Help Diane Wilson’s Texas clean water triumphs go national: this protest model fits all

Join the unshakable crusade against polluters everywhere, even your backyard. Diane’s pioneering blueprint relies on maximizing vexation to resource defilers, inciting public outrage, non-violently confronting corporate and agency resistance, then hunting up full legal, statutory muscle.

After Diane Wilson’s legendary breakthroughs in Texas, improbably against the most flagrantly unregulated state, we more accurately honor her quest as the “heroine’s journey.” For Diane epitomizes the classic “hero’s journey,” sacrificing self for a higher, communal good by: 1) abandoning comfort zones to face alien, seemingly unbeatable foes; 2) never giving up and enduring all ordeals; 3) testing all limits (inside and out); 4) then “seizing the sword” that overcomes fiery dragons; and 5) retrieving the invaluable prize that redeems a wasteland. Not for fame or riches but to clean up her beloved shrimping nurseries and help disease victims face and recoup losses. In fact, Diane lives very modestly in a small house, her prior normality wholly disrupted, life-style, family, home, husband, even her dog was shot.

According to director/producer Fax Bahr (personal email), inspiration and awe spawned his stunning documentary, Hellcat, The True Story of an Unreasonable Texan:

I made Hellcat because I am deeply inspired by Diane Wilson’s story. Here we have a divorced-mother-of-five-shrimp-boat-captain with a high school education and zero resources bring to account one of the most egregious plastic polluters on the planet. It’s a story that should inspire everyone. If that woman can do it, sure as hell so can I!

Now step two in this heroic voyage

The next event horizon, which Bahr terms the “impact campaign,” targets the prime time of national visibility, not just to raise consciousness but deliver proven blueprints to break new ground against defiant, well-heeled dragons. Until handcuffed, polluters profit by violating rules, laws and communal norms that ruin stable ecosystems that for centuries fostered family health and integral neighborhoods. The Winning Wilson Way is totally scalable across at home and overseas, no matter the foe’s heft or entrenchment:

1) invent brilliant, unorthodox, non-violent protests, first to irritate chronic corporate polluters and second, to publicize horrendous (often invisible) outcomes: diseases, pristine waterways degraded as toxic wastelands, displacing sustainable, positive local industries with unsafe, hazardous jobs;

2) relentlessly expose depth and magnitude of eco-devastation, contempt for environmental law and workable limits, worsened by gross agency negligence that won’t scrutinize, let alone suppress ruination;

3) expand outreach to inform and engage locals, especially those abused by disease, disruption and unemployment;

4) never give up, whatever the anguish: life costs, Diane’s 15 hunger strikes, fines, arrests, even jail-time;

5) partner with skilled allies to investigate short and long-term solutions to intolerable, lethal toxicity;

6) never give up; NEVER give up; keep the pressure constant until fat cat ne’er-do-wells relent and change;

7) maximize social, media, political and legal clout for full-scale leverage that seeks binding, stinging court victories and tens of million dollars in fines. Oh, and never give up.

Expanding Diane’s $50 million dollar settlement against Formosa Plastics, Bahr openly declares

Hellcat is a call to action, meant to engage and enrage. Everyone now has microplastics in our bodies, and just recently discovered in our brains! Let’s get this film out there in communities, churches, city halls, and in front of politicians so we can make change happen!

Ready for action? No need to reinvent the wheel

Battling the worst neighborhood polluters and winning in courts that demand mitigation and huge penalties is a decades-long odyssey. Even the fearless, multi-talented Diane Wilson took 38 years to begin to save Texas’ Lavaca Bay. But where’s any better antidote to the overwhelming despair of seeming impotence?

Then 1) watch the Hellcat trailer, the 39 minute or the full 90 minutes documentary, then listen hard to the panel discussion calling on expert activists, critical science, Diane and director Bahr. Film tickets and screenings are at the Hellcat film website.

2) Donate to the $300K fund needed to go national and do bigtime consciousness raising to maximize viewers, namely policy makers, legislators, media influencers, and partners. Spread the word, forward this article to any group committed to save neighborhoods, ecosystems, water resources, besieged marine animals, and/or confront massive, growing health threats. Funds fuel submission to key film festivals, cover remaining film costs (archival footage) and travel costs for screenings and alliance-building. All donations are tax deductible to a 501c3 entity.

P.S. Diane’s work (so far) focuses on the oil/plastics production side, and how much it despoils. The impact is limitless as the global swill steamroller chucks out microplastics (nurdles) and lethal powder dregs by the tons, everywhere, on landscapes and bays and across your own body. The post-movie panel details the onslaught of invasive plastics pollution, and the billions needed to cleanse water, shore areas and inland localities poisoned by hard-to-clean up effluence that infiltrates every nook and cranny.

P.S.S. The latest wacko “commies are everywhere” lunacy from Secretary of State Marco Rubio slanders Diane as a “domestic terrorist,” a label she openly wears with pride. Diane (and allies at Codepink) are rigorously non-violent, refuting any allegation or innuendo they commit terrorism or violence against others. What other enlightened champions make the list? Mayors Mamdani and LA’s Karen Bass, journalists Amy Goodman and Hasan Piker, Congresspeople Maxine Waters, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar, the Amazon Labor union, Ben Cohen (of Ben and Jerry’s), and other brave, honorable Codepink founders. This Rubio never-never land concoction posits (with incredible ineptitude) all these “terrorists” are Cuban operatives of some kind, even outrageously entitling it, “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” Gosh, what happened to the mighty China, or are they good guys this week?

This bizarre insult to logic and rationality declares, sans even bad evidence, “For more than six decades, the Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States.” Right, Cuba can barely keep its electricity on, provide medicine or feed its people (thanks to Trump cruelty) but it still has the money, motivation and clout to represent a serious, CURRENT threat, the worst anti-communist propaganda since Trump idiotically invoked McCarthyism against much smarter critics identifying colossal blunders.