Armed with signs and music, peaceful protestors gathered Thursday and Friday at the Louisiana State Capitol to speak out against the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and urge for cleaner energy in Louisiana.Students, citizens, children and even dogs congregated on the steps of the State Capitol to listen to live music, voice their opinions and speak to legislators.Ward Reilly, a Vietnam War veteran and Baton Rouge native, held a sign saying “greed spills, greed kills!! Got Greed?””I am here to try to tie the oil spill in with the current state of our nation, from everything including our troops dying in Iraq for oil, while the same oil is pouring on our shores and killing our wildlife and our economy,” Reilly said.But Reilly said the legislators can’t do anything to help.”What they did before to cause this was deregulating and not holding companies to the standards that are there in other countries,” Reilly said. “We’re paying the price for their mistakes.”Instead, Reilly and several other protestors said the next step is having alternative, clean energy sources in Louisiana.”We’ve got to find some alternatives to oil in this world,” Reilly said.Former LSU student Justin Hopkins came to the Capitol with a small jar of oil from a beach in Gulf Shores, Ala.”This is washing up on shores,” Hopkins said as he showed the oil sample. “It’s in patties now because it’s mixing with sand.”Hopkins, who lives in Memphis, Tenn., said he was ready to take several months off work to go to the coast and help, but he was turned down.”You would think that they would [want our help], especially who are from the area and familiar with the wildlife,” Hopkins said. “I basically was rejected. There’s no reason why I couldn’t just be a hand to help clean this mess up. We don’t know where to go to help.”Hopkins said he was at the State Capitol to show his support for coastal restoration and to get more people to recognize the kind of disasters local people are facing.”The same marsh I’ve gone fishing in my whole life is basically being destroyed right now,” Hopkins said.Devin Martin, conservation coordinator with the Sierra Club Delta Chapter, helped to coordinate the event.”We were able to get some people into the Capitol and show them how to talk to senators and lobby a legislator,” Martin said. “The experience, I think, makes it worthwhile.”Coastal Rescue, the Youth Alliance of Louisiana Leaders, the Sierra Club Delta Chapter and the Student Coalition to Help the Oil Leak Relief were some of the participating organizations.Martin said he thinks they successfully conveyed their message of clean energy and safer drilling.”Our message was mostly we are standing in solidarity with the people on the coast of Louisiana,” Martin said. “We want people and individuals compensated fully. And we also want to clean up the energy supply and the way we live.”Martin said his next step is going to a Public Service Commission meeting to try to convince the commissioners to adopt a renewable portfolio standard, which would set new regulations on public utilities.–Contact Catherine Threlkeld at [email protected]