Rescue Efforts: 

“A week after the blowout you’d go to the beach and you couldn’t hear the waves. Because all the coast was black. You went to Hendry’s Beach, there was no noise of the waves breaking. Just … slop, slop, slop, slop. And people just stood there and cried. All our beaches were black. You’d see surfers standing there with their boards, and their boards are covered in black.” 

• Bud Bottoms, Co-founder of Get Oil Out! (GOO), as told to Pacific Standard magazine 

Get Out Oil: Rescue Efforts & Activism 

As visual and print media began to invoke the eco-conscious of Santa Barbara residents and other Americans nationwide, the disastrous oil spill galvanized people to form environmental activist groups. The Get Out Oil (GOO), the environmental group, was founded days after the oil spill. Many residents who participated in rescue efforts or beach clean-up of the oil spill joined or created ecological activist groups. (GOO) became a prominent and well-known environmental activist group for their monthly informative pamphlets. 

GOO: Pamphlets 

Analysis: 

The monthly pamphlet aimed to inform the public and gather interest in joining their activities, strikes, and critique ads created about oil drilling activity to spark created action. Get Out, Oil!'s July 1969 monthly pamphlet featured an ad on page 5, which showed a hand seeping out of the sea covered in oil with the slogan, "From Sea to Shining Sea." The ad critiques people's involvement and attachment to their dependency on oil. Invoking a sense of responsibility to those who do not help contribute to the collective action towards environmental conservation. The slogan refers to the song America the Beautiful, connecting America's long history of dependency on oil as a symbol of the nation. Not only does the (GOO) monthly pamphlet invoke a sense of responsibility through its ad, but asks for collective action for signatures towards environmental legislation. 

On page 10, the section "What You Can Do" called residents to write to President Nixon and Secretary Hickel at the time, urging them to terminate all operations in the Santa Barbara Channel (GOO 10). The section focused on demonstrating how to write letters to lawmakers and add a list of demands to Get Out Oil advocated for ecological legislation. As well as the section reminded residents who received the pamphlet to make a conscious choice to vote for politicians that make environmental consciousness a high-priority issue in legislation. Through Get Out Oil pamphlets, the pamphlets helped create eco-conscious among Santa Barbara residents. As well as sparked activism among residents, as the (GOO) monthly pamphlets aimed to invoke a sense of responsibility that could contribute towards environmental conservation