By Jeff Dute
Tony Pope said when news reports of the potential impacts from oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon well made his 14-year-old daughter Shelby Pope cry, he decided the best way to tell people how they felt was through public protest.
Tony Pope said he spent many days on the island as a child and introduced Shelby to the its beauty when she was a baby. "The writing’s been on the wall for 35 years," Tony Pope said. "The wealthy oil executives paid the wealthy politicians to look the other way and look where that’s got us now. It’s not right that we couldn’t find an alternative source of energy during that whole time.
"When my daughter cried while watching this on the television, I knew we had to be heard."
"I’ve been coming here my whole life and now it’s going to be ruined," Shelby Pope said. "At first, when it was on fire, I didn’t know what was really happening, but then I saw what was already happening to the birds and I broke down."
Tony Pope said they weren’t just "sign-toters" and would be volunteering in any way they could to help with clean-up efforts.
"That’s going to be everyone’s responsibility now," he said.
This article originally appeared on the blog Al.com.
Idiots.