Coincidentally, we met the organizer of the event, Henry Thomas, at Electric Ladyland Tattoo shop a few days before the rally. He was pretty nervous about the potential size of the crowd and asked our team to help with “security” for the event. Essentially this meant distributing fliers, keeping the sidewalk free and moving, and keeping people out of Decatur Street. It was tough at times, but everyone was pretty cooperative. Before the protest we met at Henry’s house uptown. We adorned arm bands to identify ourselves and listened to our instructions. It was made clear time and again that this was a peaceful, pro-New Orleans, pro-Louisiana event. At around noon we all moved down to the protest site, the “amphitheater” located adjacent to Jackson Square. The sky opened up, rained poured down and we scattered for cover to await 1pm and the start of the protest. Luckily, close to 1pm the rain subsided and we took our place, the band began to play and the attendees started to arrive. Six invited speakers united and energized the crowd and offered various ways that everyone could lend a hand in the cleanup. We estimate that close to 2000 people participated in the demonstration during the duration of the event. Nationally recognizable attendees included Spike Lee and Tim Robbins.

The invited speakers included:

George Barisich, President of the United Commercial Fishermans Associaition Evan Wolf, Lousiana Nation Guardsman Dean Blanchard, Owner of Dean Blanchard Seafood Paul Orr, Lower Missippii Riverkeeper Cliff JohnSon, Co-Founder of the Southeast Louisiana Shrimp Alliance Professor John P. Clark, Loyola Environmental Studies Program