'An Unreasonable Woman’: A Conversation with Goldman Environmental Prize winner Diane Wilson. “There comes a time when the home needs defending, the line needs drawing in the sand, and those that dare cross it go at their own risk.”
About this event
Join us for a conversation with activist, and force-to-be-reckoned with, Diane Wilson. In 1989, Diane was a fourth-generation shrimp boat captain working at a fish house in Calhoun County, Texas when a co-worker handed her a newspaper article. The story was about a government report showing that her small home county had the worst toxic waste disposal record of any county in the United States. That was the start of Diane’s four-decade fight with the South Korean plastics giant whose local plant was the primary source of the pollution. In December 2019, a federal judge found Formosa Plastics to be a “serial offender” with “extensive, historical, and repetitive” violations of the Clean Water Act. The decision handed Diane and her coalition a historic legal victory and a $50 million settlement. The money was used to establish a trust that funds research, rehabilitated local shoreline and wetlands, developed a local sustainable fisheries cooperative, and more. Diane refused to personally accept any of the settlement funds.
Diane Wilson
Diane Wilson is a fourth-generation shrimper, boat captain, mother of five, author – and a fierce environmental, peace, and social justice advocate. Over the last 30-plus years, she has led legislative campaigns and demonstrations, been on hunger strikes, sunk boats, and even climbed industrial towers in her fight to protect the Texas Gulf Coast bay. Diane is also a co-founder of Code Pink, a women’s anti-war group based in Washington, DC, a co-founder of the Texas Jail Project, an organization that advocates for inmates’ rights in Texas county jails, and Executive Director and waterkeeper of San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper on the Texas Gulf Coast. Diane won the Goldman Environmental Prize (sometimes called the “Green Nobel”) in 2023.
Dan Quinlan, moderator
Dan Quinlan is the founder the non-profit SolaVida. His focus is on working with people who are passionate about making the world a more humane and healthy home for all people. His advocacy work revolves around reducing carbon pollution – through projects in advocacy, communications, and finance – mostly in collaboration with health professionals. Dan has also spent years wandering (formally and informally) around ideas about wisdom and joy – across neuroscience, psychology, wisdom traditions, philosophy, sociology, the arts and more.
