Living on the Fenceline
Overview | Conversations with Advocates of Fair Growth | Living on the Fenceline
Dr. Beverly Wright
Dr. Beverly Wright is the director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Center enters into a contract with fenceline communities along the Mississippi River that are adjacent to highly polluting industries. A memorandum of understanding between the community and the Center is written out and signed. Then a representative of the community joins the Board of the Center where they can share their experiences with representatives of other fenceline communities. In this fashion a network of community-based activists is formed. The Center subsequently provides members of this network with educational workshops that help them with the nuts-and-bolts problems involved in successfully organizing their community. Dr. Wright calls the Center, which has been in operation for 11 years, a 'community-versity' because all its activities are driven by community needs.
Interview
Steve Lerner (SDL): How did you first get involved with the struggle for relocation in Diamond [the African-American subdivision of NORCO, Louisiana, a company town dominated by the Shell Oil and Shell Chemical companies.]?
Beverly Wright: About eight years ago I was at a state Department of Environmental Quality meeting and the purpose of the meeting is blurred but I think it was the new director of DEQ's attempt to meet with community residents because it was after the civil rights meeting we had had in Louisiana, which really pointed to racial discrimination in the siting of facilities along the [Mississippi] river.
So people [from a number of communities] were there to voice their concerns and [Diamond resident and activist] Margie [Richard] was there. And someone introduced me to her and she began to tell me her story. And she also said to me that she had heard about the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice [DSCEJ] and wanted to know if we could help assist them. And at that time we were just beginning and had just gotten our Community Advisory Board in place.
We call our Center a 'community-versity' because we are community driven in all of our activities, which include the research and policy efforts or areas of investigation related to concerns that communities have; our education and training program, which is focused around what they describe as their needs and some times it is prompted by our raising questions; and we do some curriculum development: we did an Environmental Justice curriculum for the New Orleans public schools to train teachers. So we had started putting the Community Advisory Board in place and we were being very careful because we didn't want to raise people's expectations about what we were able to do [for them] because universities have such a bad track record with communities. We were careful in setting this up and we had memoranda of understanding with all our communities, which basically states what services we can and will provide. And if we have a grant an MOU is always connected to that grant describing what services we will be providing.
So Margie [Richard] came to a Board meeting and at that time we had a process whereby each community [that joined us] had to write us a letter asking [permission] to participate as a board member. The reason for this is that we don't parachute into any community: we only go where communities want us. It works better that way. And so once she [Richard] found out and got enough information on who we were [she went back to Diamond and] the community made a decision to enter into this relationship with us. So that is how it started.
But I think the thing Margie most remembers was my making the decision to make Margie my representative on the Common Sense Initiative. [At the time] that [group] made no sense often. It was the Refinery Sector [of the Common Sense Initiative run by the EPA]. After attending a few of those sessions I recognized that it would be a process that could only use my name to promote something that I really didn't want to promote. The folks were divided up between the industry and community people and environmentalists and there weren't many community people so we tended to be out voted. I was really torn and felt I needed to move away from that so they couldn't use my name and put a stamp on something and say Dr. Wright supports this.
I also knew that it was very important that we be there [at the Common Sense Initiative meetings] and after talking to Marjorie [Richard] and looking at her situation I decided that the NORCO community ought to be represented so that they could take in all the information and we could get back and talk about it. So I asked Marjorie to be my representative and I resigned. And that, I think, was the beginning to Margie really getting some attention to her community because you had the people from [EPA] headquarters and enforcement there and all of these different people on the committee; and you had Shell CEOs who were really high up in management on those boards. And over the years that Margie [Richard] served on that committee she was able to get some relationships and learn a lot more about the way the process worked. And was constantly sharing information with me. She would call from meetings about different things asking: 'What should I do: what is your opinion.' And I think that was really the beginning of her professional development around the issue of refineries and fenceline communities. I think she would agree with that because she has pointed it out to me.
SDL: Who put together the Common Sense Initiative?
BW: It was the Environmental Protection Agency and it came out of the enforcement office, if I am not mistaken. There were many sectors and some of them worked well. The refinery one didn't. I think it was the one dealing with autoworkers and steel which worked well: I heard people talking about the progress they were making. But the refinery sector was very difficult. It is a very tough sector.
So that was the beginning of our relationship [with the Diamond community] and then we had monthly board meetings at which community representatives are able to give updates on what is going on in their community. They are able to network in such a way that whenever there is a problem or a press conference they then have the support of all of the board members. So whenever Marjorie had an issue she had people there from Ag Street [Agriculture Street], Convent, Geysmer, and St. Gabriel from the whole board that represented communities up and down the [Mississippi] river. So it is a really strong network and they have learned to share. It really did require that we orchestrate this all the time: we brought them together. But I really believe and I have been strongly convinced that the only way change comes is by empowering the people on the ground so they can speak for themselves because if all you do is rush in like combat troops and fight one battle and leave you leave the community with nothing.
I had to grow into this [work]. Being a college professor we can be pretty sure of ourselves and really think that we know everything. A young woman named Dana Alston, she passed away, and she was a very good friend of mine. She worked at the Public Welfare Foundation and she gave us our first grant to deal with community development and empowerment. And her speech was always based on her experience. [And she said:] it is truly important for communities to be empowered to speak for themselves. So we developed this board in such a way that we were geared for training environmental leaders and we concentrated on the African-American community because that is the community most affected and that is the community that had the least amount of education in the area.
SDL: So Marjorie Richard is one of your graduates.
BW: Yes she is. She absolutely is. And I have just been amazed at it [her development] because we begin with classes on Pollution Prevention 101 and we have a small dictionary made up of all the environmental acronyms that they can put in their pockets and take with them because when they would go to these meetings they would be so intimidated by the terminology and we recognized that. So we developed a number of ways to bring community members up to speed on the language. We have a course called "Who Is Protecting You?" where we introduce them to every department within the EPA and every division of DEQ [state Department of Environmental Quality] because what we found was that so often people were frustrated because they never called the right people. They would make a phone call and it would be the wrong office and of course they said that they didn't handle this or give them the run around.
It was a huge book and we went through the whole thing: the enforcement office, the air office, the water office, pollution prevention and we told them what they did. Then we did the same thing with DEQ. And then we had a follow-up place called face-to-face where we invited some representatives from the agencies to have face-to-face discussions with community people. And it also helped them develop relationships with people in these offices that should have been paying attention to their issues. I find that when people get to know you by name you get a much better response. So that is the kind of work we started out doing ten years ago to build capacity within communities to fight their own battles with any technical assistance that we could give them.
SDL: Can you give me some examples of times when Marjorie Richard or Gaynel Johnson [both former presidents of the Concerned Citizens of Norco] or other members of the Diamond community came to you with a problem that they couldn't figure out and you had expertise that was useful to them?
BW: There have been numerous attempts to use the old concept of 'divide and conquer' in this community, which has caused much stress for Marjorie [Richard] and other members. The other serious battle in the process was dealing with this notion of 'outsiders' coming inthe agitators coming in and stirring it up. Our position has always been to bring as many people in as possible like the National Council of Churches, the Black Church Council, the Black Caucus, celebrities, Greenpeace (who most people on the other side absolutely hated). And then we worked with Marjorie so that she could get it across to the community that these were not outsiders intent on using them for their own purposes. When I think of the long conversations that we have had it has mostly been on strategies.
Then we have also had racial tensions because our intent and our purpose was to build black leadership in the corridor and there were some people who really weren't interested in that and they saw us as a threat. So we were called racists because we were focusing in on black communities and developing their capacity to speak for themselves so that they wouldn't have to go to this or that white organization to speak for them.
SDL: People were really calling you racists? Who?
BW: I'll give you an example. We also worked in Convent with the big Shintech case. They are board members. And I was actively involved in the development of the National Black Environmental Justice Network and when I presented it to our board members to join this national group because we include everybody -- we don't exclude engineers. Our take is that this struggle is huge and that we need every professional we can find who can lend support to this. And we needed to form this organization that would welcome everybody because there are all these divisions. There is the class divide: if you have a Ph.D. you are not [considered] grassroots. That goes on within our groups. So I presented it to the board and asked them to join and told them why I thought it would be good to join.
Damu Smith from Greenpeace came down -- he is now executive director [of the National Black Environmental Justice Network] -- to talk with them [members of our board] about them benefits of joining. So several of our board members got calls from people the white side of the activists telling them that this was racist for them to join a black groups. They [the whites] were very threatened by any organization focusing on black people although we didn't exclude anyone. The threat was there so this group was called a racist organization.
And there were other things. I was in a situation where a white graduate student, A young man from LSU, had done a really good map of Convent. But we had done this GIS mapping with the EPA with their GIS Office of the whole corridor. This was eight years earlier and so we were in on the ground floor of saying yes we need to collect data by race. So we produced the maps for the corridor and although we had these sophisticated maps, the maps that were raised up were the maps of a graduate student for what we did here at the Center. That happened a lot. Because I am a black professor, they would rather listen to a white graduate student instead of a black Ph.D. We are still dealing with those issues. They are very subtle but all of us who are black see it and many whites, who are familiar with they dynamics of race, also see it.
There were attempts by some of the other groups to separate Margie [Richard]'s community from us. And I have to say we are very competent in what we do. And they found that threatening. No stumbling-bumbling Negroes here [laughs], which they are much more comfortable with. And so it was seen as a threat like we are going to take their people away from them, which was never our intent. But we were very intent on empowering the community people who were suffering. So it is a strange dynamic.
SDL: So not only is there the tension in the community between residents of Diamond and Shell. There is also tension when different groups begin to focus attention on one or another of these fenceline communities and they begin bumping up against each other. And these groups have different approaches and different agendas so there is friction.
BW: That's right. Absolutely. There is friction. The positive side of this is that we managed to work it out. Some of it required just being silent. Terrible things have been said about us to grant officers. Right now we are under an EPA investigation, which we have been under for two or three years. They have gone through every grant and every document because someone called the hotline and said we were using communities and spending money [irresponsibly]. [It was] a total lie but you have to go through it. And that was [designed] to shut us down. But my approach has always been to not respond to lies. Steady on the course doing the work and in the end people will see what you have done and that has worked for me. I have had to convince my staff not to get upset about what people have said because while you are dealing with that you are not meeting the community's needs. So we mostly ignore [these accusations] and that has worked. [That way] you don't get your energy sapped responding to all this. [You] just move forward. And a lot of it has disappeared or at least dissipated because we are still here and we have been an important organization in bringing national attention to these [environmental justice] issues and working directly with communities to educate them.
SDL: I did an interview with Gaynel Johnson [former president of the Concerned Citizens of NORCO] who said that your workshops had been incredibly important to her.
BW: I am very happy to hear it. I really appreciate it. I'm pleased. That means we will continue [laughs]. Right now we are moving into this 'clean production' thing, which is really exciting. For me it is almost like the beginning of the EJ [Environmental Justice] movement, educating people about transforming the 'corridor' [the river towns in 'Cancer Ally' from Baton Rouge to New Orleans] from what it is to something that people can live with or near.
SDL: The area around Diamond is also the epicenter of the largest black slave revolt in the history of the Unites States.
BW: Yes.
SDL: Would you address the historical significance of this fact in light of the current struggle? We are talking about a population here some of whom are the descendants of slaves. Many of the slaves who revolted were executed and their heads chopped off and put on stakes along River Road. And then, as I understand from the interviews I have done, they lived through slavery, the Civil War, and through Reconstruction. And then Shell and other big oil and chemical companies came along and kick them off the land they were farming and put them on what became the fenceline with these highly toxic industries.
BW: That's right. It was the Army Corps of Engineers who moved them first.
SDL: To build the Bonnet Carre Spillway.
BW: They have been moved two or three times. They have been moved forciblyin a way several times which, believe it or not, is not an uncommon story for black communities along the river. The other part of it is that they also bought that land. My understanding is that after slavery this is the way it is with Morrisonville there were former slaves who had worked on the plantations and managed to save up their $20 or so and bought the land. That is how these towns were constructed because somebody paid some money at one point for this land. And the same is true for Diamond.
SDL: Do you think that was true in Belltown, the property that used to be the Trepagnier Plantation, which Shell subsequently purchased? When Shell Chemical comes along in the 1950s and buys it up what I hear is that it was sharecropped land. I am not sure of that
BW: Very likely.
SDL: Then they all end up buying right along what becomes the fenceline with Shell. Do you see that as deliberate? Did they not have any alternative?
BW: There was no alternative. They were moved and they were told where they could live. Residential apartheid still exists even now. [Today,] if you have a whole lot of money you can move a little bit more. [But back then] no, they didn't have a choice: things were dictated.
SDL: Other communities were similarly moved around.
BW: Yeah and the decision about where they were going to be moved were made by others not by them.
SDL: Also in this community of Diamond there is residential segregation: it is very clear. There is the Gaspard/ Mule line of trees and everybody is black on the Diamond side and everybody is white on the NORCO side. Is that unusual for this area?
BW: No. It is the legacy of Jim Crow. At one point, for many years, this was the law. So just because the law disappears doesn't mean that people stop behaving the way they have been behaving forever. Then it becomes custom. So the law down South, for the most part, is custom and it will take a very, very long time for that to disappear. It is no longer the law that you must live here but it is customary that you do so.
SDL: There seemed to be an opportunity here [in the negotiations between Diamond residents and Shell] to talk about moving the whole community instead of one at a time. Was that an issue you ever took up?
BW: We discussed it because that did happen with Reveilletown and Morrisonville. So now we have New Morrisonville and New Reveilletown.
SDL: Were they moved because of pollution?
BW: Yeah, they were moved because of pollution.
SDL: Were they next to refineries?
BW: One was a vinyl chloride plant
SDL: So there are already examples of towns that have been moved.
BW: Not everyone moved but large segments did and families moved together. That came up [in Diamond] for people who wanted to stay together but the situation was dragged out for so long that people decided that they just needed to move. And the complication of putting that together [moving the community as a whole] would just put another layer on top of conversations about moving and that is why it was dropped. However, with Reveilletown and Morrisonville a contractor was brought in and they were able to buy a large plot of land for a small amount of money so they could get bigger, better houses for the money that was given to them. And I believe that Exxon saw that they could also save money by doing it this way. Exxon was in Morrisonville; Placid Oil (or something like that) was in Reveilletown.
SDL: So there was a precedent for moving the whole town
BW: But this [the struggle over relocating Diamond residents] was so protracted that people just wanted to get out. I believe a fieldtrip to Morrisonville was organized by Shell so they [Diamond residents] could see that situation. So it had been done. There were talks but after awhile the old people were dying and they just wanted to get out.
SDL: There was a trial that came up over moving Diamond and it was a sad story about how it turned out.
BW: We cried, that is all I could tell you. My community outreach person went to the trial and she just cried.
SDL: Some Diamond residents suggest that their lawyer basically betrayed them?
BW: He did what many lawyers do. They want to settle the case. My understanding is what he filed the complaint under was the wrong reason to be there. If he had filed a different type of motion and my understanding is that some of the jurors told him that. What he was asking for was a nuisance case.
SDL: According to Gaynel [Johnson] the community went in asking for relocation and then at the last minute the lawyer decided to go for a monetary award.
BW: I think that if they said they were going in for relocation then that is what they went in for. The lawyers down here have been horrible. We developed a class called 'How to Chose a Lawyer' after that trial because it was so bad.
SDL: Do you know the lawyers name? I want to call him up and get his side of this.
BW: I think you should. We have had that same experience with Agriculture Street Landfill with these lawyers. It didn't happen in Convent for some reason because they were fighting a facility coming in there wasn't something already there. But we have these lawyers who file class action suits and the communities don't know anything about them. So whenever it happens they are there. That happened with Ag. Street. We had unscrupulous, immoral lawyers who were just out to make a buck. And I don't just guess this is in Louisiana. But I can get the name of the lawyer for you. I do remember the heartbreak and some of the jurors saying; "If you [Diamond residents] had kept with relocation we would have given it to you.' But nuisance [monetary awards] they would not.
SDL: Gaynel [Johnson] also said that the lawyer wouldn't call expert witnesses such as you.
BW: He never called me. He was a really pitiful lawyer. He was somebody's relative or something. He was really just a pathetic lawyer.
SDL: So that was a setback.
BW: A huge setback. And people were really depressed and it took Marjorie's faith to get them going again. And that is when we decided that we needed outside help. We needed to just shame Shell into doing the right thing because we were not going to get justice through the courts.
SDL: So it became more focused on media
BW: Yes. We needed help getting the story out because Shell wants to have this squeaky clean reputation. I don't know how they intend to do it their environmental health thing. Everybody knows it is a lie and they have to do this public relations thing. And so they don't like bad press and really that strategy really came from Greenpeace with Damu [Smith] being connected with the large NGOs that have money to withstand or be there for the long haul because what happens with these small communities is that they [the industries] know they [the local activist groups] can't last. So they just wait them out. But when you start bringing Greenpeace, NRDC [the Natural Resources Defense Council], and Earth Justice.
SDL: What did NRDC do?
BW: They did a report with Vernice Miller. They did some research to help in this struggle.
SDL: What is your reaction to the news coming out of Diamond now about the deal they made with Shell about relocation. Is this a victory?
BW: Oh, it is a victory. I will not diminish this. This is a great victory in that everyone was saying it couldn't happen. We don't have any cause and effect data showing some disease related to the specific chemicals coming out of the stacks and that is so hard [to obtain]. And that is what the petrochemical companies use. You can't prove the health impact and they know that so they are waiting this out hoping that we don't get the research done. They know there is a connection [between the toxic releases and disease in the community] but they know we don't have the data or the science [to prove it].
So with them [Diamond residents] losing in the courts and you have to remember too that the jurors are mostly Shell retirees and so you are not going to get a whole lot from them because they are in denial. Shell has done a really good job of selling the idea that this is a safe place to work and even when they are sick they are still saying it is a safe place. I have been told, off the record by Shell's public relations people, that they are concerned about all these people moving into the parish and moving close to where the plant is. And I told them that they had done a really good job of lying about how safe their plants are and then, of course, the cost of living is very low and the school system is relatively good. And since you say this is a really safe place people believe them. So if you stop the lying [I told them] maybe they will stop coming. This conversation happened at a panel at Loyola with people there from Shell.
SDL: So you think it is an important victory.
BW: I think it is a very important victory because the other buyouts were what they call voluntary.
SDL: This is also.
BW: Yes, [laughs] on paper it is voluntary at least legally.
SDL: Shell actually has a program encouraging people to stay.
BW: But the other buyouts were called from the beginning voluntary buyouts and they were doing it to reduce their liability: that was the reason to do it: to reduce their liability. They wanted to move people further away [from their plants]. But something happened in the course of ten years when the petrochemical companies decided this [relocating people] isn't a good thing. And I think they just looked at the numbers of people living next to them and they decided they had better stand their ground or it will be really costly to move everyone. So they have had to come up with something different. The mood ten years ago was different. [Then] it was like, ok, let's create this buffer zone, let's move people out, and let's move them together if they want. Then all of a sudden everything stopped and industry just said: 'No.' We are just speculating about why that happened but you begin to look at the math of how many communities are near these facilities and I think they just decided that they had better hold their ground.
SDL: Is this relocation program going to establish a difficult precedent for them? Is it going to be useful to you, this victory, in now going on to the community next to Orion and say: 'Look at what Shell did over here.'
BW: Shell is holding to this notion that the relocation is not because of environmental racism or environmental health. [They are saying:] This is a unique community and that is why we are doing this.
SDL: What do you say to that?
BW: I say: 'Call it whatever you like but there is another unique community down the street. [Laughs.] So if they need to use 'unique community' to get out from under this we will let them. But it is a face-saving device and we are willing to give it to them. The media wants a hook and 'unique community' doesn't make it but environmental health and environmental racism does so regardless of what Shell does the media is still going to write the other point so we win. There will be people writing about environmental justice and environmental racism.
SDL: Shell gets to say that we didn't move them because our pollution was impacting the health of these people.
BW: That's right. They get to say that but we all know better and the news media knows better. This is one time the news media did the right thing and Shell is very upset.
SDL: There are communities on the fenceline like this all over the country
BW: All over.
SDL: Mounting a campaign in each community for relocation will be an impossible task. It will take forever and the resources involved in mounting the kind of effort that happened in Diamond, if you did it in every community, would require many people working on it. Isn't there a systemic solution that would require that large polluting facilities not be sited next to residential communities? Is there a need for a national law that requires a larger buffer?
BW: Exactly. And EPA is basically saying this and doing the research to show that communities shouldn't live within three miles of it. That's what they are working on. But the problem is that old 'grandfather clause' for existing facilities. And even with old facilities that need to be phased out they are allowed to continue the old process that continues to pollute. It is amazing but within the scientific community this [the need for a three mile buffer] is already being said. When they were trying to come up with a definition of what constitutes an EJ [Environmental Justice] community, [we asked] what is the distance from a polluting facility that you would consider would put people at risk. So in saying all these things they are saying that communities should be outside of this boundary and it is like a three-mile area that they have been debating. They are still talking about the science of what is a safe zone. So I think we are moving in that direction eventually but not under this Administration. But hopefully, down the line, we will see some zoning regulations or something about new facilities.
SDL: What would make sense would be to move the residential communities that are right next to these places. But that would be expensive. One way to defray that expense would to turn these fenceline communities into light industrial zones. Then you could sell these residential properties and work on creating jobs that will feed off the big industry next to it. If you have an oil refinery, for example, you would ask yourself what light industries fit with that.
How would you assess Shell's change of heart? Should they be given credit for engaging in a dialogue with the community and finally agreeing to relocate these people?
BW: I give them credit for that. It wasn't just out of the goodness of their hearts: this is a business. So they are looking at their bottom line and public image. But the fact is that they did come to the table. But it took a long time. I also give the people who were around the table credit for being as civil as they could be and really trying. I recognize that the people around the table, most times, are the public relations people. They are the do-gooders but they have no power to do anything. All they can do is take the beating and go back and smile and come back. That is a very hard job and I give them credit for not sticking their foot in their mouth because they could lose their jobs by saying the wrong thing. And we were sensitive to that as well because we finally has a pretty decent team people who respected the people in the room and people who seemed to be a bit sensitive.
SDL: Are you speaking of David Brignac?
BW: Yes, those folks. We have had some really awful ones in the past.
SDL: So there was an evolution.
BW: There was definitely an evolution. [Laughs.] And this is a much nicer group of human beings and I give them a lot of credit and so should Shell because we didn't have the walkouts and the screaming that we used to have. There was a little of that but not much. Mostly it was really talking and Brignac in the hot seat trying to figure out what to do. I have a lot of respect for him whether he knows that or not. You can't show all your cards. I was the devil's advocate a lot. I was the 'bad cop' in that room. Someone has to be. I enjoy it anyway: it works for me.
SDL: What are the lessons to be learned for the Environmental Justice movement from this particular struggle?
BW: I'm writing a paper on this. I started by analyzing the Convent struggle because that was really a hard one. Based on the struggles that we have won what I have learned is that there a number of components to a win. The first is an on-the-ground, organized local community.
SDL: So, in this case that was the Concerned Citizens of NORCO.
BW: Yes. It also requires other resources for technical support like the Deep South Center that can bring in people and educate them on the issues.
SDL: Would you include in that the Louisiana Bucket Brigade? Were they an important outside resource?
BW: For technical assistance they were very important. When we first started this we didn't know that. There was a grant from the Mott Foundation years ago and Denny Larson talked to me about doing this [taking air samples]. Denny can be a little forceful and I wasn't certain about who he was. Was he the Great White Hope riding in? Was he really just trying to get his hands on this community? So I kind of dealt with him with a long-handled spoon. And the Mott Foundation funded the [Louisiana} Bucket Brigade and it came through us and it was for training. When I saw it was for training I felt it was important that it was not just NORCO it was our whole board that got that bucket brigade training in how to use the [air-sample] bucket. The NORCO community benefited the most because we were lucky enough to catch a bad sample on a day that MEK that was just so lucky and it really then put a fire under Shell. The residents were so angry because they thought they had been lied to and I told them: 'What do you expect from a polluting facility? They were not going to tell them what they had been doing and confess.
SDL: Did the catching of this MEK air sample occurred when a whole group of people were out there from the foundations and EPA?
BW: Yes, there is a release and then they race for the buckets and capture it and sure enough there is some nasty stuff in there that Shell swore was not happening and that whatever they were capturing in the bucket was not coming from them. And it turns out without a doubt now that it was in fact coming from Shell because that is where the MEK came from [was made]. So the Bucket Brigade was a very powerful tool but it was also psychologically a big support because it gave communities a feeling of having some control.
SDL: Has Anne Rolfes [director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade] been effective in that role?
BW: She has been very effective on the ground. Anne and I have also had our differences because she was also one of these very strong willed people and you have to understand that my approach is different. I really believe in letting communities make informed decisions. I don't demand anything or tell them what to do. If they want my opinion but it is really important for them to grow. Anne's approach is that she gets started on something and she is in there like the Marines. We have completely different working styles so we had one small run-in but for the most part it has been a good balance. I don't think different groups can work together without having some conflict to tell the truth. Sometimes you are going for the same goal but you are often at cross-purposes in what you feel is most important for the community. So we always have to go back to the thought of why we are here.
SDL: Back to the components of the win, one was having a local, effective group on the ground that is committed
BW: with support that can help them stay together. A group like Marjorie [Richard's] or the Convent group are constantly being attacked with rumors to split them apart all kinds of rumors about people selling out. So what we do is help them develop methods of communication to dissipate the rumors. We help them organize regular meetings where they have 'walkers and talkers' these are community people who keep the conversation going among people who aren't attending meetings: people who walk the community and communicate. People who keep the communication going are so important. Then you also need motivators people who can get in there to keep their spirits up. These are outside resources.
SDL: Who played that role?
NW: Damu Smith. We have something we call the Leadership Development Workshop and he conducted all of them and it is a real motivating let's stay on course examples of tactics that will be used by Shell or whatever groups examples of what has happened in other communities how you respond to thatPractical examples and practical information for dealing with specific problems for communities that are besieged by environmental pollution.
SDL: Was that done in the community of Diamond?
BW: Yes, it was done in the community at churches and it wasn't just for NORCO because we started moving from community to community. We were in St. Gabriel one time but people would come from all of our board areas. And then we had meetings that were specific to communities. So NORCO also had its own meetings when we were in the heat of a battle. So you have the strong local support and you have the outside resources. I just told you about the education we did. We also provided them with maps about pollution so they could have that in hand when they went in.
You also need what I call other local support or other communities with the same problems who organized a struggle or a network of communities with similar problems. And then you have what I call regional or local environmental organizations like LEAN [the Louisiana Environmental Action Network].
SDL: What did LEAN do in all of this?
BW: They supported the community. They would show up for the rallies and they did some research not so much with NORCO but with Convent. When we would have press conferences they would bring a lot of people out and say words about pollution and so on.
Then you need what I call non-profit legal support such as Earth Justice and the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. [These are] legal agencies that are not out for a profit and have the interests of the community at heart. From them you get the kind of legal assistance that you couldn't pay for and that is young students who have energy. If you had to pay a lawyer for the hours these students put in you just couldn't. And that is really what you need. You need that young energy: kids who can stay up all night, which is what they did. So these legal clinics are extremely important.
SDL: Are you saying that even though the lawsuit to get people relocated didn't work, nevertheless there remained the threat of lawsuits going on whenever there was an release or an accident?
BW: And just having that legal mind in the room is important. People who can follow the paper trail and to get into that legal argumentative state. Lawyer in the room? [Laughs.] Just their presence sometimes and their reputation to back them up [can make a difference]. The Tulane Law Clinic had a reputation for being pretty tenacious; Earth Justice does as well. So you know you have these groups that are like bulldogs: they don't give up. That is a big help.
And then I think the most critical component in the NORCO win, for me, was the large NGOs, which in this case was Greenpeace. They [Shell officials] would shiver in their boots. Greenpeace would bring down these kids who were climbing towers they just never know [what they will do]. In fact one of the guys in the plant said to Damu: 'You all haven't been back lately. Man, you all ought to come. When you all come the plant is cleaned up.' Because they [Shell officials] know that Greenpeace sneaks in and takes pictures and stuff. One of the workers told Damu: 'Working there is wonderful when they [Greenpeace] are in town. There are no accidental releases and everything is in top shape.' Just knowing that they can bring in that big boat and the news media [is important]. They [Shell officials] know the money is endless as long as Greenpeace decides it wants to be in the struggle it can stay for the long haul. That gives communities such power.
The faith community was involved. We had the National Council of Churches, the World Council and then we had the black church council as well which represented all the black denominations with site visits and so on.
And the foundation world [was an important component]. Without Michael [Lerner] we couldn't have done this. The financial support was just critical. EPA cut out all of its educational support grants under the Republican Administration. They have been looking to cut all EJ [Environmental Justice] funding. There is no more EJ funding. [Previously,] what we did was get environmental justice money from the Office of Environmental Justice at the EPA. That is where all our initial training the workbooks that we did came from EPA money. Then someone [in the Administration] recognized that [from their point of view] this is not a good thing: too much education going on. So they turned it [the funding] off. And the foundations stepped in. We were doing it anyways without the money but the money really makes a difference.
I do recognize that at one point none of the foundations wanted to work in Louisiana. They thought it was just a waste of time. They had thrown money in the community and nothing had happened. What I told them was that they were doing it wrong. They were giving it to organizations to represent people rather than empowering the people on the ground. As soon as they did it differently it changed. They were giving different groups money and they were parachuting in and telling people what to do and people were looking at them like they were crazy. So they said they had wasted a lot of money in Louisiana and I told them: 'That you did because you didn't investigate the situation to see what was the best way to work.'
I think now we are getting a better reputation down here, which is good because it means that we may get even more support. The thing that is startling to me is that we started out with 13 communities. We lost one community to the divide and conquer thing [tactic] with [the state] DEQ [Department of Environmental Quality] very much involved. It is a grain elevator town. It's horrible [conditions] and those people are still right there. Our board member from there, a little old lady, her eyes were always puffed up and she had rashes. And it is fenceline community and there is a railroad track on one side so they get locked in at different points. A black woman, [name deleted] who probably was the first buyout, sold us out and began working with DEQ. She is the one who turned us in and told the lies. She is now out of it completely but the damage that she did was immense. We lost that community to the struggle with her. I said: 'We don't work where we are not wanted.' And that community is still suffering.
And lastly was celebrity support. Bonnie Rait came down and came to one of the events we had. Danny Glover and the Neville Brothers sent money. Stevie Wonder sent letters and stuff. These are people who supported us financially.
The other strong political support that we got from Conyors out of Michigan and Maxine Waters. Conyors has been with us from the very beginning. He has visited for at least five or six years and did Environmental Justice symposia and workshops at Black Caucus events. The first time I ever spoke at the Black Caucus event, eight years ago, was with Conyors. He has been a strong ally. And we have had Paul Wellstone who has also been a really good ally and John Lewis. And a big guy from California [George Miller?].
And last but not least were the insiders who work within EPA and DEQ who faxed stuff [documents] to us. I guess you would call them whistle blowers but they are top secret. Nobody knows who they are but we do. These insiders gave us information and they are very important. You can't broad-brush any group and say everyone is a bad person. It is just not true.
SDL: So there are a lot of different elements, a lot of points of pressure, that brought about this win in Diamond.
BW: Without that you are not going to get anywhere. You really need all of those people. Key, however, are the people on the ground: if the community isn't together [it doesn't work]. At Agriculture Street Landfill the struggle was delayed five years because the community was splintered. They were angry and afraid and eating their own babies that is what I call it. Anyone who tried to help them they turned on, which is pretty typical initially of the hysteria that takes place [in this type of situation]. It took them a little longer to get their act together.
I don't work with groups like that. They would sink us and then we wouldn't be able to help anybody. So when we started out the first group we started with was Ag. Street and we had to walk away from them because they brought the lawyers in. So for years we couldn't [work with them] because there were too many other people depending on us. Then they finally got their act together and came to me as a solid group and we began working closely with them and they won their last class action suit.
We did the same thing for them [that we did for other communities] bringing all of these people in: Greenpeace, Black church council organizing all these people around them to give support and to give them some visibility. We sent them to Washington, DC where they demonstrated and all of that and putting the pressure on. They finally won their class action suit although EPA went through with its lousy clean up. It looks like they are going to win. It took several years but there was a unanimous decision that they could go to court. They lawyers were saying that it has been repeatedly appealed and the city has not won. So they believe in about a year it will happen.
SDL: On the national level do you see any policy coming up that could help solve the fenceline problems these communities face?
BW: I really don't except there is research being done that could point to some [useful] policy. I think this is going to require a concerted effort by the EJ community in coming up with a strategy for promoting a policy that could protect all people. These discussions may be happening at the upcoming People of Color Summit. It was supposed to happen in October but I am pushing for February because of the Johannesburg effort. The policy section is being headed up by [Robert] Bullard and we already have commitments from EPA/OEJ with some policy papers. This whole summit is supposed to be about strengthening the grassroots and dealing with the development of a strategy for protecting communities. There have been conversations about what we should do at the national level and what kinds of policies we should be promoting. I'm hoping that something comes out of that. What kind of policy should be put in place to stop the building of these big facilities next to residential communities? And everybody knows this makes sense but it is a political minefield to get anything through.
SDL: There were two fatalities in Diamond in 1973 as a result of an accident at Shell: Leroy Jones and Helen Washington. Shell says it can't find any documents about how much money was given to these families of these people but the oral history in the community suggests that the families received $500 and $3,000 respectively. In Canada, where there was an accident next to a Shell plant, the settlement with the families of the people killed amounted to millions of dollars. What is your comment on that?
BW: It speaks in the deep south to the race issue and the extent to which African-Americans have been disenfranchised and had no political power or support. That makes it possible for people to devalue you and know that they are not going to be challenged. Even if the community had complained it couldn't have won in court. They couldn't have gotten the white community or the white power structure to support them. This is all part of the deep, deep-seated racism that is a byproduct of slavery and Jim Crow that has been here for hundreds of years. What I have found, however, is that as we educate people on the ground and as we begin fighting harder things have begun to change. The white community is embarrassed: as bad as they are and as bad as they have been they don't want anybody to think that they are bad people. So the more you can show that they have been the good-ol-boys or rednecks or coon-asses, as they refer to themselves, the more likely you are to get a more positive response. They could get away with that [token payment for fatal accidents] in the 1970s in the river parishes but they couldn't have gotten away with it in New Orleans. Upriver they could get away with it.
All over the corridor [Cancer Ally] we find that it is mostly African Americans living next to these facilities. What happened to the white people? They were moved out.
SDL: or they got a job.
BW: Exactly. But how is it possible for you to expand your plant and move out one side of the community and not the other. I talked to lots of black community representatives about 'what is that big empty space over there?' And they told me: 'That is where the white people used to live.' When I asked what happened they would say: 'Well, somebody from the plant came and said they were going to buy our property. That was about eight years ago they moved all the white people out but we are still here.' That is how this got to look the way it looks. Blacks and whites have always lived pretty close together [in this area]. There has always been a division but they have never been far away from one another.
SDL: That is the case in NORCO where you have blacks living on one side of town and whites on the other.
BW: That's exactly right. And in a lot of places what you see is that the white community is not there.
SDL: But in NORCO the white community wants to stay there.
BW: They do. I told you they bought the brainwash and they benefited from Shell so their whole attitude towards Shell is different. It is like one of the PR people told me: 'I've lived around these facilities all my life and my parents worked in them, and we just know what the sounds mean and we know it is safe and that is why we are not as hysterical.' I said: 'Maybe you don't know what the noise and sounds mean and that is why you are not hysterical.' But his take was that they are just much more familiar with the workings of the plant and the safety precautions and all this.
SDL: They also say that the flaring is a good thing because it is letting off pressure.
BW: Right. So they are less fearful of it. I told him: 'At one time everybody smoked but now we know better. I believe that in a few years you will know better and I just hope that you are not dying of cancer or something.' He said: 'Well, I survived this far.' And I said: 'Well, it ain't over yet.' It was a serious conversation.
SDL: When I did the interviews in the white community they said: 'I can show you a guy who is 80 year-old who lives here and if it is making everyone so sick why are there all these old people.
BW: That's right but are they counting the dead ones? He is only pointing to the people who maybe had really good genes or maybe they are sick but alive. This is what I tell them: 'This means nothing because one or two people escaped illness.' It is like the smokers who say the same thing: 'Look at him, 90 years-old and smoked all his life.' Well, he is pretty damn lucky but that doesn't mean that you will be.