A Surrealist Response to the Oil Spill
This just in: the Surrealist Movement in the United States, always friends of the earth and enemies of big business, has prepared a manifesto in response to the tragic disaster that’s filled the Gulf of Mexico with hundreds of thousands of millions of barrels of oil. Read on, and click the link at the end to download a pdf of the flyer to print out & distribute yourselves!
*************************************
.
O octopus, with your silken look! whose soul is inseparable from mine; you most beautiful inhabitant of the terrestrial globe, who have at your disposal a seraglio of four hundred suckers; you in whom, linked indestructibly by a common accord, the sweet communicative virtue and the divine graces are nobly present, as if in their natural residence, why are you not with me, your mercury belly against my aluminum breast, both of us sitting on some seashore rock, to contemplate the spectacle I adore!
—The Songs of Maldoror
.We are through with the rational, reasonable, realistic and scientific solutions of faith-based positivism. Instead, we make the following demands and dedicate them to Judi Bari, an Earth First! liberator and lover of old growth trees who was car-bombed by the forces of law-’n-order twenty years ago on May 24th. Long live Judi Bari! Solidarity with Marie Mason, Oso Blanco Chubbock, Mumia Abu Jamal, and the Tarnac 9!
1. CLARIFICATION: It needs to be made clear that this is not an “oil spill.” This is a manmade disaster. Depending on which official version you chose to believe, somewhere between BP’s ridiculous estimate of 210,000 gallons and well over 4 millions gallons of oil have been gushing into the ocean every day since April 22, 2010. A “spill” is what happens when a drinking glass of water tips over; this is and always has been an unstoppable, unpluggable, uncleanable, uncontrollable, unleashed man-made geyser of toxic disaster.
2. PEOPLE’S TRIBUNALS FOR ECOTERRORISTS: An injury to one is an injury to all! We charge every BP America executive and governmental overseer of offshore oil drilling with manslaughter and ecocide. The mansions, yachts, and private jets seized from these executives and bureaucrats will be converted into sandboxes, tree forts, rain gardens, greenhouses, and amusement parks. The accused must face a people’s tribunal and stand trial in the Gulf Shore communities that their actions (and inactions) have affected. The jury will be made up of those drawn from the communities that their actions (and criminal inactions) has most affected, particularly the families of those eleven workers killed when the BP rig exploded. Bussed in from the cities, the underground, and the countryside, members of the Earth Liberation Front and Earth First! should be on hand to witness the proceedings, especially those who are currently serving harsh prison sentences for their work in defense of the natural world. The least we can hope for as an outcome is that the accused will be tarred with their own petroleum wastes and feathered with the soiled plumage of murdered birds.
3. DISMANTLING OF ALL OIL, COAL, AND NUCLEAR POWER COMPANIES: The obscene perpetuation of environmental devastation and endless wars in the name of energy company profits cannot be tolerated any longer. In the name of brown pelicans, shrimp, frigate birds, marlins, sea bass, laughing gulls, octopi, and piping plovers, we demand an immediate and total cessation of the violent industrialized extraction of oil and coal from the Earth. We also call for the shutting down of all nuclear power facilities whose foul radioactive wastes threaten ecologies everywhere.
4. DISSOLUTION OF ALL MEDIA CORPORATIONS: Our friend in New Orleans, Max Cafard, reports that monstrous tentacles of oil measuring ten miles long and three miles wide continue to grow beneath the waves, yet tellingly the media industry remains focused on the multicolored “sheen” on the sea’s surface. News outlets dutifully parrot the oil company’s party line of official estimates and explanations. When one BP official said that this disaster was a good opportunity to experiment with pollution containment strategies, no news agency explored the implications of an industry that can trigger a catastrophe and then grope around in the dark for a way out of it. In another interview with a BP spokesman, the CNN reporter concluded the report with the sympathetic assurance that “We’re all praying” for the corporation. Clearly, the media serve only the interests of their stockholders and the State in their coverage of this atrocity. Therefore we call for all equipment and broadcast network technology currently used to disseminate these outrageous lies and propaganda (“We’re glad that you’re on the job, Admiral”; “Don’t worry—warm water microbes break down the oil”) is to be collectivized and redistributed on street corners in order to encourage more participation and free expression in the report and analysis of such tragedies.
5. EMERGENCY MASS ACTION: We call upon everyone to defend your homes, your loved ones, and the Earth from destruction. We’ve seen the graffiti in Mobile, Alabama: “When life gives you oil spills, make Molotovs!”
THE SURREALIST MOVEMENT
IN THE UNITED STATES
Declaration of May 24th, 2010 * www.surrealistmovement-usa.org
Download pdf at: http://charleshkerr.com/images/oil-disaster-surrealist-response-v2.pdf