A Crisis of Democracy: Real Solutions to the BP Oil Spill

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For Gulf residents, the BP oil spill has made the problem of unchecked corporate power painfully clear. Exxon Valdez survivor Riki Ott on why this may be the moment to overcome our political divides and take back our democracy.

by Brooke Jarvis

When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, Riki Ott was living nearby in the small town of Cordova, working as a commercial salmon “fisherma’am”—one who also had her PhD in marine toxicology with a specialization in oil pollution. She had a unique front row seat to the destruction of a town, an ecosystem, and a way of life—and the losing fight to save them.

Twenty-one years after the Exxon Valdez, the company has only paid out a tenth of the initial assessment of punitive damages. Ott recognizes many of Exxon’s tactics in BP’s recent behavior: underestimating the size of the spill, downplaying and covering up damages, seeking to cap liability early on. She’s been on the ground in the Gulf since early summer, sharing her strategies for grassroots resistance and recovery. But the real crisis, she says, is bigger than this, or any, oil spill. It’s a crisis of democracy: Corporations have become so powerful that our political system isn’t able to rein them in enough to keep such disasters from happening or to hold them accountable when they do.

For Ott, the realization that corporate power was a fundamental threat came as she watched Exxon continue to profit while she and her neighbors lost their livelihoods, with few options for recourse. Now, in the Gulf, she’s seeing a similar awakening from residents working across political barriers to fight for justice from BP.

Ott believes this could be a breakthrough moment for reclaiming power from corporations. She spoke to YES! Magazine web editor Brooke Jarvis about the best strategies for using—and finally fixing—our democracy.

Read the interview at Yes