Below My Radar Screen

Apologies, because I completely missed this--fortunately Counterpunch didn't:

Antioch College's Graduate School of Environmental Studies offers a field program called Environmental Justice in the Mississippi Delta, which focuses on environmental racism in Cancer Alley. From March 14 to 25, 13 master's students and two professors were slated to tour the Delta region to interview community leaders, environmentalists, residents and industry executives.

On their second day out in the field, the group went to a small town called Norco, which has borne the brunt of toxic emissions from a giant chemical plant owned by Shell Oil. Several of the students took photographs of the sprawling facility from public property along the road outside the grounds of the plant. The group was soon confronted by a corporate security guard, who briefly detained the student photographers. The guard lectured Steve Chase, the director of Antioch's Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program, that photographing chemical plants and oil refineries was a violation of federal law. He warned Chase that if his group continued taking such photographs they could expect a raid from the FBI.

The next day Willie Fontenot accompanied the group to a neighborhood in East Baton Rogue near the big ExxonMobil chemical plant, one of the nation's most poisonous. The emissions from the ExxonMobil facility are so foul and hazardous that the company was forced to buy out the properties of the entire neighborhood.

"We had just met with Baton Rogue mayor Kip Holden and went out to drive around and look at the industry in the area," said Abigail Abrash Walton, the other Antioch professor leading the trip. "We came to a house directly across from facility and Willie Fontenot let us know that the woman who lived there had decided not to relocate. So we pulled over the van on a side street and the students got out and took photos."

Once again they were confronted by security forces. This time it only took two minutes for the guards to come and this time the company cops were wearing official uniforms from the county sheriff's office and the Baton Rogue police department. It turned out that the pair were off-duty cops moonlighting as security guards for ExxonMobil.

The guards detained the group and ordered Fontenot to collect driver's licenses from the students and the two professors. Fontenot refused, saying that he wasn't the leader of the group and that while the police had a right to question them they had no right to arrest them.

"I've researched this extensively over the years, because I often give tours for academics and journalists" said Fontenot. "It's perfectly legal to stand on public property and photograph facilities."

Needlesstosay, this bit of constitutionally-based impertinence didn't sit well with the company goons.

One of the guards told Fontenot that he had seen three students trespass onto an ExxonMobil parking lot to take photos. This proved to be a lie. The entire stop had been videotaped by one of the students. The tape showed clearly that none of the students had strayed off public property.

Hmmm. Once again, videotape contradicts accounts from law enforcement (see the post below about the GOP convention)...in fact, I've noticed plenty of instances lately where the operative conservative paradigm is basically "make shit up" and assume it will be believed because, well...I'm not really sure (although police generally have means of coercion, i.e., clubs and guns--when they start smashing cameras, we're going to be in a LOT of trouble)...

Now, getting back to the story--I think this is a prime example of why Louisiana bloggers miss Timshel, who I'm sure would have linked to these two Advocate articles, which provide a more local perspective. Regardless of perspective, though, the situation outlines what is, well, hypocrisy: the few laws on the books regarding chemical plant security are designed to impede terrorists, not students. Now, it's entirely possible that off-duty police might have trouble making the distinction, but something tells me that more of a willing failure than a matter of confusion. And the idea that photographs are now on an official "forbidden" activity list is pretty appalling--we used to loathe stuff like that about Soviet-era Russia.

But now it's just part and parcel to "freedom" in the United States, which is analogous to genuine freedom in the same way that an artifically flavored food product resembles--but isn't--real food.