Overview

When Diane Wilson, fourth-generation shrimp-boat captain and mother of five, learns that she lives in the most polluted county in the United States, she decides to fight back. She launches a campaign against a multibillion-dollar corporation that has been covering up spills, silencing workers, flouting the EPA, and dumping lethal ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride into the bays along her beloved Texas Gulf Coast. In an epic tale of bravery, Wilson takes her fight to the courts, to the gates of the chemical plant, and to the halls of power in Austin. Along the way she meets with scorn, bribery, character assassination, and death threats. Finally Wilson realizes that she must break the law to win justice: She resorts to nonviolent disobedience, direct action, and hunger strikes. Wilson's vivid South Texas dialogue resides somewhere between Alice Walker and William Faulkner, and her dazzling prose brings to mind the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, replete with dreams and prophecies.

Full Product Details

Author:   Diane Wilson ,  Kenny Ausubel
Publisher:   Chelsea Green Publishing Co
Imprint:   Chelsea Green Publishing Co
Dimensions:   Width: 15.30cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.499kg
ISBN:  

9781933392271

ISBN 10:   1933392274
Pages:   392
Publication Date:   15 September 2006
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   In Print  
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Sabotage 1. Dirty Secrets Revealed 2. A Shrimping Career Rehashed 3. An Outlaw and a Letter 4. Adversaries Approach 5. Of Fishermen and Politicos 6. Knocked Clean out of the Ring 7. Negotiating with the Enemy 8. The Press Arrives to Liars and Fools 9. Texas Water Commission Files 10. Dirty Facts Revealed 11. A Dream Is a Dream Come True 12. Losses, Gains, and Petitions 13. Money, Money, Money 14. The Informant 15. Battle Lines Are Drawn 16. Union Carbide Blows; the Fed Arrives 17. We Strike at the Heart of Formosa 18. Beauty Queens, Banquets, and Spies 19. Raining on the Chairman's Parade 20. A Hydrochloric Cloud; a Worker Talks 21. Kickbacks Paid; Internal Memos Conveyed 22. A Bay under Siege; an Activist Born 23. Hunger Strike 24. I Strike at the Gates of Hell 25. Death Threats and Deals 26. Pain and Defeat 27. A Woman Enters the Sea 28. Island of Fire and Solidarity 29. A Radicalized Woman 30. The Vietnamese Connection 31. The Sinking of the SeaBee 32. Sanchez Comes Home 33. Victory, Redemption, and Loss

Reviews

Libary Journal Starred Review- Wilson's story of greed, politics, polluters, and outright dishonesty is one we have unfortunately heard before: big industry tries to bulldoze through permits, regulations, and environmental and worker safety to arrive at a profit. The Seadrift, TX, native doesn't like it when she reads in the paper that her county has the worst pollution in the nation (this was in 1989). A shrimp boat captain and mother of five, Wilson goes on to discover that a multibillion-dollar corporation, Formosa Plastics, is killing her catch and her friends by dumping toxic chemicals into the bays. And that's not all: agencies that are supposed to watchdog polluters (e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency) do not, and politicians who have a responsibility to their constitutents serve the few, often themselves, first. Even friends betray and threaten, yet Wilson takes action, asking questions, studying, following through. Her story is delivered in an affecting, soft-spoken style that pulls readers in. There is more to be learned from this extraordinary woman than how to fight big industry; let her teach you.

-Don't pick this book up if you want to stay in your comfort zone. Diane's journey is a riveting tale of 'Nothing Is As It Appears.' The environmental agencies we're so proud of simply give out permits to polluters, tweaking a detail here and there. With spunk, verve, and humor, Diane faces down her fears. This story will break your heart wide open.---Ellen Augustine Schwartz, author of Taking Back Our Lives in the Age of Corporate Dominance

Author Information

Diane Wilson is an eco-warrior in action. A fourth-generation shrimper, Wilson began fishing the bays off the Gulf Coast of Texas at the age of eight. By 24, she was a boat captain. In 1989, while running her brother's fish house at the docks and mending nets, she read a newspaper article that listed her home of Calhoun County as the number one toxic polluter in the country. She set up a meeting in the town hall to discuss what the chemical plants were doing to the bays and thus began her life as an environmental activist. Threatened by thugs and despised by her neighbors, Wilson insisted the truth be told and that Formosa Plastics stop dumping toxins into the bay. Since then, she has launched legislative campaigns, demonstrations, and countless hunger strikes to raise awareness for environmental and human rights abuses. Wilson speaks to the core of courage in each of us that seeks to honor our own moral compass, and act on our convictions. She has been honored with a number of awards for her work, including: National Fisherman Magazine Award, Mother Jones's Hell Raiser of the Month, Louis Gibbs' Environmental Lifetime Award, Louisiana Environmental Action (LEAN) Environmental Award, Giraffe Project, Jenifer Altman Award, Blue Planet Award and the Bioneers Award. She is also a co-founder of CODEPINK, the Texas Jail Project, Texas Injured Workers, Injured Workers National Network and continues to lead the fight for social justice. Kenny Ausubel is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, journalist and filmmaker. He is co-CEO and cofounder of Bioneers, a nonprofit dedicated to disseminating practical and visionary solutions for restoring Earth's imperiled ecosystems and healing our human communities. Ausubel launched the celebrated annual Bioneers Conference in 1990 with his Bioneers cofounder and wife, Nina Simons, and serves as executive producer of the Bioneers plenary series airing on Free Speech TV and Link TV. He acted as a central advisor to Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary The 11th Hour, and appears in the film. He also cofounded Seeds of Change--purveyors of organic, biodiverse heirloom seeds. In addition to Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature (2012), Ausubel has written three books--When Healing Becomes a Crime: The Amazing Story of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinics and the Return of Alternative Therapies (2000); The Bioneers: Declarations of Interdependence (1995) and Seeds of Change: The Living Treasure (1994). He also founded and operates Inner Tan Productions, a feature film development company, has written two screenplays, and has also produced several documentary films about alternative medicine. Kenny has served as executive producer and principal writer of the award-winning radio series Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature, heard in more than 200 communities across the U.S. and Canada, and more globally--reaching 70 million listeners worldwide. He lives in the mountains outside Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife and their two dogs.

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