I really believe that we have to end the plastic era. I really believe that the fossil fuels in this plastic is killing our planet, and we have to turn that around and start thinking totally different.
—Diane Wilson, fisherwoman, activist
Last month, at the first convening of the People’s Microplastics Conference in Calhoun County, Texas, a constellation of frontline activists, research scientists, and others crowded into a small community center to solve one of the greatest threats facing life on planet Earth today: the plasticization of all life.
As we wrote in our report back from the two-day convening (See: “Calhoun County’s First ‘People’s Microplastics Conference’ Hopes to Usher in the End of Plastics“), plastics emerged as an answer to the drive for convenience but has quickly revealed its more insidious nature, breaking down into micro- and nano-plastics that are now found in every environment on Earth and even entering and influencing human development in the womb.
It is hard to imagine this conference convening but for the decades of fierce activism of Diane Wilson, the subject of a new documentary, “Hellcat,” screened at the event. Deceleration met Wilson at the conference and followed up on the phone a couple weeks later to gauge her thoughts about the conference, regional organizing efforts, and the state of the growing global movement against plastics. The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Speaking with Diane Wilson
Roxana Rojas/Deceleration: I know this was the first conference of this type. Do you have anything you would like to share about what you hope this first conference can do, and if you would like to see it continue in the future?
Diane Wilson: Where we are at, we have Formosa plastics on one side of us, and we have another plastic plant, like Dow Chemical, on the other side of us. And given that we did such an in-depth hunt for pellets at Formosa—like, I’ve been doing this almost 37 years now—and you see what it does and where citizens can make a difference. It becomes real, real apparent, real fast, that the state, and the feds, and sometimes your local groups or local agencies, are failing in their job of making these companies accountable. Matter of fact, they get tax abatements, they get all of these perks like dredging options and all of these expedited permits. And the citizens are left holding the bag. You know, we’ve got Alcoa Aluminum. They came in, got all this [incentives], and what did they leave? They left 20-foot landfills full of bauxite and mercury. They leave a superfund [site] in the bay, and then they just leave. And we are left to deal with it. And you have fishermen out there trying their hardest to just stay alive, because most of them feel as if the last nail is in their coffin. And that’s really my background, is fishermen, the fishing community.
My aim with this conference is, one, to let the people in this area know about what it is they’re drowning in and what we’re trying to do about it. Some of it was really just an intent to educate them, because a lot of people are not—a lot of people were very afraid.
In the beginning they were horrified to be around us. They would almost walk on the other side of the road rather than be seen talking with us. Because we were such pariahs in this community.
This is important especially now that we won the lawsuit and that we’re getting zero discharge of plastic. We cleaned up Cox’s Creek, where there had been 10 stormwater outfalls—and there were like 1,500 samples that we took to court just from Cox’s Creek.
And that’s particularly interesting about this case, right? That this is one of the, if not the—and you can correct me—the first case that was brought forth by citizen initiative. That’s a big deal in this case.
Yeah because normally when you do a Clean Water Act lawsuit, you go to the state agencies and you get the documentation and you say, ‘You didn’t do it [clean up] here,’ or whatever. And there was no documentation. [Not] the state, nor the feds, nor Formosa did anything. There was no reporting, there was no inspection.
Basically we had to hunt down the violations. And that’s what we did. It was almost three years, and we were doing it daily, [in the] rain—well, we don’t have snow, but you know, with the hurricanes—we were tracking those pellets.
And people were, they were hooting at us. They thought we were crazier than loons being out there, tracking these [pellets] and being so persistent at it.
So, like I said, it was like we had over 1,500 samples collected in the creek. And then we had over 1,000 collected in Matagorda Bay.
And now we are—next year, probably—we are going to start doing the clean up of the plastic in Matagorda Bay. And that’s like 100 miles of area to be cleaned with plastic. And we’re looking at 150 landowners. Can you imagine dealing with 150 landowners. It’s like—your front property has had pellets and powder—and really, it’s never been done before. This has been decades of [contamination from] the [Formosa] stormwater outfalls, coming from the outfalls of their industrial waste stream. And it goes in the marshes, it’s on the waves, it goes out into the Gulf.
I was talking to a scientist the other day, and they’re finding microplastic from the plastic embedded in the soil. So it seems to be everywhere. And the thing of it is we are talking about visible microplastics.
There is a whole new ballgame with the nanoplastic that scares the fool out of me. It’s like, you can’t even see it. It’s like the microplastics is the tip of an iceberg. And the rest of it is like—where is that at, and what is it doing?
That’s brand new. That’s brand new stuff we’re looking at right now.
The conference was a part of letting this community know, because I feel like we’re at ground zero. But the other [part] is just to spread the information. We are definitely going to be doing a second and a third conference and for as long as we can. There is so much to be done out there. Educating is a big part of it.
Do you think it’s even harder to get folks to believe that there’s a problem right now? With this new research that is coming out talking about nanoplastics and things that are not easily visible? How do you think that’s going to change the nature of your work?
It’s like, we cannot keep doing this to ourselves. And they only want to increase it. But also the fact that there is so much new research. Almost every week there is a brand new report out there about things we never even conceived it was related to. And when I first started out—I mean, the agencies, they were like, they just poo-pooed it. Like: It’s just like litter. It’s no big deal. And the fish, they might eat it, but they’ll poop it out. It’s not something to worry about.
I was reading something recently, I think it was on the bacteria that are adhering to the microplastics, and they were like talking about, you need to be wearing gloves dealing with it. I’m like, oh my God, I’ve been wading in it. I’ve been picking it up. And they are just unearthing all of this.
I really believe that we have to end the plastic era. I really believe that the fossil fuels in this plastic is killing our planet, and we have to turn that around and start thinking totally different.
I imagine it won’t happen in my lifetime at all. But I guarantee you that is the big picture. Right now we’re just putting out fires—you know, like there was Exxon, and there’s Formosa, and there’s Dow, and there’s, you know, some of the oystermen down in Corpus Christi are filing suit against one of these plastic industries in their dredging operations, killing the oysters. And all they want to do is increase it. I would like to think it’s the last struggle of the fossil fuel industry trying to stay alive. That’s why it’s so fierce. But we have to, as a planet, as a part of this big round blue globe out there—we are killing ourselves. We have got to stop this.
And that fierceness, you’ve met it with your own fierceness, your own ferocity, right? You’ve been quite a match for these big corporations. And I guess that’s where the name of the documentary came from, Hellcat. And you were saying earlier, you know, “We were such pariahs.” And so how do you think having these circumstances surround you—like there’s these big corporations and you’re fighting them—does that influence the misconceptions that people may have about what you do?
Oh, I totally do. I think people are afraid. They think they are not the ones capable of doing [what I do]. They always want to say, “Oh, well, you’re, you know,” and they don’t realize I really am a real introvert, and I love solitude and I love quiet. I really am. And people don’t believe me. But that’s why I was a great shrimper, and most of the time I live very far out in the country. I avoid parties. But the thing of it is, I have a passion for this bay and for these fishermen. It’s my home, and I am really fighting for it very fiercely.
People in the beginning, they kept saying, “Well, you don’t even know how to do this. You’re not the right one.” And I even believed it. It’s like there had to be a smarter, more diploma-ed person, and a biology expert—and, you know, I didn’t know how to even run meetings or any of that.
And I was always kind of looking like, well, there probably is someone better suited for it. And if anybody showed the least interest, I would say, “Are you interested?” And they’re like, “Oh, no, no, no.” But I found out, you know, a number of years later, [that] I was perfect for this, and it was because of my passion for what I was doing.
So I think our limitations are all self-imposed, and I think you just have to do it.
I truly believe everybody has a destiny. Somewhere, they have a meaningful existence or reason. And I think it approaches everyone at some point, and it just depends what you do with it, whether you get afraid and turn away from it. Or you turn around and just walk into a part of yourself you didn’t realize you had.
It’s amazing. I think we’re invincible. It’s given me more than I’ve lost. But it’s soulful, soulful stuff.
Moving forward from what is shown in the documentary, the fight documented there and the victory, how does that speak to what comes next? And is there anything missing from the documentary that you would have liked to see?
I’ve always liked the part about the fishermen. I wish there was more about the fishermen, because that has made me who I am. And even when people want to say, “Oh, how do you want to be introduced?” They think you want to be introduced as an activist or whatever. And I’m like, I still see myself as a fisherwoman—very, very simple. I’m real simple, but I’m very focused. And I almost think that’s a key to this, that sometimes just you focus on it, and you got an intent, and it comes right to you. And I’m amazed by it. I really am. Some of the [industrial] plants, I think they see me and they’re like, oh, [she’s] a witch. You know?
That’s a misconception folks have of you?
I think they have become afraid of me and I think they’re surprised by my wins. And I really do believe it’s people [that] are the sleeping dragons. I mean, we got immense power for change. We just have to believe in it and just not be so well-behaved. I think we are so well-behaved. It’s like, you know, “don’t go too far, don’t want to be too impolite” or…just, you know, be bold.
I believe in boldness. I think Che Guevara said that. Be bold, be bold.
