November 19, 2002
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
Taking the Risk:
Diane Wilson launches a movement
by Stephanie Hiller
Diane Wilson is an inspiration.
When the Texas shrimp fisher, 54, learned that her small county, Calhoun, was the most polluted in her state, she called a meeting. She's never done anything like that before. Speaking, she insists, though her listeners at a press conference at the Bioneers do not believe her, is difficult for her. She knew nothing about chemistry, regulatory agencies and the politics of pollution control.
What she found out, she tells us in her rolling Texas accent, blew her mind.
"All I did was call a meetin' and there was such a backlash I just couldn't figure it out. What's the deal? It was just a meetin'.
" I was working at the fish house and the County Commissioner came by, the Senator came by, the plant manager came by, the city council came by. And they were saying, like Diane, you just got to let this thing cool off. And I'm like, let what cool off? They just wanted to get rid of it."
When she saw how incapacitated public agencies are, how the corporations play them, and how there's a "little swinging door" through which public agents pass into higher paying corporate jobs, it was "like a culture shock." Then she understood that "the public has no idea what is really going on. Because once you start talking to the workers, start talking to the agencies, they're so frustrated, their hands are tied. It's not working and that's why we're in the mess that we're in. Because we're accepting this falsehood, that the agencies are taking care of business and the corporations are doing their best to comply, and they're not!"
So she undertook a one-woman fight to bring the truth to light. And she just wouldn't have done any of it, she told us, if she hadn't had this little trick:
"I always knew when I was on the right track, when I smelled the fear. Because it's real scary. I have this little trick that I do to myself if I get this instinct to do something and I know that it's right -- but it's scary. So immediately I have to call someone and tell them that I'm going to do it. Today! I'm going on a hunger strike today! And then you're committed."
During the past 14 years she has taken four long hunger strikes in protest of the chemical companies which have polluted the bay where her family has fished for four generations. And she got results. Formosa Plastics agreed to negotiations and actually took steps to correct the problem, though not as well as she would like.
Then she found out about Bhopal.
She learned that Dow Chemical, one of the major pollutants in her county, had bought out Union Carbide, the company responsible for the 1984 explosion in India. She learned that Union Carbide had known all along that the plant was at risk of failing. She found out that their compensation to victims was barely more than a token. She realized that Bhopal's fight was the same as hers -- -- and so she decided to back up the forgotten Bhopal people who had lost 20,000 people toe the accident, with 120,000 ill and dying of related diseases, and strike with them.
"It's all connected," she told a reporter. "The pain of a mother in Bhopal whose breastmilk is poisoned with Dow's toxins, is my pain." In solidarity with Bhopal, she planned a 30-day hunger strike at the Dow company plant at Seadrift.
But this time Wilson's strike was different. This time, she had support.
The preceding fall, Diane had been asked to speak at the Bioneers Conference. She concluded her talk by saying, "A reasonable woman adapts to the world. An unreasonable woman makes the world adapt to her. So I urge you women out there to be unreasonable!"
The response was tremendous. Women kept coming up to her to tell her that they were unreasonable women too!
Diane had a vision of all these unreasonable women coming out of the closet simultaneously and joining forces to object to the injustices of the world. It was time for women to stop being so polite.
Knowing Diane, she must have told somebody about her idea, and my bet is that she talked to Nina Simons. Nina is the co-producer of the Bioneers Conference with her husband Kenny Ausubel. In the 13 years she has been running the conference, she has invited all kinds of unreasonable women to speak about women's issues, women's spirituality, women's medicine, and women's struggles for a more sustainable world.
In May, 34 of these women came together for a four-day retreat. Among them: feminist scholar and writer, Susan Griffin; Starhawk, the leader of magical nonviolent protest against globalization; Pramila Jayapal, author of Pilgrimage: One Woman's Return to a Changing India Caroline Casey, the "Visionary Astrologer" who peppers the airwaves with sparkling analysis of the myths we live today; filmmaker Jodie Evans who is on the board of a dozen progressive and environmental organizations; Julia "Butterfly" Hill, whom everyone knows as the dazzling woman who spent two years in a redwood tree. These women command a huge audience of women and men, old and young, and are at the helm of numerous resources working intensively for global change.
They all said they felt isolated in their struggle.
And so, they joined forces to become the organization Diane had envisioned. They called themselves Unreasonable Women for the Earth and agreed to support each other in their work. This fall, Starhawk and Jodie birthed the Code Pink Pre-emptive Strike for Peace. Paint those first two fingernails red, they urged, to colorcode your "V" when you raise your fingers for peace.
When Diane told those unreasonable women about her plansto fast in solidarity with Bhopal during the UN Environmental Summit Conference last August, they decided to help her. They put up a web site where daily reports from the scene were posted. They arranged to accompany her during her strike, bringing books and conversation, helping her track the activities of Dow Chemical, and replenishing her with fresh water, minerals, electrolytes.
Caroline Casey taped two shows from the back of Diane's pick up truck where our sheroe spent thirty days under a tarp in sweltering Texas heat, without eating.
Reports of those 30 days by Diane and her companions are full of inspiration, wit, and crisp narratives about the reactions of Dow Personnel and the employees who were told to ignore the strike as they passed it every morning on the way to work. They tried to ignore it, but as the days progressed, more and more workers lowered their windows to ask questions:
From Diane (Day Twelve)
Well, folks, think we're making an impact. Where before security trucks would go by and wave and smile (after all I was only a little protestor and wasn't I cute) Now after 10 days the cuteness has wore off and additional folks from all over the country are calling Dow and asking them questions. Why is there no clean up. Why is there no rehabilitation and training. No medical information. A Dow representative told one who called, "Things are bad over there anyhow."I guess he's thinking, a little more agony won't hurt them.
By the time Diane completed that fast and climbed the tower at the Seadrift plant, people were watching. News was all over the Internet, and Diane Wilson finally got the attention of the press, which until then had refused point blank to tell her story. The Houston Chronicle photo of Diane at the top of the Tower migrated to other papers.
"I went up there because I knew the group in Bhopal were taking their issue to Johanisburg for the Earth Summit conference there." The CEO of Dow was also at the summit conference. "One thing the group in Bhopal had been telling me, they can have 10,000 people in the street and it's like, they do not care. Their voice gets lost. So they were taking their hunger strike to Johanisberg and I wanted to support that."
Diane doesn't think she's done anything special. "Any person that I see, I believe they are the person that's going to be capable of turning this thing around. We need every woman out there to do this. And every man."
Diane's life has been threatened, a helicopter has flown low over her house, her dog was shot. But she just keeps on trucking. She believes that risk is necessary. Sending money is good and relieves your conscience, but for Diane Wilson you have to risk something, your money or your job or maybe, your life.
It's unreasonable, and that's why it works. "I truly believe that the world is requiring unreasonableness. Here we are going to war, there's going to be hundreds of thousands of people that are gonna be killed. You know, one time I had a reporter tell me I was being rude! An unreasonable woman is the woman who sees the insanity that seems to be going round, and they will take a stand, and often it requires being rude, being unpredictable and misbehavin.' It requires that. The only way you can make a difference, and I believe it's a level of commitment you have to have."
In this tipsy topsy world, we salute Diane and all her companions at Lafayette Park during this unprecedented 40 day vigil for peace in view of the White House during the coldest time of the year. With them, we make an unreasonable demand: for peace.
True words aren't charming,Charming words aren't true.
Good people aren't contentious;
Contentious people aren't good.
People who know aren't learned,
Learned people don't know;
Wise souls don't hoard;
They more they do for others the more they have,
The more they give the richer they are.
The way of heaven profits without destroying.
Doing without doing
Is the Way of the wise.
From Ursula le Guin's The Tao. Buy this book from Powell's!
JOIN THE MOVEMENT:
Visit unreasonablewomen.org/
Go to codepink4peace.org to sign the petition to stop the war.
Read the lively reports from Seadrift at http://www.bhopal.net/worldwide-action/dianereports.html
For all the information on Bhopal: http://www.bhopal.net