When I get discouraged about things like yesterday's treachery in the Senate, when I feel powerless and wonder what the hell one person like me in the middle of Republican nowhere can do to stop or even slow the corporate crushing of America, I stop and remember the heroes who have shown that one ordinary person can make a difference.
Here on the Coastal Bend of Texas, a hero lives and works without much recognition from most local people. In fact, of those who are aware of her work, many would wish only that she shut up.
Diane Wilson is from Seadrift, a small community in rural Calhoun County. She is a fourth-generation fisherwoman and shrimper with
a great love of the bay. For many years, the only other big source of jobs in Calhoun County was to work for the chemical plants. Those plants have had carte blanche in our local communities; whatever the chemical companies want, whether tax breaks or a free pass to pollute, they generally get.
In the late 1980s, Calhoun County was named the #1 most polluted county in Texas, and in the nation in terms of air, water, and ground (via injection wells). Diane, while not a professional chemist, was stunned when she saw the dismal results of the first mandated report on plant emissions . (Seadrift's zip code is 77983; see what's being released even now.) Years later she still sounds shocked when she describes the chemicals that were being released into the region's drinking water supply, into the wetlands that served as nursery for the shrimp and crabs local fisherman pursued. She educated herself about chemistry and began calling meetings to discuss these concerns. When she began to be warned by those in power that she should stop doing so, she figured she was on to something. And thus began her real work.
from Voice Yourself:
What Diane asked for was "... an environmental impact study. Which means before you can build a huge plant you have to study what kind of impact you are going to have and if it's bad you have to figure out a lesser impact." Suddenly plant managers, commissioners and government officials were showing up at her shrimping boat and fish house. "They were trying to get me to stop what I was doing, or control how far it went," Diane said. "I got offered all kinds of stuff. I was discouraged and intimidated in all kinds of ways. But I wouldn't let it stop me." Formosa executives tried every trick in the book to intimidate anyone who might support Diane. The constant intimidation, name calling, threats to family and even hiring of a cousin to openly spy on her, were tactics used in an effort to silence her.
It didn't work. So she went on a hunger strike. And then, later, another hunger strike. She testified at state hearings. Filed suits. But nothing really changed. She decided to make a more dramatic gesture.
From a 2002 interview:
When I realized that the law didn't matter, that they were going to do what they were going to do and the federal government was going to work along with them, I was so outraged. I thought something had to be done to make people realize exactly what this meant, because most people don't think about it--it's like losing part of your civil rights. So it dawned on me to sink my shrimp boat, because I knew that action would force someone to look at it--it's kind of like a farmer saying he's going to burn his farm. That was a painful decision because I truly loved that boat, I had been shrimping on it a very long time, but I believe sometimes when you appeal to a higher law you have to be willing to go out there. I'm a very nonviolent person so I would never have considered sinking anything else out there; it had to be my own boat. So I removed the engine
She removed the engine because even the small amount of diesel residue in it was a potential pollutant.
So I removed the engine, and in the dead of night, a shrimper tugged my boat out and I was going to sink it on top of Formosa's discharge pipe out in the middle of the bay. A freak storm had come and it was rough and dark, and all of a sudden there was three Coast Guard boatloads with spotlights, and they said I was a terrorist on the high seas. About two dozen shrimpers went out and demonstrated in the bay when they saw the Coast Guard and my boat tied up, and it made the news, the Houston Chronicle. I had been fighting Formosa Plastics tooth and nail--three hunger strikes and demonstrations and I'd filed suits on them--and I think this last action just made them so sick and tired of me, they were like what will it take? I asked for zero discharge and for them to recycle their waste stream, and I got what I went after. I don't have a shrimp boat anymore, but you know...
In other words, Formosa agreed to zero emissions and the recycling of their waste stream. A huge victory.
Formosa is only one plant in the area, though, so Diane's work did not stop there. In solidarity with the people of Bhopal, India, she chained herself to the tower at the Union Carbide plant and went on a hunger strike, for instance.
While she has had some local support, people have often been afraid to publicly stand with her, and she is not generally recognized as a hero--or recognized, period--in this area. Nationally and internationally, she has found more support, and with Medea Benjamin, co-founded Code Pink. She protested the Iraq war by disrupting Rumsfeld's testimony, and demonstrated at the second Bush inauguration. There has been a short film made about her and a children's book written about her.
Diane is a hero not only for demonstrating that one person can make a difference, but for doing so in an environment that does not nurture or support activism--or, for that matter, individuality. She still lives here on the Coastal Bend, without celebrity, wealth, adulation, or ease. She's still working hard as an activist in a time and place where that is an odd thing, indeed. Maybe some of you were familiar with her work already; for those who weren't, I wanted to introduce you.