About 50 opponents of continued oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico rallied on a suburban New Orleans sidewalk Monday, then brought their chants about potential impacts of continuing the lease program for five more years into a federal open house, The Associated Press reports.
“Today we are here to ask President Obama to keep it in the ground,” Jennifer Crosslin of the Steps Coalition in Biloxi, Mississippi, told the small crowd on the sidewalk in front of a hotel. Kenner police officers and city barricades kept them from straying onto the hotel’s lawn; four more officers stood in a line at the front of the hotel lobby.
Then they headed inside and formed a circle at the center of a meeting room where the federal agency in charge of oil and gas leases had set up stations for its officials to talk with people. After a couple of short speeches, they chanted “The Gulf is not for sale!” and clapped in time.
The meeting came less than a month after about 150 protesters disrupted an oil lease sale, chanting and waving signs. Janice Schneider, assistant secretary of the Interior Department, said afterward that the protest didn’t hold up the sale and everyone had the right to express themselves.
Supporters of offshore drilling were there, too.
Carroll Angelle, owner of Premier Offshore Catering Inc., said he’d come in response to an email asking him to attend. Premier had 160 employees in October and now has 30, he said.
“I have people that’s out of jobs, out of work,” he said, “They’re (demonstrators) going to come here and protest and say it’s our fault?”
Stricter rules aren’t the answer, he said: “The government has so many regulations right now it’s pathetic.”
