These days, Erin Brockovich-Ellis isn’t spending her time tottering around contaminated neighborhoods in cha-cha heels gathering samples. But even though she has staffers now performing the nuts-and-bolts field work immortalized in the Steven Soderbergh film that bears her name, she still gets mad as hell when she hears about industries dumping toxic agents in the air, water and earth of their surrounding communities.

“They get away with practically murder,” says Brockovich-Ellis, talking on her cell phone from a noisy California restaurant. “Big corporate America has the money, the technology and the manpower to act responsibly, so I’d invite them to move their damn families out and live in the contaminated hellholes some of these people live in, and see how they feel.”

Brockovich-Ellis — who added the latter surname in 1999 when she married her third husband, actor Eric Ellis — really isn’t even in the office that much these days. She’s on the lecture/interview circuit, speaking to audiences who became intrigued by the struggling single mom-turned-environmental barnstormer last year, after Julia Roberts portrayed her in an Academy Award-winning star turn.

“I’ve been pleased as punch to speak to groups wherever I can to create awareness,” says Brockovich-Ellis, the featured speaker April 19 at Loyola University’s Fr. Carter Lecture Series. Her appearances are part motivational, part educational, and part off-the-cuff question-and-answer sessions that she admits is her favorite part of the evening.

The movie Erin Brockovich traces the unconventional odyssey of a file clerk who discovers that a huge public utility has contaminated the town of Hinkley, Calif. with toxic chromium-6, and leads a legal charge culminating in one of the largest class-action lawsuits ever. It garnered Brockovich-Ellis an overwhelming amount of attention, and alerted her and her mentor, attorney Ed Masry, to the staggering number of similar cases out there.

“Since the movie was released, we had 100,000 hits on our [law firm’s] Web site within 30 days,” Brockovich-Ellis says. “We still channel hundreds of phone calls, emails and letters of potential toxic sites globally and it was an eye-opener for all of us, how prevalent it is. … Big business is getting away with a lot, and you have to be consistent. Stay in their face. Get political people behind you.”

Brockovich-Ellis, now director of environmental research at the Masry & Vititoe law firm, repeats the same litany to anyone seeking advice on how to fight a corporate polluter: Education, education, education. “Protect yourself. Become knowledgeable about the facility around you. Don’t be afraid to go into local agencies and find out — we have the Public Records Act. Don’t be afraid to talk to your neighbors,” she says.

When asked about Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” — the stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans where a large number of chemical plants and oil refineries are located, and where several instances of cancer clusters have been documented — Brockovich-Ellis admits she isn’t aware of the particulars in Louisiana. Her general advice to “Cancer Alley” residents is to mobilize and start gathering facts.

“If Hinkley, California, for example, had only two people come forward, I don’t think you ever would have seen a case come to fruition like it did,” she says. “If you get together in masses, get everybody to come forward, it can make a difference.”

If residents are thinking about suing, it can get tricky, Brockovich-Ellis warns. “Causation is the number one thing that the corporation will try and succeed in beating you up on. You have to show causation between the chemical and your illness,” she says.

“When I’m working on a case, the most valuable information I have is, what is the chemical, what are the concentrations of the chemical, what’s your exposure factor, and are there relatable illnesses or diseases that can be correlated to this chemical? … Is it in the air, is it in the water, do you have an ingestion factor, dermal absorption, or inhalation?” she says. “Educate yourself. Get your facts. It is the best weapon.”

Part of the problem, Brockovich-Ellis says, is that “more often than not, state and federal agencies are underfunded and understaffed. They don’t have the proper personnel” to properly monitor large industries, she says. “The Hinkley case, for example, in all of the years that [Pacific Gas & Electric] got away with poisoning people, not once were they ever fined.”

In recent months, Brockovich-Ellis has received a fair amount of criticism from business supporters. She doesn’t care. “I don’t want to destroy corporate America,” she says, “but I think corporate America needs to be held responsible and act responsibly. When you’re producing products that can harm people, I don’t think that’s asking too much.” .


Erin Brockovich-Ellis will speak at Loyola University’s Roussel Performance Hall at 7:30 p.m. Thursday (April 19). The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. For more information call 861-5888.

Olympia Gold
by Geraldine Wyckoff

Family, friends, fans and fellow musicians mourned the loss and celebrated the lives of two members of the Olympia Brass Band at jazz funerals held on consecutive April days. The passing of trumpeter and bandleader Milton Batiste on March 27 and bass drummer Nowell “Papa” Glass on April 3 are indeed great losses, yet the two musicians have left behind a legacy that was reflected throughout their respective funeral services.

  A testament to Milton Batiste’s gifts to the New Orleans music community flowed from the trumpet of Kenneth Terry as he lifted his horn in salute to his mentor. As part of an ensemble that played “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” as mourners filed out of Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home on Friday, April 6, Terry’s bold and brassy style echoed Batiste’s aggressive approach to the instrument. At first, it was a bit eerie hearing Terry sounding so much like Batiste. A moment later, it brought a smile with the realization that the musical torch remains aglow.

  As a teenager, Terry, who even goes by the nickname “Milton” to some, became a member of Batiste’s Junior Olympia. “The first lesson from him was to stick with the traditional music,” says Terry, who as a member of the New Birth Brass Band is now adept at both old and new styles. “We would go to Milton’s house and sit in the back in the shade and we’d always have a talk session first. We’d listen to the music first to understand who wrote a song, what a song meant … [and] then get our horns out.”

  The traditions that meant so much to Batiste were represented in the decorum of his jazz funeral. Dressed strictly in traditional black and white, some 30-plus musicians accompanied the horse-drawn hearse from the funeral home on North Claiborne Avenue and St. Philips Street to Corpus Christi Church on St. Bernard Avenue, playing old hymns like “I’ll Fly Away” and “Gloryland” while six grand marshals strutted solemnly. Even with six tubas in its ranks, the band grew quiet as it neared the oak-shaded sidewalk that leads up to the church. Acting as pallbearers, members of the Black Men of Labor Social Aid & Pleasure Club dressed in striking white dashikis and carried out their duties with great dignity.

  One couldn’t help thinking of the many such occasions when it was Batiste’s horn that blew in honor of a fellow musician. Batiste, 66, maintained a presence in the New Orleans music scene for over 45 years, both on the streets and in clubs such as Preservation Hall. A member of Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band since 1959 and its leader since 1980, he began handling the band’s business affairs when saxophonist/leader Harold Dejan’s health began to fail. He and Dejan, who put the Olympia Brass Band back on the streets in 1956, also founded the independent record label Dubat.

  “Besides being a good trumpet player, Milton was a spontaneous guy and a good entertainer,” says saxophonist Ernest “Doc” Watson, who’s played with Olympia for 20 years. “And I think he brought singing to the streets. Most brass bands would just play. He started singing songs like ‘It Ain’t My Fault’ and ‘I Got a Woman’ and get the crowd doin’ it. Now, at most of the street parades, they (members of the band) start singing and the whole second line is their choir. That was shown at his funeral.”

  Voices did ring out on “Down By the Riverside,” when, following the church service, the second line headed up North Claiborne Avenue. It wasn’t until the body was “let go” that the first secular piece, “Second Line (Joe Avery’s Blues),” kicked in.

“We lost a mountain of music,” said historian/disc jockey/journalist Tex Stephens the next morning. Stephens was standing outside the St. James Methodist Church where services for Papa Glass took place. For more than 37 years, Glass beat the bass drum with the Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band, gaining fans around the world with his solid rhythm and warm smile.

  Many of the same people sang the same hymns in honor of Papa Glass as they had the previous day for Batiste. In the church, just behind a beautiful floral spray in the shape of a second-line umbrella, a baritonist boomed out “Precious Lord.” Members of the Black Men of Labor were again the dignified pallbearers, and again a large contingent of musicians played hymns. On this day, Batiste’s son, “King” Richard Matthews, the Olympia Brass Band’s grand marshal, took his place in front of the second line.

  “Papa’s greatest gift to this band was being Papa,” says Doc Watson, echoing everyone’s affection for this kind man. “Papa could have you laughing and in stitches all day long. The only time it was quiet was when he was asleep. He kept the young kids (in the band) laughing, he kept them in line.”

  Young musicians blew their horns next to veterans in the brass band processions honoring both Batiste and Glass. The two respected and treasured men left us with the assurance that the Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band’s ranks will remain filled and the New Orleans brass band tradition will continue.