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An UnReasonable Woman for the Earth - An Interview with Diane Wilson Diane Wilson is an inspiring powerhouse of a woman. A mother of five and fourth generation shrimper, Diane grew up in Seadrift, Texas, a small fishing town on San Antonio Bay in Calhoun County — which has the dubious distinction of being the number one county in the nation for toxic disposal. Diane has been battling huge chemical corporations — Union Carbide/Dow, Aloca, BP Chemical, Dupont, Formosa Plastics, Carbon Graphite — since 1989, the first year corporations were required by law to report toxic emissions. As a fisher, she knew something was terribly wrong before 1989 but no information was available. Once she found out what was going on, she became determined to change things. She has been on several hunger strikes, some over 30 days, and attempted to sink her own 42 foot shrimp boat on top of an illegal discharge. In August 2002, Diane climbed a 90 foot tower inside a Dow/Union Carbide facility in Seadrift and unfurled a banner that read: “Dow/Union Carbide Responsible for Bhopal” to protest the company’s refusal to take responsibility for the disaster in Bhopal, India. (See update). In 1995, she won “zero discharge” agreements with Alcoa Aluminum and Formosa Plastics, one of the world’s largest producers of PVC. She is the inspiration behind UnReasonable Women for the Earth, founded in 2002, and co-founded Code Pink in response to the war in Iraq. She has won numerous environmental awards and been featured on 48 Hours and Lifetime TV. A children’s book, Nobody Particular by Molly Bangs, tells her story. I spoke with Diane shortly before Thanksgiving as she prepared to go to jail in Austin for disrupting the Texas legislature as they passed their resolution supporting George Bush and the war in Iraq. (She hung a banner and screamed “No more killing!” as the police dragged her out.) Nothing deters Diane’s invincible spirit and commitment. Not jail (she was jailed six times in 2002 and has two trials coming up in January 2004), not risk to herself, and certainly not threats from the powers-that-be. Talking with Diane was a real treat. She’s easy to talk to and has a great sense of humor. I felt as though we were close friends sitting on the back porch, drinking tea, sharing our concerns and our passion for the Earth. Our conversation was punctuated with laughter — and more than a few cackles. As she would put it, Diane is on our side. And I, for one, am extremely grateful. GV: You started taking action in 1989. At around that time, until 1992 or so, I was researching what I called “the worst corporate destroyers of the Earth”. How had I not heard of you? DW: Well, for a long time it was just a Texas thing. And especially around here, they just thought I was a nut. Now they say I’m a persistent nut. (Laughs) GV: Well there has to be something a little off in order to do what you’ve been doing. (Both of us laugh). No, really, because most people can’t imagine it. DW: I’m a firm believer in commitment. I think most folks just don’t understand what that word means. It’s not writing a check to Greenpeace. It’s about putting yourself into it. You make your commitment and things happen. It’s like a miracle. You create action, you create events. GV: And the energy builds up around you. DW: That’s right. What people don’t understand is I don’t plan a thing. My actions come from a spontaneous, intuitive place. When you’re a fisherman on the bay you’re very instinctive about where you go. You feel the moon and the water and the wind. You imagine where the shrimp or the fish are going. You have to think like them. When I do my actions, it’s the same thing. I just put the intent out there. Some of the most miraculous actions are completely spontaneous. GV: Relying on your intuition comes naturally to you. DW: Oh yes. Matter of fact, I consider myself a mystic. GV: Can you talk about that a little bit? DW: I’ve been on the water my whole life. When I was about five I can remember going to the bay and the bay was a woman. I could see her. She had gray hair. I felt like she was my grandmother. The thing is, it was visual. It was emotional. I felt her. I saw her. When I would come to the bay I felt so welcomed. She was like, “Why Diane!” It was like coming to see your grandmother who adored you. And it was real. It wasn’t airy-fairy or pie-in-the-sky. It was a real, physical thing. There was never a boundary between me and the water or the wind. It moved into my boundaries. There was no place where I could say I was different from it. GV: I know exactly what you mean. I feel the same way about the mountains here. So did the bay tell you what was going on? DW: Being a fisherman I knew something was wrong. We were having brown tides and green tides, and the red tide which was like a carpet. Fish were coming out of the water trying to get air, and we had a huge dolphin die-off. The shrimping had gotten so bad I tied up my boat and was running a fish house. The resource wasn’t there anymore. So I knew things were happening but I didn’t have any information about why. Then one day in 1989 a shrimper — who had three different kinds of cancer and huge lumps all over his arms — gave me a newspaper article about the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). This was the first time industry had to report the toxins they were dumping into the air, water, and land. And it was the first time I had seen anything in the paper about what the chemical plants in the county were doing to the environment. The article said we were the number one county in the nation for toxic disposal! I was totally flabbergasted! I couldn’t just sit on that kind of information. GV: I remember when the TRI first came out. It was such a shock to learn that millions of pounds of toxins were being spewed into the environment every year. DW: People still cannot believe it. And it’s a big myth government agencies are taking care of it for you. At one point I went to get some information from the district office of the Texas Environmental Agency in Corpus Christi. Come to find out that the executive director, who was up for retirement, had an application in to the company I was fighting. Two inspectors pulled me aside, went to a file room, gave me information about contamination, and said, “You do something because it’s going nowhere here”. And that’s the way it is. It’s a revolving door. GV: So what did you do after the TRI came out? DW: First thing I did was call a meeting at the fish house. I was inexperienced and naive. All I knew was what I read in the paper. I had the meeting and was promptly attacked by mayors, chambers of commerce, business people who believed that questioning the corporations was asking for economic trouble. I was unprepared for all the hate that was directed at me. Why did they care? I was just a woman in Seadrift who called a meeting. But they wanted me to be a good citizen and stop causing problems. After about a year of writing letters, starting petitions, calling politicians, making Freedom of Information Act requests, talking to the EPA and other state agencies, I found out that corporations are all self-monitoring. I learned that corporations and federal agencies can violate laws and it doesn’t matter. It’s business, it’s money. I had politicians actually say that they’re not going to commit political suicide by getting involved. So I knew I had to do something out of the ordinary. That’s when I did my first hunger strike. GV: A hunger strike — now to me that would be a very difficult thing to do. DW: It is. I remember the day I decided I was going to do it. I knew I had to tell the press right away. Because if you think on your outrageous ideas you start getting nervous and you start backing down. So I had to put it out there. The idea blew my mind so much that I almost felt like I was moving out of my body. It was a tremendously expanding idea in my head when I did that. GV: So you just took it one day at a time? DW: Absolutely. Because I had no idea how to do it. Except that you didn’t eat. I did that hunger strike on my shrimp boat and didn’t even have a telephone, that’s how dumb I was. A fellow from an environmental group in Houston told me, “Oh Diane, this is the stupidest thing. You can’t do it.” And I kept saying, “I’m going to do it.” So he said, “Well you know it’s going to take at least a week before anyone takes you seriously”. So I was sitting on a boat for a solid week by myself. My husband was so irritated with me he wouldn’t bring down any of the kids. The only people who came to see me were the chemical plant executive and some of the staff. Every morning they came down to the bay and said, “Well, there she is, just look at her.” There’d be about seven men in their business suits and they’d look at me and say, “Isn’t she doing a stupid thing?” GV: They just wanted you to go away. DW: Yeah. The hunger strike rattled them. They couldn’t control me. They had no idea what I might do next. Being spontaneous is real important because the whole thing about corporations is control. They want to control everything, they want to control the activists so they know what we’re doing. They want to obliterate our voices. When you’re spontaneous you get them off guard. And they get nervous. GV: It’s like they don’t really know what’s at stake. They’re like kids. They have no idea that they’re play-ng with the ultimate thing here. DW: (Laughs) No they don’t. Or they refuse to think that far. GV: I have to believe that’s it, that they’re not all totally evil. DW: Definitely not. When I see someone in a corporation on a personal basis I can’t get mad at them. I’m friendly as the dickens. But when I see it as a faceless thing — this (growls) corporation — oh, I can get real energetic about it. GV: So tell me about UnReasonable Women for the Earth. DW: (Laughs) I had been asked to give a plenary speech at the 2001 Bioneers Conference. Now I’m not the type to write a speech and give it. I just rely on inspiration. At the end of my speech, I paraphrased something George Bernard Shaw had said, that a reasonable man adapts to the world and an unreasonable man makes the world adapt to what he wants. I turned it around and said that the Earth needs unreasonable women. We need to get out there and turn the world into what we believe it’s capable of instead of going with the status quo. And the women went bananas. I had women coming up to me who were crying. I was just totally overwhelmed with this idea — and I really believe this — that women have the key to what can change things. We have the energy, we see how the world could be. After the speech I called Nina Simonds and Kenny Ausable (producers of Bioneers) and said, “I just got a vision of a group of unreasonable women who do outrageous things, and I know we can make an impact.” So in May 2002, Nina put together a retreat of 34 of some of the most unreasonable women she knew from across the United States. We discussed what an unreasonable group of women would be like, how to get a movement like that going. We were real cautious about putting an established form around what we wanted to do. We wanted it to be more organic and see what happened. When I went home to Texas one of the first things I did was spontaneously tell some Bhopal women who were on a hunger strike that I would support them in the United States. Bhopal, India, as you know, was the site of the worst industrial accident ever. 8,000 people died overnight and almost 20 years later people are still dying. Even so the Indian government was getting pressure from U.S. interests to drop all charges against Union Carbide (now owned by Dow). The women were so outraged that they went on the hunger strike. GV: Have you been to Bhopal? DW: I was there in 1992. My life as a fisherwoman has taught me one thing, that there are no seas with lines and divisions. So similarly if there is a border that separates me as an American from the anguish and sorrow of my sisters and brothers in Bhopal and their fight for justice, then that line is a false and lying one. I told them that I would do the hunger strike in the United States. I contacted the UnReasonable Women, explained what I was doing, and asked for their help. That was one of the most successful hunger strikes. Over 1,000 people participated from eight different countries. And what came out of that hunger strike was that the Indian government reversed their decision and instead intensified their efforts to bring Union Carbide to court. And the Bhopal Network gave the credit for the success of the U.S. hunger strike to the UnReasonable Women. GV: Tell me about Code Pink. DW: At the 2002 Bioneers conference the UnReasonable Women had a workshop and one of the women in the back asked, “What are you going to do about the war in Iraq?” I was so excited I jumped up and said, “Why I can just envision all of these women on a hunger strike right in front of the capitol.” And so we decided right then and there that we were going to do it. We met the very next day and spontaneously decided to launch a hunger strike vigil in front of the White House. We were there for about three months. The government was in Code Orange or Code Red, so we called ourselves Code Pink. It was an alert for women to increase their awareness. GV: I remember that. It really captured people’s imaginations. Code Pink. How can anything that’s pink be threatening? DW: One of the funniest actions we did was in Iraq right before the war. All the media, there must have been about two hundred, were in one building with all the satellites on the roof. There was only one TV so everyone was downstairs watching Colin Powell talking about weapons of mass destruction and how they were fixing to possibly invade. So we knew all the reporters were going to go up on the roof and do their little speech about war in Iraq. There were three of us from Code Pink there and we decided to take over the broadcast and get out a message of peace. So we went to the roof where technicians were arranging things, placing the mikes, and all. It was so funny because they looked at us as if we were supposed to be there. They even offered me a seat. So we sat down to wait for the reporter to come and make his speech. And when he got there we grabbed the mike and shoved him off. (laughs) We took over for about five seconds. I think on CNN they saw a flurry of pink-shirted women and heard something about no more killing. It was a hoot. GV: That’s so cool. And it was just three of you. I guess sometimes that makes it easier. DW: It does. You just look like you belong and melt right in and then do it. A lot of times the only thing that stops people is the doing. It was either Cesar Chavez or Ghandi who said the most important thing to remember in any action is just do it. People are not alert for the outrageous. GV: And then you have to be willingto pay the consequences. DW: That’s right. I feel that’s part of the whole package. It’s not just a cause or an action, it’s your life, your integrity. You know how Joseph Campbell talked about myths and the hero’s journey? I see life as a mythical journey and everything that you do tells your story. When you’re jailed, it’s a part of that story. GV: You’ve made an incredible impact for one person. It’s amazing, really. Why do you think that is? DW: I credit it to being unreasonable. Being rational, logical, and linear, working for more regulations isn’t going to cut it. Corporations have made the playing field. If we play by their rules we’re not going to get anywhere. I believe you have to be unreasonable and go out for what you believe is possible — and expect miracles. I totally do. I expect miracles. I expect things to turn around. And people just look at me in amazement. People are so disillusioned. They don’t believe you can win anything. They say, “You’re just wasting your time, making a fool of yourself. You can’t change City Hall.” GV: And of course if that’s your attitude, you’re not going to. DW: That’s right. So when I speak it’s not so much to convince people on zero discharge but to inspire them to take their passion and create miracles with it, create change. GV: I agree. And I know it’s possible. I don’t know that we’ll do it but it is possible. And it can happen very quickly. To me the Earth has a lot to do with it. The Earth is a participant. That’s where the magic comes in and that’s where the possibility for miracles comes in. It’s not just us humans making it happen. DW: Definitely. I’m a big believer in magic. I have a sense of awe and delight and it’s just like Christmas every day. I just get this bubbling excitement. I have the mind of a beginner. All things are possible. It’s whatever you can dream up. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. I guarantee you do it a few times and it’s like, “Oh well, I did that”. One thing leads to another and it frees something in your head. I have never felt so free and powerful in my life. Most people my age are thinking about sitting back, taking it easy. But no way! At this age your heart catches up with what you probably always knew. Don’t waste it. Do something with it. Update: On January 29, Diane was found guilty by a Texas court on charges of criminal trespass and resisting arrest and sentenced to four months in jail. The judge refused to allow her to make “any direct or indirect reference . . . to Bhopal, India, the plant explosion in 1984, or any other environmental crimes . . . of Dow Chemical or Union Carbide” effectively preventing Diane from defending her actions. To find out more: www.bhopal.net, www.codepinkalert.org; or wwwunreasonablewoman.org. | |||||||
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