Politics of Poverty

Senate passes Gulf Coast restoration amendment

March 9, 2012 Posted by Irit Tamir

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the RESTORE Act possibly coming for a vote in the Senate. Good news! Yesterday the Senate voted for its strong bipartisan approval of an amendment to dedicate 80 percent of the civil fines from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster to restoring Gulf communities, ecosystems and the economy. The amendment to the Senate transportation bill, introduced by Senators Mary Landrieu, Bill Nelson, and Richard Shelby was based on the RESTORE the Gulf Coast States Act, sponsored by the three members and six other Gulf State Senators. Out of 76 votes in favor of RESTORE, 23 were Republican and 53 were Democrat.

Oxfam has been advocating for workforce development and training funds within the RESTORE Act as a way to decrease the social vulnerability of impacted communities living on the coast. We worked with faith groups and with private sector companies to let Senators know why RESTORE has such great potential for creating much needed jobs. Oxfam supporters have been weighing in all week with calls to their Senators which really helped push the bill forward.

Now, the House will need to vote on a similar measure. If they do, they will be supporting Gulf coast communities and the many people there that rely on a healthy environment for both their lives and their livelihoods like fishing and tourism.

Irit Tamir

Irit Tamir is the Director of Oxfam America's Private Sector Department. In her role, she is focused on working with companies to ensure that their business practices result in positive social and environmental impacts for vulnerable communities throughout the world. She leads a team of advisors that engage the private sector on tax, business and human rights, vaccine equity, legal advocacy, supply chain and labor relations, climate change and gender and racial equity. She oversees the private sector engagement from campaigns and advocacy to collaborations and programs focused on corporate behavior along with a work focused on investors and shareholder advocacy.

Prior to working at Oxfam, Ms. Tamir was the Director of Government Relations at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, where she successfully lobbied for an extensive federal and state legislative agenda. She co-led the effort to pass the Sudan Divestment Bill in Massachusetts, which required the state pension funds to divest from companies doing business with the Government of Sudan in an effort to halt its human rights violations in Darfur. Ms. Tamir is an attorney with a masters in international law and has taught Business and Human Rights as an adjunct at Boston College Law School. She sits on the Board of the Fair Labor Association and co-chaired the Working Group on Business and Human Rights for the New York City Bar Association. A devoted human rights activist, she has spoken publicly about inequality, human rights, climate resilience, and the food system. Ms. Tamir has had years of experience in government relations and is a former prosecutor who supervised civil rights prosecutions and hate crimes.

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