Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas

Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas

ISBN-10:
1933392274
ISBN-13:
9781933392271
Pub. Date:
09/28/2006
Publisher:
Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN-10:
1933392274
ISBN-13:
9781933392271
Pub. Date:
09/28/2006
Publisher:
Chelsea Green Publishing
Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas

Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas

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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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781933392271
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Publication date: 09/28/2006
Pages: 391
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range: 14 - 18 Years

About the Author

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.

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

What People are Saying About This

Ken Wells

Imagine if Faulkner were the Mad Hatter on a mission to save the planet and you get some idea of Diane Wilson’s astonishing story and her rawboned but powerful prose style. This is an important book because it proves that eternal vigilance and magnificent obsession are often the price that must be paid to save our fragile ecosystems from those bent on despoiling them for profit. (author of Meely LaBauve)

Kenny Ausubel

A literary voice like Diane’s surfaces only a few precious times in a generation.(From the Foreword, founder of Bioneers)

Ellen Augustine Schwartz

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. (author of Taking Back Our Lives in the Age of Corporate Dominance)

Molly Ivins

What a terrific book. I don’t often gush, but this book had me fascinated from the first page and whomper-jawed half the time. A voice like Diane Wilson’s - working class woman with five kids - is so rare. For one thing, if you have five kids and a job, not to mention a battle with an international chemical company on your hands, it’s hard to get around to writing. And to write this well is a stunning achievement (Nationally syndicated political columnist and author, most recently, of "Who Let the Dogs In?")

Medea Benjamin

Read and delight in the story how one fierce and feisty fisher-woman wrestled the corporate polluters and won. Diane Wilson’s pit-bull tenacity when it comes to defending Mother Nature is the stuff of legends. Hip to the fact that well-behaved women rarely make history, Diane has already inspired a new movement of totally uncontrollable, irresistible and unreasonable women! (cofounder of CODEPINK and coauthor of Stop the Next War Now)

Jim Hightower

Texas is famous for its tall tales, but they pale in comparison to the true tale of Diane Wilson. Hers is a mind-bending story of corporate intrigue, government shenanigans and all-around political dirty tricks. This is a book about one of our greatest local heroes that could just give Texas a good name for a change. (author, Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush)

Joan Dye Gussow

Nothing can really prepare you for the nervy, scary, riotous, enraging tale of Diane Wilson’s education as an environmental activist - or its ultimately inspiring resolution. Essential reading. (author of This Organic Life)

Janisse Ray

This is a book with arms so strong it reaches out, grabs you, and won't let go until its last dying words. Even then it haunts. An Unreasonable Woman is the first book in years that has caused me to lose sleep. This is the extraordinary story of a woman who gambled everything for her place. It is like nothing I have ever read. This book is a crucible and no one will finish it unchanged. (author, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land)

Rick Bass

An Unreasonable Woman will stand as one of this nation’s greatest works of nonfiction. I have never read a book quite like this one, and worry already that I might not yet again. This is one of the most powerful works of nonfiction I can remember reading in many years. In a cynical age, amidst such rampant loss and destruction, it’s easy to regard Diane Wilson’s book as simply a masterpiece, and to let it go at that. But we owe it more. This book inspires in us the courage to believe - to remember - we can still change the world. (award-winning author of The Hermit’s Story and Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had)

Doug Peacock

In these dire days when governments wage war on all life on earth, we await heroes. Now, a powerful voice has emerged from the Texas coast. Diane Wilson's passion is sufficient to drive her to civil disobedience and her physical courage sets her apart from our tame modern environmental mainstream. This remarkable woman has written a durable and empowering book. May we all draw strength from her victory. (author of Walking It Off)

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