Last week Willie Fontenot, former community liaison officer at the attorney general’s office, said he was asked to either retire or run the risk of losing his job, which he held for 27 loyal years. This forced resignation was the superficial result of one incident but was actually an excuse for firing one of Louisiana’s most prominent fighters for public access to environmental policy information. In the backward, twisted politics of Louisiana, Fontenot was a beacon of light to residents, activists and people seeking answers to their environmental health problems.

Fontenot is credited with helping form Louisiana Environmental Action Network, the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation and the Calcasieu League for Environmental Action Now.

Fontenot’s resignation came after an incident on March 16, in which off-duty police officers and full-time security officials from an ExxonMobil chemical facility near Baton Rouge detained a group of instructors and students from Antioch New England Graduate School touring the area for a field studies course on environmental justice. Fontenot was accompanying the group, and according to an article in The Times-Picayune on April 5, he had informed the attorney general’s office of his assistance with the group. Security guards asked for licenses of members of the group and then detained them because they were taking pictures of the plant, although from public sidewalks and roads. In a press release from Antioch, Fontenot stated that the group’s actions were perfectly legal. The sheriff’s department filed a complaint about Fontenot to the attorney general’s office.

Across the country, individual rights have been thwarted in the name of homeland security. And what adds sting to the burn is that even when injustices are exposed, they continue to occur.

In an e-mail to friends and associates, Fontenot said he did not want to return to his job, admitting that he used to feel restricted in his efforts to help the public navigate through the tape of the state government.