{"id":19507,"date":"2016-04-04T12:12:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T17:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19507"},"modified":"2016-04-04T12:12:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T17:12:24","slug":"katrina-climate-justice-and-fish-dinners-social-justice-lawyer-colette-pichon-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19507","title":{"rendered":"Katrina, Climate Justice and Fish Dinners: Social Justice Lawyer Colette Pichon Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2016\/04\/04\/katrina-climate-justice-and-fish-dinners-social-justice-lawyer-colette-pichon-battle\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Katrina, Climate Justice and Fish Dinners: Social Justice Lawyer Colette Pichon Battle<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"post_meta\">Colette Pichon Battle gave up a great job working as a corporate immigration lawyer in Washington DC to live in a tent in front of her flooded family home 50 miles from downtown New Orleans. She is now a much honored director of a small but powerful non-profit\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gcclp.org\/about-us\/gcclp-staff\">climate justice human rights firm<\/a>\u00a0advocating all along the Gulf Coast. Why the big change in her life? Katrina, climate justice and fish dinners.<\/p>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p><strong>Bayou Vincent<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pichon Battle\u2019s extensive South Louisiana\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lacreole.org\/\">French Creole<\/a>\u00a0Catholic family live in Slidell along Bayou Vincent, which connects directly to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lake_Pontchartrain\">Lake Ponchartrain<\/a>.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lacreole.org\/research\/resources-history\/\">Free people of color<\/a>, on her mother\u2019s side, who have lived there since the 1700s they can trace their roots back to France. Many in the community still spoke French when she was growing up. Their roots include people from the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.choctawnation.com\/\">Chocktaw Nation<\/a>. In the past they farmed tiny plots, fished and trapped, and later became master carpenters and craftsmen. Her grandfather actually built the home she and her mom grew up in.<\/p>\n<p>Pichon Battle always knew she was going to become a lawyer. \u201cI was known as Coco in my family and Coco was always going to be a lawyer,\u201d she said. A family reunion questionnaire asked 8 year old Coco what she wanted to be when she grew up and her response was a lawyer! Her interest in becoming a lawyer was fueled by reading about\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biography.com\/people\/thurgood-marshall-9400241#early-life\">Thurgood Marshall<\/a>\u00a0and watching\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/jezebel.com\/let-us-celebrate-clair-huxtable-feminist-icon-and-the-1637004240\">Clair Huxtable<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Mom was her biggest inspiration. Mom attended segregated public schools before graduating from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.suno.edu\/\">Southern University at New Orleans<\/a>. Mom was one of the first African Americans in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.peacecorps.gov\/\">Peace Corps<\/a>\u00a0where she spent years teaching in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.peacecorps.gov\/volunteer\/learn\/wherepc\/northafr\/morocco\/\">Morocco<\/a>. As a French teacher, she took students to France nearly every year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Katrina, Climate Justice and Fish Dinners: Social Justice Lawyer Colette Pichon Battle Colette Pichon Battle gave up a great job working as a corporate immigration lawyer in Washington DC to live in a tent in front of her flooded family home 50 miles from downtown New Orleans. She is now a much honored director of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13282,1218,13283,7350,8478],"class_list":["post-19507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-bill-quigley","tag-climate-justice","tag-colette-pichon-battle","tag-conterpunch","tag-katrina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19508,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19507\/revisions\/19508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}