for the presidential race.

Prop. 8 was launched by ProtectMarriage.com to counter the California Supreme Court’s May 15 ruling which deemed unconstitutional a 2000 ban on same-sex marriage. “Vote Yes on Prop. 8” forces raised $35.8 million. The ban won 52 to 48 percent.

The coalition of right-wing organizations that supported Prop. 8 included the Roman Catholic Church, Knights of Columbus, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, American Family Association, Focus on the Family and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon).

The Utah-centered Mormon Church actively organized support for Prop. 8 and raised significant funds in both that state and California. Every congregation was read a letter in support of the bigoted ballot measure and urged to donate and raise funds. About 45 percent of donations to ProtectMarriage.com from outside California came from Utah, much more than any other state. (Mercury News, Oct. 24)

Prop. 8 marriage ban ignites protests

On Nov. 4 across the country, LGBT people of all nationalities gathered to watch and then celebrate Obama’s victory. But on Nov. 5—with the announcement of the passing of Prop. 8—a new firestorm of protest was ignited. LGBT political and legal organizations immediately started an appeal process.

An estimated 10,000 people rallied, marched, sat down in the streets and/or shut down traffic in Los Angeles and San Francisco. On Nov. 6, the protests spread to more cities, including San Diego and Westwood, Calif. More than 3,000 people protested on Nov. 7 in downtown Salt Lake City at the Mormon temple and church headquarters.

Actions took place throughout California on Nov. 8, including a march of 13,000 in Los Angeles and 10,000 in San Diego. On Nov. 9, the California Highway Patrol was forced to close two state highway traffic ramps for 13 hours, as 350 people protested outside the largest Mormon temple in Oakland.

Saturday, Nov. 15, has been called as a national day of action against Prop. 8. In California, protesters are planning massive rallies at city halls all across the state. Legal and economic campaigns have been launched throughout the country to strip the Mormon Church of its tax-exempt status. An economic boycott is being discussed.

According to the Associated Press: “Utah’s growing tourism industry and the star-studded Sundance Film Festival are being targeted for a boycott by bloggers, gay rights activists and others seeking to punish the Mormon church for its aggressive promotion of California’s ban on gay marriage. It could be a heavy price to pay. Tourism brings in $6 billion a year to Utah.” (Nov. 6)

Don’t blame Prop. 8 win on Black community

In a despicable effort—played heavily in the media—to deflect attention from the rich and powerful religious right, California’s Black communities have been blamed for Prop. 8’s passage. The media falsely concluded that the high voter turnout of Black people resulted in the measure’s passage.

The LGBT movement has been erroneously depicted as entirely white and middle class, and Black communities as politically conservative, highly religious and heterosexual.

But LGBT communities and movements in the U.S. are overwhelmingly multinational and working class in character, and neither Prop. 8 nor the oppression of LGBT people originates from the African-American community. The millions in donations raised by the anti-LGBT forces did not come from the pockets of Black churchgoers.

A new study released by the University of California, Los Angeles-based Williams Institute indicates that more than 7,400 Black men and women in California are in same-sex relationships. Fifty-five percent of Black women and 11 percent of Black men are raising children within these couples, the study found. It also found economic disparities among Black same-sex couples and their heterosexual counterparts.

Christopher Ramos, the study’s co-author, noted: “These analyses break stereotypes about gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, like the idea that they are all wealthy. We find that gay and bisexual [African-American] men in California have household incomes that are 44 percent lower than their heterosexual counterparts.” (L.A. Reporter, Oct. 23)

In a statement, Kathryn Kolbert, a reproductive rights attorney and president of the pro-LGBT People for the American Way, countered the divisive news coverage: “[We have looked] at the basic numbers and concluded that it is simply false to suggest that Prop. 8 would have been defeated if African Americans had been more supportive.

“The amendment seems to have passed by more than half a million votes, and the number of black voters, even with turnout boosted by the presidential race, couldn’t have made up that difference. ... Republicans and white churchgoers, among many other groups, voted for Prop. 8 at higher rates than African Americans. ...Who’s really to blame? The religious right.” (www.pfaw.org)

The right-wing campaign of lies and deception during the campaign included “robocalls” directed at Black households that falsely portrayed Obama as a Prop. 8 supporter. In fact, it was Black communities and religious leaders who mobilized to counter much of the right-wing efforts.

The California NAACP sent mailers opposing Prop. 8 to 140,000 Black households. In October the campaign in the Black community against Prop. 8 ranged from an evening of preaching against Prop. 8 at a predominantly Black church in San Francisco to a press conference held on the steps of Oakland’s city hall by prominent African-American leaders.

While John McCain was a supporter of Prop. 8 and Obama publicly opposed it, both candidates voiced opposition to gay marriage. Obama is only for the right of civil unions for LGBT persons, which do not confer the same rights and benefits as marriage does.

According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: “The 1,138 federal benefits and protections of marriage are only available to couples that are allowed to legally marry. These include Social Security survivor and spousal benefits, the ability to file a joint tax return, immigration rights, and coverage under the Family and Medical Leave Act. To date, civil unions are not ‘portable,’ meaning that when a couple moves to another state, none of the benefits, rights or responsibilities coming from civil unions move with them.”

At the heart of the Prop. 8 and marriage equality struggle is the right to health care and employment benefits that all workers of every nationality, gender and sexuality should have. LGBT marriage is essentially about workers’ rights. This is why organized labor has fought the bosses to have domestic partner benefits in their contracts. Prop. 8 is a setback to the entire progressive movement for social and economic justice.

It is not surprising during this capitalist economic crisis that the right wing poured millions of dollars into a campaign to deny benefits to LGBT workers. At the heart of their efforts is an attempt by the entire ruling class to pit workers and oppressed communities against each other in the hope we won’t unite to fight back against them.

The struggle to overturn Prop. 8 will continue. A multinational, multisexuality movement will be a powerful force to turn back all the economic attacks coming down on the working class in this period.