The inaugural meeting of Protect Our Coast, a grassroots campaign to ban offshore drilling and exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, was held last month at the Pensacola Downtown Public Library. The group is asking concerned citizens to vote “yes” in November for Amendment 9, a ballot measure proposing such a ban.

  “This meeting was the place to be if you care at all about preventing oil rigs from encroaching on the Emerald Coast,” says Frankie Hawkins, a field organizer for Oceana, a conservation and advocacy organization. “With just a few short months until the release of the federal government's offshore oil and gas drilling plan, we need to act now.”

For more information, email [email protected] or visit Oceana.org.