Oppose Schwarzenegger's Corporate Ocean 'Protection' Racket

Oppose Schwarzenegger's Corporate Ocean 'Protection' Racket

by Dan Bacher

A "protection racket" is when a tough-looking thug from the Mafia or a gang visits your home or business and asks for a contribution to insure and protect you from injury and harm. If you are really naive, you may ask, "Protect me from what?"

Like a Mafia "enforcer," Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, a process overseen by corrupt oil industry, marina development, real estate and other corporate interests, is coming to Fort Bragg on July 21.

MLPA officials, chosen by Schwarzenegger to greenwash his abysmal environmental legacy, are asking North Coast fishermen, Indian Tribal members, divers, seaweed harvesters and coastal communities to make “contributions” in the interest of protecting us from unspecified damage and injuries to our coast.

Although proponents of the MLPA fiasco claim that these closures are based on "science," the current North Coast marine reserve proposals have no basis in science.

None of the proposals under consideration for so-called Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) on the North Coast provide any significant increase in biomass or contribution to the sustainable yield of our local fisheries, according to the MLPA Science Advisory Team's evaluations of these proposals.

Meanwhile, all of the proposals have very significant social and economic impacts to the local economy - up to 16% economic loss to local fisheries, according to the same evaluations. According to the best available science, the conservation benefits of MPAs are highly uncertain, while the economic impacts are real and documentable.

So what are these fake marine reserves "protecting us" from?

In reality the marine reserves have nothing to do with real marine protection, since the original Marine Life Protection Act, a law signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999, has been eviscerated under the Schwarzenegger administration. The MLPA Initiative under Schwarzenegger has taken water pollution, deep water oil drilling, wave energy projects, habitat destruction and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing off the table.

The MLPA is an absurd parody of real protection, since it would do nothing to stop deep water oil drilling off the California. In fact, many believe that it would actually pave the way to offshore drilling.

It is no coincidence that Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA, is the chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast and now sits on the task force for the North Coast. In spite of the unprecedented environmental and human catastrophe that has resulted from the BP Oil Gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, Reheis-Boyd has repeatedly called for new offshore oil drilling off the California coast.

Are you sick and tired of corporate operatives and government bureacrats coming into town, like Mafia enforcers, to tell fishermen, Indian Tribal members and real environmentalists about how they must support corporate-backed plans to “protect the ocean?

Are you sick and tired of a private corporation, the shadowy Resources Legacy Foundation, funding this elitist and racist process that openly violates numerous state, federal and international laws, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People?

Then come to a rally to protest MLPA ocean privatization and to support sustainable fisheries on Wednesday, July 21, noon at the southeast corner of Oak and Main Streets in Fort Bragg, CA. Please wear a blue shirt to show your opposition to the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force's greenwashing program.

The purpose of the rally is to increase the visibility of the Coastal Fishing communities, Businesses, Indian Tribes and Tribal Communities that are being impacted by MLPA regulations, and make the public aware of the issue. Please respect local residents - we need their support! Do not block traffic or public thoroughfares. Bring a lunch and something to share if possible. Bring signs, banners and flags.

The MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF) meeting is being held in Fort Bragg on July 21 and 22. They are scheduled to break for lunch at 12:45, so rally participants will proceed to that location a little after 1 p.m.

Parking: From Main St., turn west on Oak St. and use the parking lot. There is an empty lot at the SE corner of Oak & Main, where rally participants will assemble. There is plenty of room for banners, signs and tables.

You can provide public testimony to the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force, at the C. V. Starr Aquatic Center, 300 South Lincoln St., during the open public comment period at 4 p.m.

I also urge you to watch the superb video, produced by Stormy Staats of the Klamath-Salmon Media Collective, that covers the protest by the Coastal Justice Coalition at the MLPA meeting in Eureka on June 29. Members of the Yurok, Hoopa Valley, Karuk, Tolowa, Cahto and other Tribes interrupted an MLPA Science Advisory Team meeting with chants of, "MLPA, Taking Tribal Rights Away!"

You can view the video on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/user/klamathmedia#p/a/u/0/Qcox-tHsJN.

You can expect similar testimony to be provided at the July 21 Blue Ribbon Task Force meeting. Agendas for these meetings are available at: http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/meetings_n.asp.

For more information about the Fort Bragg demonstration, call Mike Carpenter, (707) 937-4362. For more information about the Coastal Justice Coalition, call Frankie Joe Myers, (707) 951-5052.