While Barack Obama was visiting Gulfport Mississippi and promising to do something and having no scheduled public appearances, Larry Everest and Tracy Stern, organizers for the coming Emergency Summit to Stop the Gulf Oil Catastrophe, demonstrated along his motorcade route, holding up banners reading: The People Must Act to Stop the Gulf Oil Catastrophe — www.gulfemergencysummit.org, and Gulf Oil Disaster — System Not Fit to Be Caretaker of the Earth.
As the call to the summit states: "The government and BP have proven unable and unwilling to stop the disaster, protect the Gulf, or even tell the truth….BP and the government – pursuing their own interests – have ignored people’s ideas, blocked public participation, suppressed and harassed scientists, and prevented people on the Gulf from taking initiative to keep oil away from shore."
This continues to be true despite Obama’s promises today.
Summit organizers are calling for "A broad, determined, and powerful peoples’ response" to "get the truth out, to protect the shores and oceans and deal with the ecological impacts, while exploring deeper causes and solutions."