Gulf spill galvanizes activist community

With the U.S .government and oil giant British Petroleum under fire for their handling of the more than two-month-old Gulf Coast oil spill disaster, environmental and community activists across the country are taking matters into their own hands. In New Orleans, a Gulf Emergency Summit was held to design a grassroots response to the crisis on Jun. 19, resulting in the launch of the "Emergency Committee to Stop the Gulf Oil Catastrophe". "We're organizing a broad resistance," Larry Everest, a spokesperson for the committee from San Francisco, California, who traveled to the Gulf after the disaster, told IPS. "The goal of the summit flowed from the call we put out, a recognition of the enormity of the catastrophe... and recognizing that the disaster is out of control and spreading and BP and the government have shown they are unable and unwilling to stop the disaster and protect the environment or even tell the truth," Everest said.