Camping Out a Chemical Giant: Diane Wilson Persists in Hunger Strike for Clean Waters

Maximilian Alvarez: 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 Maximilian 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.

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 Estuarine Waterkeeper (SABEW). She’s the author of numerous books, including the highly acclaimed 2005 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 Estuarine Waterkeeper won a landmark $50 million Clean Water Act settlement after suing Formosa 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 was in its third week at the time of recording, and she was 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 Dow, 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 4, 2026, Dow and its subsidiary, Union Carbide [Corporation (UCC)], requested a change to its wastewater permit in a 320-page application. This was three weeks after SABEW announced plans to sue Dow over unpermitted plastic pollution.

“Dow/​UCC’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 31, 2025, Dow’s wholly owned subsidiary, Long Mott Energy L.L.C., applied to the U.S. 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 2, 2026, I began a hunger strike and 24/7 encampment near the entrance in the ditch of the Dow/​Union Carbide Seadrift facility. I have a tent and am camping out 24 hours, 7 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.”

I am truly grateful to have Diane Wilson herself joining us now from the ditch outside the Seadrift facility, like literally in the trenches. I want tojump 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.

Diane Wilson: Well, I’m in my 15^th day of a hunger strike, and square in the ditch. I know what’s public property and what[‘s] Union Carbide/​Dow’s 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 … I walked in there – it was a pretty empty lobby. But all of a sudden here, this guy came out, and he want[ed] to know what I wanted. I said, ​‘Well, I had this letter, and I want to deliver it to the plant manager, so he would deliver it directly to Jim Fitterling.’ He said, ​‘Well, the plant manager 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 the CEO got it,’ he told me he would take it.

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. If you set foot on this property, you’re going to be arrested.’ I said, ​‘Arrested for delivering a letter?’ He said ​‘Past history, Diane, past history. … I was there when you, when you climbed the tower and chained yourself.’ He wasn’t gonna tolerate me in that office at all.

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 copy. Basically, they said we would be arrested if we set foot on Dow’s property.

But we’re still sitting here.

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. The reason why I’m doing it is because Calhoun County where I live, which is a tiny little county on the mid-Texas Gulf Coast, we have logged some of the highest counts of plastic pellets.

We have collected all these violations against [Dow], 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.

What they’re trying to do now with their wastewater permit – they’re trying to say the limit that they are violating like crazy, it’s too vague … They want an open license to pollute with plastic, and the way these permit fights go, you’re lucky if you get community standing.

I just like draw a line. They are not getting it! They are not getting this community. They’re not getting that Bay. I’ve been fighting industry 38 years. 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.

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 tried to do lawsuits. We’ve got a number of things legally we’re trying to do. But I’m out here on this hunger strike. I got a tent. I aim to stay, and I’m gonna go as far as I’m gonna go, and they don’t know. I’m pretty stubborn, and I think my longest hunger strike was 57 days.

Alvarez: 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?

Wilson: What has happened is, in Seadrift, when I was a little bitty girl, we had five fish houses where you could sell shrimp. Shrimping was primarily the biggest way you could make a living. … We probably had 125 boats, and 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 builder. The whole town was alive because of that Bay, and now there are no fish out. Zero.

If you go Seadrift, every business that had been there is boarded up. They’re gone. … So now there are, instead of five fish houses and 125 shrimp boats, there are no fish houses. And there’s maybe a few shrimp boats that go out, and when they go out in a season, it might last two weeks instead of a number of months.

If you live near a plastic plant, we know how you can find the pellets. So if anybody out there is around a plastic plant where they’re discharging, and they want to know how to fight that or how to collect evidence and get in touch with us, we would be delighted to show you how.

I would encourage anybody who has an issue in their own community, and I know most people think they’re not the type, but you are. It’s only ourselves that limit us, and I would encourage them to be a bit unreasonable.

Alvarez: 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. Thank you all for listening and for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. In the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network across our YouTube channel, our different podcast feeds, our website and our social media pages. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

This episode of the Working People Podcast was originally published on March 18.