{"id":17600,"date":"2020-09-16T04:54:56","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T01:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/watch-gcaptains-impassioned-call-for-change\/17600\/"},"modified":"2020-09-16T04:54:56","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T01:54:56","slug":"watch-gcaptains-impassioned-call-for-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/watch-gcaptains-impassioned-call-for-change\/17600\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch: gCaptain\u2019s Impassioned Call For Change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s time, to be honest. <a href=\"https:\/\/forum.gcaptain.com\/t\/impassioned-call-for-saving-the-us-merchant-marine\/56733?u=john\">gCaptain is overwhelmed and the industry is breaking<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>And here\u2019s why\u2026<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Right now gCaptain is working on stories about<br \/>\nThe 2 million barrel VLCC New Diamon on fire and drifting.<br \/>\n150,000 Mauritians protesting the Wakashio bunker spill.<br \/>\na cable layer that\u2019s currently in flames<br \/>\nThe Waymon L Boyd dredge explosion in corpus,<br \/>\nThe delayed salvage of the Golden Ray.<br \/>\nThe Stellar Banner grounding investigation.<br \/>\nThe Hoegh Xiamen explosion in Jacksonville.<br \/>\nThe Alanis and Florence Spirit collision in Canada<br \/>\nMultiple hurricanes bearing down on the GOM<br \/>\nChina challenging freedom of navigation<br \/>\nA total collapse of the cruise industry<br \/>\nMass layoffs offshore and at big companies like ABS<br \/>\nMultiple US shipping companies near collapse<br \/>\nThe Bonhomme Richard Fire.<br \/>\nThe navy responders refusing harbor tug help.<br \/>\nWhy the USS Zumwalt cost $8B and doesn\u2019t work.<br \/>\nWhy the Bonhomme Richard $8B vessel is not protected by a single fireboat.<br \/>\nThe USS Fitzgerald NTSB report finally being released 3 years later.<br \/>\nWhy the Navy is continuing its gangway up order after suicides.<br \/>\nThe abysmal state of the MARAD and sealift fleets.<br \/>\nThe fires aboard our only 2 icebreakers.<br \/>\nAn Explosion in Beirut<br \/>\nSexual assault allegations at numerous maritime academies.<br \/>\nDiversity and inclusion initiatives.<br \/>\nHundreds of thousands or mariners stuck at sea,<br \/>\nand a IMO \u2018expert\u2019 who\u2019s telling people that carcinogens are \u201cnature\u2019s skin cream\u2019.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>And that does not include what I haven\u2019t mentioned publically.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>The list just goes on, and on.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>But the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back and caused me to film this video today was a message from a friend about a death aboard a Pacific Drilling Rig in the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>For the first time in gCaptain history, I told someone that a single life does not matter. That gCaptain can not investigate that death that we don\u2019t have time.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>sigh<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>What has stuck most in my mind since COVID started is the one man in our industry who has fought harder than the rest.\u00a0Captain Robert Cook, president of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.obmg.org\">Organization of Black Maritime College Graduates<\/a> who has been fighting for the advancement of his members for 27 years.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>27 Years.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>27 years and countless young, bright, talented OBMG cadets have graduated, entered our industry and have risen to the ranks of Captain, Chief Engineer, and Pilot. Not bad. I\u2019m a captain myself, and proud of that achievement. But look around the board rooms and smoke-filled rooms of our industry\u2019s elite and you will see his job is not finished.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>I have daily discussions with Ally Cedeno of Women offshore and she works harder than anyone I know and has so much more work to do. In 1974 WISTA was formed and that same year Kathy Metcalf first walked down the passageways of King\u2019s Point, among the first women to attend any service academy.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>46 years and there is so much more to do.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, a battle has been fighting on social media over sexual harassment and rape and nobody is certain of the facts but everyone acknowledges it\u2019s sharing some of our most valued institutions to the core.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>So I traveled to Susan B Anthony\u2019s house then walked to WEB DuBouise\u2019s childhood home and then read his books. This led me to other books by Robert Caro about Robert Moses and Lyndon B Johnson. Books about strong men who did great things but also made mistakes.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>And it led me to a speech by\u00a0then US Senator Hubert Humphrey which I think resonates with the situation the maritime community faces today\u2026 so I reworked it a bit and turned on the camera.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><em>Admiral Buzby , shipmates, fellow Americans:<\/em><br \/><em>I realize that in speaking in favor of an investigation report on mariner rights and the state of the US Merchant Marine that I\u2019m dealing with a charged issue \u2014 with an issue which has been confused by emotionalism on all sides of the fence. I realize that there are here today friends and colleagues of mine, many of them, who feel just as deeply and keenly as I do about this issue and who are yet in complete disagreement with me.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>gCaptain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s time, to be honest. gCaptain is overwhelmed and the industry is breaking. And here\u2019s why\u2026 Right now gCaptain is working on stories about The 2 million barrel VLCC New Diamon on fire and drifting. 150,000 Mauritians protesting the Wakashio bunker spill. a cable layer that\u2019s currently in flames The Waymon L Boyd dredge explosion &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3074,1949,7604,11282,2860],"class_list":["post-17600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-world","tag-call","tag-change","tag-gcaptains","tag-impassioned","tag-watch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/17601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}