On June 4th, residents from across the Gulf South are coming together for the Gulf Gathering for Climate Justice and Joy in Baton Rouge to celebrate as a form of resistance.
Join us for this free, family-friendly festival filled with food, music and fellow Gulf Southerners. We love our way of life here in the Gulf South, and we deserve a future where we can sustain it.
False promises have put the Gulf South under threat. For decades, wealthy corporations have extracted our resources, carved up our swamps and forests, and used our region as the nation’s dumping ground. They have done this while offering false promises of wealth and opportunity. Instead, they have funneled the profits into CEO bonuses and corporate tax havens, leaving us with a rapidly shrinking number of jobs in the oil and gas industry, toxic water and air, and no way to pay to clean up their mess.
After decades of climate denialism, oil and gas companies are now attempting to reposition themselves by offering a new set of false promises. They are trying to sell flawed and failed technologies like so-called “blue hydrogen,” carbon capture, wood pellets, and biomass as silver bullets to climate change without giving up their ability to profit off of our national dependency on burning nonrenewable fuels. But we see these false promises for what they are.
We don’t need false promises. We need real climate action. And if those of us who cherish and celebrate the Gulf South come together, we can win it.
On June 4th, residents from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida will converge in Baton Rouge to connect with one another, learn from leaders on the front lines of the fight for the future of the Gulf South and celebrate the culture of our region. This festival will feature live music, local food, art making and educational workshops. To protect everything we cherish about the Gulf South, we need to lead with joy and remind our leaders that a hopeful future is still possible.
That’s why we’re also inviting registrants to join us one day early to strategize how we’ll achieve this hopeful future for the Gulf South. On June 3rd, we’ll host a day of people’s movement assemblies to collaboratively develop hopeful alternatives to the false climate promises offered by the oil and gas industry.
