PANUPS: Diane Wilson Released from Jail

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Tue, 21 Feb 2006 23:06:50 GMT

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PANUPS: Diane Wilson Released from Jail

 

 

Diane Wilson Released from Jail

February 21, 2006

 

" Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them...or shall we

transgress them at once? " wrote Henry David Thoreau in his famed

essay, " Civil Disobedience. " On Friday, February 17 another inspiring

American activist, Diane Wilson, was released after 74 days in a cold

and crowded Texas jail cell. She had been arrested in Houston on

December 5th for speaking out during a fundraiser for

recently-indicted U.S. Representative Tom Delay, then jailed under an

existing warrant for protesting at the Dow Chemical plant in her

hometown of Seadrift, Texas. Diane Wilson went to prison for making

the point that the world's worst chemical disaster could well be

repeated in her backyard.

 

Take action now to insist that Texas governor Rick Perry enforce laws

against toxic Texas polluters.

 

In 2002, Wilson climbed a chemical tower at the Dow plant in her

hometown of Seadrift, Texas, and dropped a banner declaring,

" Dow-Responsible for Bhopal. " Dow is the sole owner of the chemical

company Union Carbide, which operated a pesticide plant in Bhopal,

India. In 1984 the poorly maintained factory exploded, filling the

streets of the city with toxic clouds of methyl isocyanate gas. The

Indian government charged Union Carbide and its former CEO Warren

Anderson with manslaughter for killing 15,000 people--although the

real figure may well be over 20,000--and claimed damages for injuries

to 100,000 more.

 

Wilson's imprisonment raises the question of just who our justice

system is protecting us from. Twenty one years after the explosion,

Anderson has yet to appear for his criminal trial in India. Meanwhile,

the citizens of Bhopal who survived that ghoulish night continue to

suffer and die not only from the long-term effects of continuing

contamination, but also from the poverty that comes from being too

sick to support a family. Survivors of the Bhopal gas leak are

demanding that Anderson and Dow face trial, clean up the toxic site,

pay for medical treatment and compensation for illnesses, and provide

economic rehabilitation for those whose ability to work has been affected.

 

On February 20th, 150 survivors of the Union Carbide plant explosion

and victims of the resulting groundwater contamination have set off on

foot to New Delhi demanding a meeting with the Prime Minister.

Depending on the response of the central government, the marchers may

decide to go on an indefinite fast at the end of their 900 kilometer

long march. Read a daily blog on the march at

http://www.bhopal.net/march/.

 

Those who suffer from Dow's pollution in the United States are

recognizing that they have a tangible common bond with the Bhopal

survivors. Wilson, a mother of five, captained a shrimp boat off the

coast of Seadrift, Texas for years until she noticed that her friends

were getting cancer and the shrimp she depended on were dying. When

she found out that Dow and other chemical plants were dumping lethal

ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride into her beloved bays, Wilson

launched herself on a mission to stop the pollution. She hatched a

plan to sink her shrimp boat on top of a dioxin flume, and left her

livelihood behind to fight full time against corporate power.

Recognizing her community's bond with others harmed by the chemical

industry, Wilson forged an alliance with the survivors in Bhopal,

resulting in her action at Dow's Seadrift plant.

 

A Texas court charged Wilson with a minor misdemeanor for trespassing,

but instead of showing up for her sentence immediately, she took off

in search of fellow fugitive Warren Anderson. " This company has

warrants after their arrest, and they can be defiant and not show up,

but let a little woman with a banner drop it... and I'm a dangerous

woman, and I have to be thrown in jail, " Wilson decried.

 

Wilson's stay in jail was not a comfortable experience. She spent her

first several days sleeping huddled on the floor without even a

blanket or a toothbrush, in a cell where the one tiny window was

papered over. " It feels incredible, just incredible to be out, " she

stated Friday a few hours after being released. " I've had a lot of

people, especially the girls inside who know what it's like to sit on

the floor of a crowded cell every day, tell me, 'I guess you won't do

this again.' "

 

Yet her spirit has only been strengthened. " I told them I don't regret

it, and I would do it again. We have to take our issues as seriously

as the corporations and administration do. We need to be as committed

to our issues as we can be; we need to draw a line and hold it. "

 

Shocked by the conditions she found in the Victoria County Jail,

Wilson drafted a letter to the local sheriff deploring the worst

abuses. " The women in this jail are predominantly African American or

Hispanic and very poor. Most of their offenses are minor, for things

like traffic tickets or soliciting or violating probation--all

non-violent, yet they are forced to remain in the cell without counsel

for long periods of time, " she wrote. Wilson's letter also described

how lack of health care in the jail resulted in cases of a ruptured

gallbladder, kidney failure, and even the tragic death of a newborn

baby whose inmate mother was placed in solitary confinement when her

water broke, leaving her to face a breech birth on her own.

 

" Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a

just man is also a prison, " Thoreau declared after spending one night

in jail in 1849 for refusing to pay taxes to a government that

supported slavery. Thoreau's teachings that individuals should follow

their own moral compass when the laws of their country are unjust

provided the philosophical base for the actions of Gandhi and Martin

Luther King Jr. Today, Diane Wilson uses her moral compass to draw the

lines of right and wrong, to speak out that polluting her community

and taking the lives of 15,000 people and injuring 100,000 more in

India is a much greater crime than unfurling a banner from a tower, or

the minor transgressions of her cell mates.

 

A government that allows corporations to commit crimes with impunity

becomes implicit in these crimes itself. A freedom of information act

request in 2004 revealed that the U.S. State Department denied India's

extradition order for Warren Anderson after the U.S. Department of

Commerce joined Union Carbide in pleading on Anderson's behalf.

 

Thoreau described the act of civil disobedience as asserting personal

freedom--freeing oneself from the fear of state retribution for

non-cooperation with injustice. " I saw that, if there was a wall of

stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one

to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I

was, " he observed from his jail cell. We curtail our own freedom with

fear of speaking out. Yet there is a Diane Wilson in each of us, a

core of courage to honor our own moral compass, to stride past fear

toward the freedom to act on our convictions, to be as committed to

our issues as we can be.

 

Take action!

 

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is currently

revising its penalty policy, providing an opportunity to push for

greater accountability against polluters that break the law and put

public health at risk. Call Governor Perry to support stricter

enforcement and penalties against corporate polluters.

http://ga4.org/ct/271RIZS1AzO4/

 

 

Sources:

For more information on the struggle of the Bhopal survivors, visit

the Students for Bhopal web site:

http://www.studentsforbhopal.org/MarchToDelhi.htm#March

 

Wilson, Diane. 2006. Letter from Jail.

http://www.chelseagreen.com/2005/items/unreasonablewoman/fromjail

 

Pesticide Action Network. 2005. The 21st Anniversary of the Bhopal

Pesticide Plant Explosion.

http://www.panna.org/resources/panups/panup_20051202.dv.html

 

Thoreau, Henry David. 1849. " Civil Disobedience. " See

http://eserver.org/thoreau/civil.html

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