by Diane Wilson
Follow Diane’s day-by-day account of the latest Global Hunger Strike against Formosa Plastics. You can join her by signing up here.
I’m sitting here with my back against the tent to keep it from blowing in. Probably 35-mile gusts. This AFTER my first night in the tent. Lordy, wasn’t that something. But I’m not complaining. I think of those folks who camped out in a blizzard protesting a pipeline up north somewhere a year or so ago so, no, I’m not complaining about the everlasting lights from a petrochemical plant and the flaring that sounds like a train gathering steam. Then the traffic. At first, I thought it was an after-Thanksgiving party at the administration building but then I realized it was a shift change. It was cold and dark at 5pm last evening so I went to my tent and went to bed. Then all the lights and racket and trucks coming and going and flares going off all night. I heard horns honking at the tent all night. Love me? Hate me? At 4 am in the morning, too. Obviously, that was the shift change. No need for a night light. My tent was clear as daylight most of the time and especially when the worker shift happened. That’s when beaming headlights ran through the entire tent. So, the walls caving in on this tent isn’t so bad.
About one o’clock this evening I shoved a chair against my leaning tent and welcomed about ten vehicles that drove into Formosa Plastics’ ditch for our Thanksgiving Day press conference. We had Sharon Lavigne from Rise St. James in Louisiana, Jeff Jacoby from Texas Campaign for the Environment and a large delegation of Vietnamese-Americans from DC, Houston, Dallas, and Austin. And a choir with a dozen beautiful, long haired Vietnamese-American women in white gowns. We live streamed the whole thing with 3 cameras rolling. My favorite part was the women’s choir which would invigorate a rock to stand up and march. I think the folks in the administration and Formosa Plastics workers in the units heard the music and stood awhile and listened to it. The amazing thing about all this was that we did a full-scale program with 25 knot winds and the temp edging into the low 50’s. I gave out at the end. My legs were noodles, so I went back to my cold tent and sat awhile.
