Flushing the toilet on life for 34 years and counting.

An Easier Way Out?

I am nearing the one-year anniversary of being illegally detained and physically threatened by uniformed police hired by Exxon for trying to document the Mayflower spill. I was convicted of "interfering with government operations" but the State abandoned the case when I appealed. Every attorney I have spoken with believes my first amendment rights were violated, but not enough for an Arkansas jury to award sufficient damages. They basically are telling me that an escalation to violence would justify a case. If the cops had beaten me really good, I could take them to the bank. This is a travesty on two levels. We are saying it OK for corporations to hire police to hide information from the public. Information regarding public health! And we are encouraging activists to make a scene instead of quietly demanding their rights. If we could act on this case, maybe the next time, Exxon will have to play by the rules.

Any advice is appreciated.

HELP!

The Exxon-Mobil Media Manipulation team has been very busy spinning last year’s Mayflower, Arkansas spill. They very much want newspapers writing about lost revenue and legal loopholes to re-open their sixty-five-year old Pegasus Pipeline rather than the non-response of the Arkansas Department of Health. Exxon and Arkansas State Government do not want us discussing the petrol-chemicals still leeching into the lakes and creeks as I write. They don’t want to talk about people still eating the fish from the lake. There should be signs everywhere warning them otherwise. They should have been erected the day of the spill. The entire town should have been evacuated. The local police should have been assisting people with leaving instead of accepting $35 per hour to keep journalists from showing the world the truth. Arkansas government protects profits of the world’s largest and most toxic corporations at the expense of citizen health. I would love to say that this is an oversight or perhaps a misunderstanding of socio-economics but my experience has led me to believe it is systematic. One might think they are trying to ensure hospitals meet their quotas of sickened citizens! The corporations and politicians have an understanding. The Exxons and Tysons and Cargills and Chesapeakes know that Arkansas does not have appropriate environmental protection infrastructure. If they did, there would be a legal framework by which these corporations might be held accountable for destroying a town and making its people sick. The cost would break them. And it should. The corporations purchase the local government through campaign donations and year-round legislative lobbying. Their charitable trusts and endowment funds purchase our higher learning institutions both public and private. They threaten television stations with lawsuits if they run critical adverstisements. They have purchased our societal silence across the board. So what do we do? The legal solution will not surface in Arkansas. Do you think the West Memphis Three would be out of prison without intervention from Hollywood and New York? Arkansas waterways, clean mountain air, and scenic landscapes are jewels of this country. People in Atlanta, El Paso and Las Vegas know how precious our water is. I often hear the line that our Governor is “one of the most popular” in the country. Can someone show me the hard data on that? His lack of respect and protection for our resources reminds me of Chevy Chase in 3 Amigos. What has any politician done to protect Arkansas from Exxon-Mobil? Attorney General Dustin McDaniel spoke out early but no public official has demanded that Exxon do the right thing. I have heard that the right thing would cost upwards of $500 Million. Governor Beebe should have been banging on the table for federal intervention like Washington State’s Governor did when they had nuclear troubles.

So now Exxon wants to talk about re-starting a social-security-aged pipeline that crisscrosses the drinking supply of nearly half a million people? And they begin the media assault in the week after a major chemical spill directly into a river in West Virginia? Are they hoping that Arkansans will think the spill in West Virginia wasn’t so bad? That we are lucky to have Exxon doing business here? That they somehow deserve to open this rusty old pipeline? That we do not know that they covered up how bad the Mayflower Spill is?  Well here’s to hoping that people from out-of-state respect Arkansas' natural resources and citizen quality of life more than the people who live here do. If no one in Arkansas is going to ask for outside assistance, I will: Help!

A League of Their Own

My football coach in college was very matter of fact. After a loss he had a habit of coming in on Monday morning and singling out a player after watching the film of the game.

"Son, this is no discredit to you, but you do not have what it takes to be a college football player," he would calmly say. He would then go on to blame himself for not recognizing this earlier. Sometimes he would tell the player to go clean out his dorm room. Pack his stuff and go back to his hometown. After a while, coach would calm down and a remediation plan would be set forth to help the kid stay on the team.

No one in Arkansas government has what it takes to be a politician in the modern world. We live in a beautiful, resource-rich wonderland and we have been infiltrated by pirates. Our "leaders" are line items on a corporate check list. They are generally lawyers with an old school corporate "growth" economic bent. They protect money, not resources.

This has to end. It is time to replace cleverness with wisdom. We should not consider anyone who does not have climate change and transitioning from fossil fuels at the top of their list. Instead, the two major parties are so infiltrated with petrol-chemical dollars that they dare not offer a candidate with the good sense to understand and act upon scientific data. We need people who can give us the hard news and a real plan for facing it.

We have an entire roster of players who do not have what it takes. That is the way this league was designed. Ridiculing and blaming politicians has become an expectation. It does not have to be like this.

It is time for a new league, with all new players.

Black Glass Balls

Its pretty simple why I am blackballed by Arkansas politicians. Its the same reason I was blackballed by fraternities in college. I believe in TRANSPARENCY. Especially in government. Here, I believe in ABSOLUTE TRANSPARENCY. In Arkansas government I believe in SUPER-DUPER-DOUBLE TRANSPARENCY. Unfortunately, the World Wrestling Foundation is more transparent than Arkansas government. If your resume doesn't include a strong streak of corporate whoredom, you don't stand a chance. The kind of people who become Arkansas politicians are best described by Arkansas Senior Senator Mark Pryor in this video. The kind of people who become Arkansas politicians hire people like Dr. William Mason, an elderly pulmonologist, to head the Emergency and Disaster Response Unit of the Arkansas Department of Health. After he completely dropped the ball and was publicly and professionally humiliated by people with one-tenth of his education, he was not fired. He was not demoted. He received no public review. He went back to work the next day. That's what you do in Arkansas. You show up. You smile. You say everything is great. You say how thankful you are. You tell them you will see them in church on Sunday. You allow the poisoning of their children, In the summer of 2013 I showed this video, proving Exxon was lying about clean-up to Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe's Health Department Adviser, Philip Adams. He looked like he had seen a ghost. Although it was obvious that this was the first time he had seen the video I asked and he confirmed that it was indeed. I asked him would he show it to the Governor. There was a long pause as he perhaps processed the video content or maybe the consequences of sharing it with his boss. I left thinking he might. A week later, after receiving no confirmation from Mr. Adams, I had a chance meeting with First Lady Ginger Beebe and told her that I had shared an important video relevant to the Mayflower Spill with Mr. Adams and asked would she mention it to the Governor. I also mentioned that Mr. Adams might have some trepidation about showing it to him. She confirmed that she knew Mr. Adams and assured me she would make mention. I attempted to communicate with Mr. Adams and the Governor via phone, email and in person often after sharing the video. Several months later Mr. Adams confirmed that the Governor had seen it. I ran into Mr. Adams again at the State Capitol again in early Fall 2013. It was only a few days after watching Dr. Mason embarrass himself and our state in Conway. I told him flat out: This guy needs to lose his job. Maybe I am just the wrong person to be giving this advice to our leaders? I was trained as a journalist but no one seems interested in flying their trustworthy banner atop my writing. Do you think local editors would give me such freedom? If I don't ask the hard questions, who will? Can we even ask hard questions when our leaders are so slow to witness hard evidence? Who among us is up to the task? Can we afford transparency? Will we recognize it? Will they recognize our demands? Are we ready? Discuss.

Lake Mona Lisa

Political defenders of Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe often pass the baton to the Attorney General's office when asked about Exxon's 2013 petrol-chemical spill in the town of Mayflower. They ignore demands for leadership today with hopes for court victories tomorrow. Imagine Lake Conway as the Mona Lisa. Exxon, as a visitor to the building that displays the Mona Lisa has cut the velvet ropes, smashed the protective covering and has slowly torn the painting into tiny pieces for ten agonizing months. Think of Governor Beebe as the head of security at the museum. We, the outraged patrons, are beside ourselves. We are watching the iconic face of the Mona Lisa slowly become unrecognizable. Surely any form of intervention is better than none? The Governor first asks that we step into a side room so that we don't bother the perpetrator with his "work." He then explains that he has called in a lesser authority to monitor the work with an assurance that the Attorney General will do a great job. What he does not say is that Attorney General McDaniel won't even be in office when Exxon comes to trial.

He also doesn't give any updates as to what is actually going on with the painting. Are they still tearing it to shreds? Are they putting it back together now? When can we look at it? Will it be the same? Those of us who know the Exxon Spill to be the greatest environmental catastrophe in Arkansas history know that looks can be deceiving. Many of us pleaded with the Governor to take a stand against hydro-fracking for shale gas. He thanked us with a weak severance tax and legislation mandating the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission be ruled by the industry it purports to govern.

During Governor Beebe's re-election campaign in 2010, Spokesperson Matt DeCample told me in a rare moment of candor that the key to  re-election is public perception. He made sure to distinguish between perception and reality. He told me the primary role of the Governor in a four-year-term is to make sure he is re-elected to another 4-year term.

I quietly disagreed.

Public Relations has trumped science and reason for years in the election of United States politicians. DeCample, a former KATV channel 7 news anchor makes enormous decisions on behalf of Governor Beebe. Sometimes I wonder if Beebe even hears about the things his spokesperson says he said! A month after the Mayflower spill, in May of 2013 I was at an Estate Sale in North Little Rock when a blocked number rang up my cell phone. I was shocked that it was Governor Mike Beebe. He asked my opinion about what was going on in Mayflower. He sounded sincere. I believe he was. I told him it was scripted. I told him Exxon was doing the same thing they did in Kalamazoo, Michigan three years ago. He did not disagree. A few days later I was forwarded an internal memo where DeCample advised the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to endorse Exxon's talking points in a press release. These were critical moments when Arkansas had access to an army of global scientists who had seen Exxon run its game again and again. I talked to spill clean-up gurus from around the world who assured me that Exxon was cutting corners on the clean-up. I saw demonstrations of more appropriate technologies. I wondered why no one was forcing Exxon's hand. They let me know that Mona Lisa's smile would never be the same. There was no way this spill could be cleaned for less than $500 Million. I was told that this was worse than the Exxon Valdez. If Exxon were made to clean up correctly in Arkansas, they would be forced to clean up their other messes too.

They told me that Governor Beebe and Matt DeCample and especially Exxon will soon begin telling us all that we are looking at our Mona Lisa from the wrong angle. Her smile is the same. We just see her in the wrong light. How does she look to you?

The United States of Exxon.

On March 29, 2013 Exxon-Mobil’s Pegasus Pipeline ruptured in a neighborhood in Mayflower, Arkansas. Within a few days of the spill I heard reports that Exxon was manipulating the media and that a no-fly zone had been established over the area.

At the time, I was on a self-imposed hiatus from years of local activism. My most recent work involved informing local politicians and administrators about the dangers of hydraulic fracturing. Then, my friend showed me this video of what was really going on in Mayflower. After seeing the video, I knew that the spill was more serious than reported. My friend and I made plans to visit the site the next day.

On April 17th, we visited the site. We saw lots of activity but there were no checkpoints. There were no warning signs or trespassing notices. No established jurisdiction. There was only a red ribbon that was up in some places and on the ground in others that said “danger.” We drove into a neighborhood and parked. We then walked into an area where we saw two workers without any protective gear. We asked if they minded us filming and they replied, “No, as long as you don’t film us.” This video was live streamed soon after our chat.

After I finished streaming the video, we were confronted by two men wearing Exxon hard hats who told us we were in an unauthorized location and asked us had we “checked in?”   I advised them that if we were unauthorized, we had no way of knowing because there was no signage stating who was in charge or where we should or should not go. I told them that I had a lot of questions as I lived downstream. They told us that we needed to leave and that they had advised security to help us find our way out. They asked us had we seen the sign that read “danger.?” I said yes, but I wanted to know “dangerous according to who?” According to Exxon? According to the EPA? According to the Health Department? The police? They would not answer my question.

After we walked through the woods back to our car, we met a woman who told us that she owned the property along the lake to our left. She took us on a short tour which I live streamed here. After we left, we saw two armed, uniformed policemen approaching us. I noticed after we got closer that one was from Faulkner County and the other was from Greenbrier. This is the Live Stream Video of what happened next.

Note that the policemen on the left says “You ARE going to talk to me.” Its hard to see in the video, but the officer on the right unsheathed a taser. We were illegally detained and threatened with assault for attempting to document what had actually happened here.

After we turned off our cameras (devices!) the police calmed down and followed us to our car without charging us. We got into the car and I noticed several other police cars pulling up behind us. I saw several uniformed policemen walking toward us. The two officers who had originally detained us came back up to the passenger window and the larger one asked me my name. I turned to my friend and said, “I ought to tell him Joe Blow.” At this point, another officer I had yet to meet rushed up into the driver side window and yelled “You better get your license out right now or your going to wish you did!” I immediately complied.

The officers huddled up at the back of the car and conferred for several minutes. They returned with a ticket for me that charged “illegal parking” and “interfering with government operations.”

Later, the illegal parking charge was dropped but I was convicted of the other charge in the local Mayflower Court. I appealed, for the non-refundable sum of $160, and the State of Arkansas dropped the charges before a scheduled jury trial in Faulkner County in early December 2013.

After I first received the charges I was outraged. I was also astonished that there was only a small blurb on the Arkansas Times blog about what happened. Nothing in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette or any TV or radio. I was the first Independent candidate for Arkansas Governor on the ballot in over 60 years, a member of one of the most popular music groups in recent state history and a prominent local merchant and activist. Not a peep from the local “media” about my plight. This seemed like news to me.

So… what to do?

It was really eating at me how I was treated personally, but I was also outraged at what was still going on in Mayflower. And what potentially might float its way down to my home in Little Rock. And, I was beginning to receive information about how Exxon had run the exact same playbook in Michigan. Then, I met the people behind Opflex Solutions who were offering to help clean up the spill for free but were ticketed by Arkansas Game and Fish.  I learned about the complexities of cleaning up this type of oil. Channel 7 finally did an in-depth story about the dangers of the spill but it never made it onto their website. We made sure that the video found its way to the web.

Another friend and I went to Mayflower to warn residents of dangers that the Arkansas Department of Health would not.

Then, I saw this video made by activists who went in a few days before us. Then I saw this video that proved Exxon was lying about the type of crude and the “clean-up.” I shared these videos with top advisers to the Governor and the Attorney General. Then, this internal memo confirming Governor Beebe and ADEQ were letting Exxon call the shots made its way to my desk. I was flummoxed.

My daughter was going on a two-week school trip to Europe in May 2013 and I made a last-minute decision to be on the same continent with her after her cousin decided not to go. I didn’t want to be the hovering Dad, so I took my guitar along and stayed in inexpensive hostels and sometimes crashed on the sofas of friends old and new. I was getting into the live streaming video thing and I was also still totally eaten up with the Mayflower incident and how easily the media had been manipulated. How could they let the largest environmental disaster in Arkansas history go so under covered?

I had written a song about my dealings with Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe and the natural gas industry and decided one day to live stream it in Liverpool, England. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was to be my new strategy for keeping this story alive.

After I got back from Europe I was absolutely obsessed with clearing the charges against me and seeing to it that Exxon-Mobil would be held accountable for their actions. I continued to dialogue with the people from Opflex Solutions and other appropriate spill clean-up technologies. I learned very much about how Exxon had been rewarding themselves for “cleaning up” their own messes for years.

I also continued writing songs about the incident and the toll that it was taking on my personal life. I wrote posts on Facebook assailing the people of Arkansas for not being more active in this situation. I was incredulous that more people didn’t seem to feel the same outrage as me about the situation.

Then, I decided to hit the road again to try and keep this thread alive and hopefully put some pressure on Exxon. I kept the live-stream video idea going first in Dallas, home of Exxon-Mobil. Next, I went to the Texas Railroad Commission in Austin in an attempt to discuss tar sands oil shipments via trains. When they wouldn’t talk, I kept singing.

Now I was starting to wake a few people up. Maybe they were hoping I would improve my guitar playing and singing? I stopped by where Buddy Holly recorded his hits in New Mexico. I sang at the grave of Billy the Kid. I played the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.

I developed a new wrinkle by visiting places that would enable us to someday live without petroleum. I went to the Earthships in Taos. (Learn more about them here.) I visited sustainability stores in Flagstaff, Arizona.

I began to see that the national media had also under reported the Mayflower spill. No one seemed to touch stories that might interrupt their flow of advertising revenue. I was also starting to notice that my Facebook posts were beginning to be censored.

I went to Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park, California to complain. While I was in the neighborhood, I also went to Google and Apple. I went to a Solar Village in Mendocino County. I made a video with the C.E.O. of my favorite Bicycle Company in Oakland. While I was in Oakland, I played at Boots Riley’s Mom’s Food Co-Op.

I played on Venice Beach. I played Hollywood. I played in a Redwood Tree.

My friends thought I was crazy. They were right. Exxon-Mobil was getting away with murder, and nobody was talking.  I kept going. I actually thought I could make a difference by showing up.

I made a literary twist by playing the Steinbeck Center. I played at Monterey on Cannery Row. I played in the Mojave Desert. I played in Winters, California. I played Hearst Castle.

I continued North to Oregon playing the Black Forest Kitchen, an Irish Pub in Eugene, on the beach with some Canadian Hippy Chicks and for Babe the Blue Ox and Paul Bunyan.

Then I went home. But nothing had changed. In fact, people seemed even less interested.

So I went East to Memphis and Nashville and Louisville. To the Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina and record stores in Charlottesville, Virginia.

And then on to Washington D.C. where I followed up on my report regarding Arkansas political corruption and negligence with the F.B.I. To the ultra-sustainable Polyface Farms outside D.C. To the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

Then I went up to New York City where I played a Manhattan Deli, The Brooklyn Bridge, the Prospect Park Band Shell and finally played my song “Mayflower” in Times Square. When I posted the video on Facebook I remarked that the people in Times Square were paying more attention to me than Arkansas Governor Beebe was to Mayflower.

I didn’t begin this journey without first exhausting more practical avenues. I interviewed not one, but two M.I.T. professors. I talked with the Governor and his staff on the phone and in person. I interviewed the Department of Health. I interviewed the EPA.  We were even led around my this paid actor supplied by Exxon-Mobil who gave us a fake name, title and phone number.

Now I am back in Little Rock. Most people here do not want to talk about Mayflower. They want to pretend like the spill was cleaned up correctly. They want to pretend like the 65 year-old Pegasus Pipeline that crosses many drinking water reservoirs is getting better with age. They want to believe that I am a crazy man. A trouble maker.

Exxon is beating us to death with our own addiction and we act like it isn’t happening. I am at my wit’s end. I believe that my, your, OUR civil rights have been violated. I cannot afford to let this go.

Neither can you.

Please share this post and contact me if you can help bring Exxon to justice.

Rod Bryan [email protected]

Polyface Farm with the Pigs

At Polyface Farms in Virginia

Brooklyn, NY

Times Square NYC

On Brooklyn Bridge

Mostly Plastic in a Creek. (Barnardsville, NC)

Rod Plays FBI

Asheville Record Store #2.

Asheville Record Store #1.

Rod Sings "Former Lover" at the Biltmore in Asheville, NC