APRIL 7, 2006
Last
year Alexandra and I hosted a shrimper on EarthTalk Today by the name of Diane Wilson. A shrimper is one who goes out in a shrimp boat and catches shrimp. Diane is the Forest Gump of South Texas; or more accurately was, because now she is a hard working mother of five committed to preserving a healthy community way of life by speaking truth to power.
She is speaking truth to chemical companies whose presence is felt from her local bay to the villages near Bhopal India. Still concerned about the people of India who have not been served well since the 1984 Union Carbide Fertilizer plants explosion, Diane loses sleep knowing that chemical contamination is dramatically altering the lives of millions, and now her family and friends in the shrimping industry.
The last time I looked much of Texas was directly adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico that has a 'dead zone' the size of New Jersey. Something, or more accurately, pesticides and chemicals are the probable cause of the dead zone, and people are concerned.
Diane's town of Seadrift is a very atypical village. It has not changed much through the years other than most of the fishermen are now from Vietnam. Hard working fisher folk are a vanishing breed in our country and shrimping is now becoming something we will tell our grandchildren about through pictures and movies like Forest Gump.
Rarely do we have grandmothers willing to go to jail over principle, but that is what is happening with Diane. Her story is the story of one person who cares enough to confront, and when all is said and done, Diane has presented a bank of mirrors to the faces of corporate executives, boards and directors, and protective legislators who are in the pocket of the companies, and proclaimed: Look what you have been doing to the eco-systems that sustain our shrimping and our quality of life.
Criticized, jailed, ridiculed and humiliated because she uncovered the truth of chemical contamination of her environment.
The song opening the Academy Awards, Hooray for Hollywood, should be re-written Hooray for Heroes and Heroines. It is time to give academy awards to people who are really doing something to make our lives better.
--Peter