The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and today we are diving back into our ongoing coverage of the corporate and government pollution that’s harming our bodies, disrupting our livelihoods, and turning more and more of our homes into sacrifice zones, where poor and working people are being abandoned to live in conditions that threaten life itself. And as we’ve done in East Palestine, Ohio, here in South Baltimore, in Conyers, Georgia, and even Granbury, Texas, we’re taking you straight to the front lines and speaking directly with the people living, working, and fighting for justice in America’s sacrifice zones.

And today, I am really grateful to be joined on the show by someone who’s been fighting on the front lines for a long, long time. And she is continuing that fight as we speak. Diane Wilson is a fourth generation fisherwoman and a lifelong resident of Seadrift, Texas. She’s a Goldman Prize-winning activist and currently serves as executive director of the San Antonio Bay, estuaring waterkeeper. She’s the author of numerous books, including the highly acclaimed 2006 biographical history, An Unreasonable Woman, a true story of shrimpers, politicos, polluters, and the fight for Seadrift, Texas, which details Diane’s epic journey from shrimp boat captain and mother of five to social and ecological justice warrior and global folk hero who took on a multi-billion dollar corporation polluting the bays along her beloved Texas Gulf Coast. In 2019, Wilson and San Antonio Bay estuarian waterkeeper won a landmark $50 million clean water act settlement after suing Fermosa plastics in Point Comfort, Texas.

And she and other waterkeepers have spent years collecting thousands of samples of evidence of the Dow Chemical Company and other plastic producers continual plastic pollution in industrial canals and waterways outside of their facilities. Now, as we speak, Diane is on a hunger strike, which is now in its third week, and she is camping outside the Dow Union Carbide Plant in Seadrift. In a letter sent to Dow CEO, Jim Fitterling, she explains why. “I’m a fourth generation fisherwoman and have lived my entire life in Seadrift, Texas, a fishing town that is approximately eight miles from your Dao Seadrift plant. I am deeply distressed by the current and proposed hazardous radioactive and plastic pollution threats to the bay from Dow and am embarking on a hunger strike and encampment to call for a cease to these emissions and plans for more. Violating the Clean Water Act and using the region as a guinea pig for dangerous nuclear reactors are completely unacceptable.

On January 4th, 2026, Dow and its subsidiary Union Carbide requested a change to its wastewater permit in a 320-page application. This was three weeks after San Antonio Bay estuarian waterkeeper announced plans to sue Dow over unpermitted plastic pollution. Dow Union Carbide’s latest application requests sought, among other things, to loosen standard language that limited floating solids to “trace amounts in chemical plant wastewater.” Another concern, Diane’s letter continues. “On March 31st, 2025, Dao’s wholly owned subsidiary Longmont Energy LLC applied to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to construct four nuclear reactors at the Dow Union Carbide Seadrift site. They are a type of nuclear reactor that has never been built in the US and is not licensed by the NRC. In response to all these concerns that I feel will be devastating to our bays, fisheries, marine life, and Seadrift fishing community. On March 2nd, 2026, I began a hunger strike and twenty four seven encampment near the entrance in the ditch of the Dow Union Carbide Seadrift facility.

I have a tent and am camping out 24 hours seven days a week to impress upon Dow Union carbide our intense dislike and frustration of decades of plastic pollution being discharged into our bays and waterways. “And again, I am truly grateful to have Diane Wilson herself joining us now from the ditch outside the Seadrift facility, like literally in the trenches. Diane, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. And I want to just jump right in and ask if you can tell our listeners more about what you’re doing right now, why you’re doing it, and how you’re doing as of this recording.

Diane Wilson:

Well, thank you, Max, for that great introduction there. I was very kind to you. Yeah, I’m in my 15th day of a hunger strike in square in the ditch. I know what’s public property and what Union Car Biden Dallas property. I don’t know whether most people know it, but I had my list of demands. I was going to ask of Dow and Union Carbide about what it would take to get me off this hunger strike. So I went over there to the headquarters over there. It’s not too far away, and I walked in there. It was a pretty empty lobby, but all of a sudden, here this guy came out and he said he wanted to know what I wanted. And I said,” Well, I had this letter and I wanted to deliver it to the plant manager. “So he would deliver it directly to Jim Federing.

And he said,” Well, the plant matter isn’t there anymore and the person who was in his place, he don’t know where he was. “And just as I was getting ready to say,” Well, I really want to give it to someone in authority so I can make sure that Jim Featherling, who was the CEO, got it. He told me he would take it himself. And when I insisted again, I really would like to get it to someone close to the plant manager. “He said he was head of security and he said,” This is the way it is, Diane. “He said,” You’re not going to sit on the couch. You’re not going to deliver another letter. “And he said,” If you set foot on this property, you’re going to be arrested. “And I said,” Arrested for delivering a letter?

“And he said,” Past history, Diane, past history. “And he said,” I was there when you climbed the tire and change yourself. “And so he wasn’t going to tolerate me in that office at all. So we went back to this little tent that I got here and within a couple hours I had three cops show up and they served me a paper that I still don’t know what it was about because they wouldn’t give us a coffee. And basically they said we would be arrested if we set foot on Dow’s property. And so already we kind of … There’s a little bit of … I think they’re real peeved off on me. And anyway, but we’re still sitting here. I’ve been here 15 days, 24 hours.

My place where I’m sitting is not bad. I get to look at Dow all day long if I want to and sit out in chairs. But basically the reason why I’m doing it is because, one, is I think Callahoun County where I live, which is a tiny little county on the Mid-Texas Gulf Coast. We got Corpus town below us, we got Galveston up above us, and we have two of the largest plastic plants that have been discharging pellets. When Fermosa was there, I actually had workers in the plant who first told me about the plastic pellets that were out in the bay because he said he worked in wastewater and he could see it when they were doing treatment, he could see all this plastic, but it really hit home when he took his three boys fishing, these little bitty kids, and they all had plastic pellets on the bottom of their feet.

And that’s when he realized plastics were out there in the bay. And so he was a little bit of a whistleblower. He got fired by the company because he spoke out, and that’s kind of what they do down here, is you speak out, you’re fired, and you’re blackfalled. And so I met him one day in the furthest place away from this county that we could get, everybody’s afraid of being seen. And so I think he picked a beer joint in a town about 45 miles away. And at first he had to feel that he could trust me. And so we had to sit there a while before he could even trust me with the information, but basically it amounted to all of this plastic being produced. And I believe Hermosa made a thousand pellets per day was going into the bay. And so we started checking the bays.

And then I had a meeting with Pramosa and I remember asking … It was a room full of a conference room, and it had 14 guys and suits around the table. And I remember reaching across the table and asking … He was kind of like the chief executive there. And I said,” How many pellets are y’all putting in that bay? “And he said,” Not a single pallet, not one. “He said,” We’re selling everyone. “And the thing with it is, I knew that was live because I had just been to their outfalls and they were all over the place. And so that’s when a couple workers from that chemical plant, Romosa, started helping me find plastic. And we started going along the beaches. We would go to the boat launches, we would wait out in the marshes, and then I wised up about stormwater outfalls, because most people think of a plastic plant is you have an industrial wastewater outlet outfall, and it’s probably out in the bay or maybe it’s in a river, but they don’t think about the stormwater outfalls.

And in this case, for most, I had 10 of them, and they go out into these little bayous and creeks. And that’s where I got a kayak and I started hunting down those stormwater outfalls. And to give you a sense of the amount of pellets that can come out of them, first of all, some of them are so big you could land a plane in them. And one of the outfalls that I had, when we had collected discovery for Mosa and I had some documentation, one of those pieces of information that promotes I had saved for some odd reason, it was that outfall six, stormwater outfall six, they’ve been doing it 26 years, 10 outfalls. And on this particular day, they put out 170,000 pounds of pellets. That’s probably close to four billion pellets. You got to think this is 26 years and this is one of 10.

And so the amount of plastic that was in that creek was … I mean, we got over a thousand samples there. We got over 1,000 or 1,500 samples in Madagora Bay. And so we won on that case. We got zero discharge of plastic. We got enforcement, we got monitoring, and we got a $50 million settlement that we put entirely back on the community who had been impacted. And so when I started collecting the pellets on Dow, I mean, in one spot, on one spot around the Victoria Barch Canal, it’s where they dump into the Victoria Barch Canal, which goes to San Antonio Bay, which goes to the Gulf of Mexico. In our little fishing community of Seadrip, we have Vietnamese crabbers, we have Hispanic ocemen, and we have shrimping that has gone to hell, literally. And so basically all of these pellets are being discharged into San Antonio Bay.

And like I said, when we were making samples in one sample, it took about 15 minutes to collect it. It weighed 107 pounds and it was over two million pellets. And this was … We were finding things like that all over that barge canal that emptied it into San Antonio Bay, which is the home of the endangered whipping crane that’s been an endangered species for quite a while. So we’re doing that. And in the middle of it, Dow is putting in four modular nuclear reactors the first of its kind. In fact, I think people were telling me even newscasters up in Washington DC were talking about it because it was the first of its kind and had never been done before and it wasn’t licensed by the NRC. It was kind of like an experimental modular because they’re small and they thought they could get them in here easier.

And the reason why Dow was doing it was to fuel their process of making plastic and what they were going to do in the meantime, they were going to lay out 4,200 workers globally so they could bring in AI. So workers who think for a moment that this is a good deal for them, it is not. The only person it is good for is union carve out in doubt. That’s the only people that is being provided because it’s right right near San Antonio Bay and in Guadalupe Bay and Mission Bay, and it’s a small fishing community, and we get a lot of hurricanes. So it’s like the thing in the way it is in Texas, the Texas legislature, the governor, TCQ, our state environmental agency, I have went to them before to just look for information, files that they have. And I had some inspectors that were watching me for a while, and then pretty soon they pulled me aside, took me to a file, pulled it out and gave it to me.

And they said, “We cannot do anything with that information because it stops in Austin.” And they said, “We don’t even want to know why it stops like that. ” And he said, “You do something with it. ” So there is this reluctance from the state agencies to enforce, to pursue, to enforce, and then you don’t have OSHA at all who is helping these workers out here. So you’re right. So eventually you feel like they’re going to push in the nuclear reactors. They are going to endow is going to push what they’re trying to do is … We have collected all these violations against them, and they’ve been doing it for decades. I talked to grown elderly men as old as me, and they remember swimming in there and the pellets were all over everything. So that is 50 years, that’s at least 50 years that they’ve been doing this.

And the thing of it is, what they’re trying to do now with their wastewater permit, they’re trying to say the limit that they are violating like crazy is too vague and it’s too strange. So they kind of want an open license to pollute with plastic. And the way these permit fights go, you’re lucky if you get community standing. And so to me, it was like … I just draw a line, they are not getting it. They are not getting this community, they’re not getting that vague. And so for years I’ve been fighting industry 38 years. And in the beginning, it was like nobody was willing to stand up because they were afraid because you could lose your jobs, you couldn’t get loans at banks, you would be intimidated. And so for a long time, the only thing I had was myself. And so I did civil disobedience because at least I had myself and I found out it works.

It really works and it has power and it has the ability to change things because industry cannot control hunger strikes or civil disobedience. It just aggravates the hell out of them, I think, quite frankly. That’s why I’m doing it because we try to do lawsuits. We’ve got a number of things legally we’re trying to do, but so I’m out here on this hunger strike. I got a tent aim to stay and it’s just, I’m going to go as far as I’m going to go. And they don’t know. And I’m pretty stubborn. And I think my longest hunger strike was 57 days.

Maximillian Alvarez:

You’ve left quite the legend of a stubborn woman, right? I mean, if that’s one thing we all know about Diane Wilson. Yeah. Right? That’s true. And I wanted to ask a little bit about that because I was telling you before we began recording, you’re someone I’ve wanted to get on the show for a number of years now, and there’s so much I want listeners to hear about your incredible story. And we’ll have to, I’m sure, save most of that for the next time we have you on. Sure. But I wanted to ask if we could sort of do a shortened version so that people could understand how far back this fight goes for you and how personal it is for you to be a fourth generation fisherman, a shrimp boat captain in these waters. And you saw what these industries were doing to your home.

So can you talk people through just a little more about your working life and how this issue began to change your life and your home, like how that fight has evolved over those 38 years you’ve been …

Diane Wilson:

Sure. Well, I guess it all started when I was about 40 years old and I had been shrimping by myself. I was a mother of five kids, five kids. I pretty much said that five kids. And shrimping was starting to get bad. So I started running a fish house, and I don’t know whether y’all know what a fish house is, but it’s like an old 10 building and it’s sitting on the docks and boats come up there and they tie up, they get fuel, they get ice, and then they go out shrimping. And when they come back in the evening, I unload all their cats, I process it. I figure out what size count shrimp they had, and that’s real tricky. And then I paid them with the check, but I was working for somebody else. It was called Froggy Shrimp House. And one day I had a shrimper that had three different types of cancer.

He had these cancer tumors all over his arm and he was in because he was going to Galveston to get cancer treatment. And he threw a newspaper article to me on the desk and he said, read that guy. And it was front page heading and it was by the Associated Press. So it was a serious story. And it mentioned Calhoun County, which is the county I live in, about three or four times. And it was the first time the toxic release inventory was ever made public. And the toxic release inventory is a community right to know. And that was passed by Congress because of the people that died in Bocall from a union carbide incident that killed thousands and injured over 500,000. It was awful. I believe it’s the worst environmental disaster in the world. And they mentioned Calhoun County because we were number one in the nation for the most toxic student land.

And by nature, I really am a really white person. I’m kind of solitary, not much for talking. And I know people think that’s a lie. They think I’m a line of storm, but no, I really am an introvert. And so what I did, I acted totally out of character. I went down to the city hall and walked down there and I said, “I want to have a meeting about this article.” And so they wrote my name down and was like, “Diane’s have a meeting.” And then the very next day, I had the same lady who signed that. She came to the fish house and said, “Diane, you can’t have this meeting. You can’t have this meeting. There’s too many red flags, red flags.” And she said, “You can’t do it at all. We’re not going to give you the building.” And I was extremely puzzled what on earth she was talking.

I had no idea why she said that. And then the next day, I had the bank president of Cedric, who I had never talked to in my life, and she walked, came in the fish house in a nice three-piece suit, and he walked out in the dock and he said, “Diane, are you starting a vigilante roof and fixing the roast industry alive?” And I’m like, “What?” I mean, that’s the type of reaction I got from the very beginning and it has just gotten worse after that. And the main thing is what I was concerned about was primarily the bay, because that is your livelihood. The bay is the heart and soul of the community. And it’s where I remember how it was and how alive it was and with the boats and when they were getting ready for the season and they were out there laying out their nets and they were laying out the keball and they were rigging everything up.

And then on the night before a season started, they went out in the bay to anchor so they could start the next day before the sun come up. And it was like a small little city out there with all the little lanterns that they had out there.

And I loved that bay. I loved that community. I loved the fish house. The bay is very, very important to me. And when I was a little girl, because when your dad or your brother is a shrimper, you go down to the bay when all the boats start coming in. And when I was a little girl, I would go with my sisters and my mom and would walk down to the bay. And when I would go down there, there was this old woman in this long dress and she was always there and she really likes me coming down to the bay. She really wouldn’t say anything, but I thought she was my grandmother and that vision of her persisted because I realized later the water personified itself. So I really had a real vision of the water and she was an old grandma and so it’s real personal.

Anyway-

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, no, I really appreciate you sharing it. And it both makes my eyes sparkle to see that vision that you’re describing and it breaks my heart to know how much of that has left us and it’s gone and that’s- It

Diane Wilson:

Is. It is.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And it’s the kind of thing that I see for myself and hear through the stories of other people living around this country. And like you, and I talked about before, this is a show about the working class for the working class and about all manner of issues that affect working class people. And I just wanted to ask on that note, if you could just drive home even more, the people who made their livings in that bay, the people who depend on those industries, what’s happened to these communities since that time when you were a little girl to now?

Diane Wilson:

What has happened is, in Seadrift, when I was a little bit a girl, I mean, we had like five fish houses where you could sell shrimp. Shrimping was formerly the biggest way you could make a living. You could really make out a living and Oh, so we had five fish houses. We probably had 125 boats. The entire community was either fishermen or they supported it by doing welding or being a diesel mechanic or selling the webbing and the cable to rig up your boat. And there were boat builders. So the whole town was alive because of that bay. And now there are no fish out, zero. They are bulldozed. If you go through seed drip, every business that had been there is boarded up. They’re gone. And maybe there’s a handful, maybe three or four boats that go out. So now there are, instead of five fish houses and 125 shrimp boats, there are no shrimp houses, none.

And there’s maybe five shrimp boats that go out. And when they go out in a season, it might last two weeks instead of a number of months. And also, if a shrimper wants to decide and he does catch a little shrimp, he has to either go on Facebook and sell it on Facebook and say, “Here, I’ve got some shrimp. Would you come buy my shrimp and tries to sell them on Facebook?” Or he takes his truck and sits out on the edge of the road and sells five pounds of shrimp. And it has totally changed an entire community, an entire fishery. And it seems that … And I’ve even seen articles that it said in the portal backwave, it was like some of the officials would say, “Well, the shrimping and the fishing industry is done with. We need to wipe our hands of them and invest in industry.” And it’s like they are the ones I largely blame for the destruction of the bays down here.

We’ve had the brown tide, we’ve had the green tide, we’ve had the red tide. Then we had the largest dolphin die off in the mammal stranding network’s history. And there were dead dolphins all over Matagorda and San Antonio Bay. I remember when I was working at the fish house and some of the shrimpers were bringing in the dead dolphins because they’d find them out there where they’re at and they brought them in on their boats. And then here are these long trailers from Galveston who pick up the dolphins and they take them to Galveston to do nicropsies on them to find out why all of the dolphins were dying. And it’s like the industry has been destroyed. It’s not there anymore. And the only thing that is doing a little bit now is oystering. So that’s one of the last things that they can make a living with.

And now there’s scientists that are finding, they have tested the oysters in Matagorda Bay and they have found the microplastics in the tissue, not in the shell, in the tissue of the oysters. And with all the new science coming out on health impacts on ingesting microplastics, it’s like, oh, Lordy, that could do great harm to a market. Because if you’ve got microplastic in something you’re eating, that’s not good.

Maximillian Alvarez:

No. And it’s one of the reasons why I try to communicate on this show and on the real news. Every time I talk to another community that’s been affected by corporate or government pollution or a community that’s suffering the effects of manmade climate change and being abandoned to the devastation, whether it’s communities like my home in Southern California burning every year or communities like Asheville, North Carolina, like getting walloped by massive hurricanes. This stuff affects all of us, even if we keep telling ourselves that it’s not our concern or that’s just an environmentalist issue over there or yada, yada, yada. I wanted to ask, when you speak to people like that, how do you respond? How do you convey to them, “This is your issue and you already are living it whether you want to acknowledge it or not. The microplastics, the chemicals from DuPont and Dow, they’re already in your blood.”

Diane Wilson:

Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, mainly I have to be … I know with fishermen, what I had to do is because basically with the industry in such a crisis that it is, is most commercial shrimpers felt like the last snail was in their coffin, that you couldn’t fight it, that they did not have long to survive. And so the only way I could get them is to, I would have to get on their boats, literally on their boats and sit face-to-face with them and have a long conversation with them and I could make them see. But it was like you really, really had to get on a one-to-one basis. And it’s real interesting because at one point I got really, really perturbed with Fermosa because they didn’t have their wastewater permit, but the state and the EPA was allowing them to discharge into Lavaca Bay. And I had filed an appeal and supposedly they weren’t supposed to be able to discharge, but I had called EPA and asked how the permit was doing and she thought I was Primosa’s lawyer because Primosa’s lawyer was named Diane too.

And she just started telling me, “Oh, how the waste of water was going and were you taking control of all the copper and the chromium and stuff you were violating?” And I realized they had totally ignored it and they were letting them discharge. And I got so outraged. I was outraged and it was like nobody could see what they were doing and flouting the law because fishermen couldn’t flout the law and a person who broke the street limit, he couldn’t flow the law, but a chemical company with all the money and power is like whatever they wanted. So I decided to sink my shrimp boat on top of their discharge pipe and to make sure it was like no safety net. There was going to be no safety net. So I pulled the motor out and gave it away because you can’t think about with a diesel engine.

It’s got all this, it’s got fuel. So I took it out in the middle of the bay to sink it and somehow or another, the Coast Guard found out about it. So I like had three Coast Guard cutters chased me across the bay and the fishermen on the docks saw that because the Coast Guard caught up with me and had ropes caught. I’ve got about 10 ropes tied out over my bay and they were actually sleeping on my boat. And the fishermen who normally would not have done anything because they were a bit apathetic, they all got in their boats and went out in the middle of the bay and protested it. So you can see sometimes talking does it, but often action does it too.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh, I mean, that’s … Moments of action and solidarity like that are just … I really hope people listening take that to heart because it’s not impossible. And I know all of the many, many evils and struggles that we’re facing make it feel like change is impossible, but people like Diane are living proof that it’s not, right? I mean, and we’re only going to change things if more of us get involved in the fight and if more of us talk to each other, like Diane’s saying, like one-on-one, connecting with each other on that human level like we’ve tried to do here with folks in East Palestine, Ohio and beyond. And so Diane, I know I’m talking to you so much when you’re on hunger strike and I feel guilty about it, and I promise I’ll wrap things up soon. But I guess just two final questions.

I wanted to ask, if you could also talk to folks in those communities like East Palestine, I mean, the vinyl chloride is what spilled all over their damn neighborhood and then they set it on fire.

Diane Wilson:

Yeah, absolutely.

Maximillian Alvarez:

You’ve been fighting that stuff too. I mean, what would you say to communities like that and like the ones here in South Baltimore, Conyers, Georgia, Moss Landing, California, like these communities that are going through toxic events like this and are facing the impossible struggle of fighting a billion dollar company or a negligent government, what would your advice be to people about how to fight and win and how to keep going even when all feels hopeless?

Diane Wilson:

Well, I tell you, one time it was like Sharon Levine of Rise St. James, she was a Goldman Award winner too, and she was in Louisiana and Fermosa Plastics was trying to build a $12 billion plastic plant, just like the one I was fighting in Point Comfort, Texas. And so I used all the pellets that I had collected for that first lawsuit against Formosa. They packaged them up and put them in almost like a cow cart and hauled it to Louisiana. And we had pictures blown up of what that pellets look like because people do not understand what pellets look like on the water. They don’t understand what the powder looks like, and they don’t understand how severe it can be. They call it little nerdles and you think it’s something kind of cute. And so when Sharon and Rice Sam James was having a meeting before their Paris City Council, is I went up there and spoke my heart out because I get very passionate about it when I’m talking about what they’re doing to the Bay and it’s what’s contaminating the seafood and what’s affecting the people.

And I know the advice I always, I told Sharon is, “Do not let this plant put a foot in your community.” And I always told, I said, “The one thing I regretted about my fight with Cromoza is that I did not stop them, absolutely stop them.” I have been over quite a few places where I speak about the action I do, and I know I have been in some places like in California, like with the Bioneers where I spoke about what I did, and I always tell them, I said, “We’re too well-behaved.” And I truly do. I think we’re too well-behaved and we’re like saying, “Oh, pretty pleased, will you save the bays? Will you pretty pleased not pollut us today?” And it’s like, no, I think we’re way too polite and way too well-behaved. And that’s why I advocate being an unreasonable woman. I think change is made by unreasonable women.

I really do.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah. And again, you are living proof of that and you carry on a very proud and long tradition of other unreasonable women who have made history and who are making it today. And I wanted to sort of end by bringing us back to the history making, change making action that brought us together for this interview, back to you in your tent outside of this facility in Seadrift. And so I wanted to ask in closing, if you could tell listeners a bit more about why this matters, what the demands are, and if they’re listening, what’s your message to folks about what they can do to get involved in this fight? Okay.

Diane Wilson:

I guess there’s two issues here is one is zero discharge of plastic. There is a huge movement growing on out there about plastic. Plastic in your clothes, in the bottles, in your … Everything around us is made of plastic, and they’re now finding out the damage made with the health, the health impacts, the damage to the environment that can be made from microplastics and pellets and all of this stuff. And so the thing of it is, is I feel like where I’m at is kind of like ground zero of plastic. And we are starting a zero discharge of plastic campaign. So every single plastic facility across the United States and elsewhere, they will have these industries pledge, put it on their permit, not pledge, put it on their wastewater permit, zero discharge of plastic, and that they will have a … And we had this on Fermosa’s discharge.

It was a wastewater sampling mechanism and it works because you can say, “I want zero discharge of plastic,” but yet it’s like, who knows if they’re getting zero discharge? Do you think the industry’s going to tell you? And it’s like you can bet they want. So the thing of it is with Promosa, we have a wastewater sampling mechanism that’s about the size of a tall, medium sized room, and it’s sitting right over their wastewater discharge pipe. And that sampling mechanism takes 3% of their waste stream, and it tests that three times a week, and that’s where it finds if there is plastic in their waste stream, there’s about three different ways inside the WSM where you can find it tested. And when they are showing up in their electrical equipment and the testing and all of that, then they’re violating zero discharge. So that’s what we’re trying to get from Dow and Dow is really fighting it.

And matter of fact, they want just the opposite. They want a open-ended discharge of plastic into the bay. And the other one is that those modular nuclear reactors, they want to bring in this untested … There’s no containment like a typical nuclear plant where it’s to protect in case there’s a meltdown. There’s none of that. All they have is fuel, and they say those fuel balls are the containment. So it’s really been untested, so we really don’t know. So we’re really like a guinea pig, and they are going to use that nuclear reactor to process so they can make more plastic. And oh, by the way, we’re laying off 4,200 workers because we’re bringing in AI. And it’s like it’s an extremely selfish and destructive manner from Dow. And so to make my point, to really make my point, I’m sitting right here. If you live near a plastic plant, we know how you can find the pellets.

So we are very much … If anybody out there is around a plastic plant or they’re discharging and they want to know how to fight that or how to collect evidence as get in touch with us. And we would be delighted to show you how, because I’ve got an extreme load of information on zero discharge of plastic. And the other one is just, I would encourage anybody who has an issue in their own community. And I know most people think they’re not the type, they’re not the type, they’re not the type, but you are. It’s only ourselves that limit us. It’s only ourselves. And I would encourage them to be a bit unreasonable. A bit unreasonable.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guest, Diane Wilson, legendary fisherwoman, author, and activist who is currently on a hunger strike outside the Dow Chemical Company, Union Carbide Facility in Seadrift, Texas. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network, where we do grassroots reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Check us out across our YouTube channel, our different podcast feeds, our website, and our social media pages, and help us do more work like this by going to the realnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really makes a difference.

I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Solidarity forever.