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View a segment from TEXAS GOLD (Produced by Turtle Island Films), a film focusing on Diane Wilson's fight to clean up the bays.

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Diane Wilson

Topics:

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

Travels from: Houston, TX

Exclusively Represented by Speaking Matters

Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper, 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.

Wilson recently spent 74 days in a cold and crowded Texas jail cell. She had been arrested in Houston in December, 2005 for speaking out during a fundraiser for former U.S. Representative Tom Delay, then jailed under an existing warrant for protesting at the Dow Chemical plant in her hometown of Seadrift, Texas. Wilson went to prison for making the point that the world's worst chemical disaster could well be repeated in her backyard.

Wilson speaks to the core of courage in each of us that seeks to honor our own moral compass, and act on our convictions. Her work on behalf of the people and aquatic life of Seadrift, Texas, has won her a number of awards 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, and the Bioneers Award. She is also a co-founder of CODEPINK and continues to lead the fight for social justice. An Unreasonable Woman is her first book.

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