# Fighting Formosa in Louisiana

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 23 Jul 2021, 26 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/01b6240d-935d-4039-a191-b3ec00f2a737/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

Diane Wilson couldn't keep Formosa Plastics out of her Texas town, but down the coast in St. James Parish, Louisiana, Sharon Lavigne is fighting like hell to keep the petrochemical giant out. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:10] Speaker 1: Previously on drilled.
[0:12] Speaker 2: My only regret is that I did not try hard
[0:17] Speaker 2: enough to keep them out, and they need to try
[0:22] Speaker 2: everything to keep them up. They do not want Formosa
[0:26] Speaker 2: in there.
[0:27] Speaker 1: That was Diane Wilson in Texas talking about her thirty
[0:32] Speaker 1: year battle with Taiwanese petrochemical company for Mosa. In Diane's defense,
[0:39] Speaker 1: she didn't know Formosa was coming to her town. She
[0:43] Speaker 1: didn't know about them at all until they'd been there
[0:45] Speaker 1: a while and started planning a massive expansion in Louisiana,
[0:50] Speaker 1: where the company is hoping to build a nine billion
[0:54] Speaker 1: dollar complex with fourteen different plants. It's a different story.
[1:00] Speaker 1: Residents and activists knew about the project almost immediately because
[1:05] Speaker 1: they were already fighting the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries
[1:11] Speaker 1: all over the region.
[1:12] Speaker 3: So I worked with the Bucky Brigade, and we were
[1:14] Speaker 3: working in Saint James Parish in regard to the Value
[1:17] Speaker 3: Bridge pipeline.
[1:19] Speaker 1: So when Formosa came to Saint James Parish, Louisiana, the
[1:23] Speaker 1: community was ready for them.
[1:25] Speaker 3: There is a drive to build and expand more petrochemical
[1:30] Speaker 3: plants all over the country, and certainly Louisiana is ground
[1:33] Speaker 3: zero for that, and within that, Saint James is in
[1:36] Speaker 3: the bullseye, and so they built the southern leg of
[1:39] Speaker 3: the Dakota Access pipeline in Saint James Parish. I was
[1:41] Speaker 3: already working on that, and then in the midst of that,
[1:45] Speaker 3: this is this, you know, horrible idea of formost and
[1:48] Speaker 3: last coup job.
[1:49] Speaker 4: That's our story today. I I mean Western Love. This
[1:53] Speaker 4: is drilled season six, the bridge to nowhere. Today the
[1:58] Speaker 4: continuation of one plastic.
[2:02] Speaker 5: Pipelines, and we gotta fight for most of them. We
[2:05] Speaker 5: will not allow them to pick our ancestors out of
[2:08] Speaker 5: his ground and put them somewhere else. We're gonna stand
[2:11] Speaker 5: up for Saint James Pear. This is our home. We're
[2:14] Speaker 5: not going anywhere for Massa have a have a fight
[2:17] Speaker 5: on their hands.
[2:43] Speaker 1: The Triumphant music you hear is the soundtrack to a
[2:47] Speaker 1: twenty three minute promotional video for Most of Plastics posted
[2:52] Speaker 1: to YouTube in January twenty twenty one. Here's how they
[2:57] Speaker 1: describe this project in Saint che Parish.
[3:01] Speaker 6: FPG will continue to build downstream petrochemical plants and also
[3:06] Speaker 6: plans to invest nine point four billion US dollars to
[3:11] Speaker 6: build a large petrochemical complex in Louisiana. FPG will also
[3:18] Speaker 6: evaluate the feasibility of expanding its investments in the future.
[3:24] Speaker 1: So, like we talked about last episode, Formosa's taking advantage
[3:28] Speaker 1: of cheap shale gas in the US to fuel its
[3:32] Speaker 1: buildout of petrochemical plants. Shale gas is another term for
[3:37] Speaker 1: natural gas, or fract gas or fossil gas. It's the
[3:41] Speaker 1: stuff a lot of US companies have been drilling out
[3:44] Speaker 1: of rocks over the past decade. Part of the reason
[3:47] Speaker 1: for MOSA is expanding so much in the US is
[3:51] Speaker 1: not just because of all the cheap gas. It's also
[3:55] Speaker 1: because the government in its home country, Taiwan, refuge to
[4:00] Speaker 1: give the company permits. It's violated so many environmental regulations
[4:05] Speaker 1: over the years that it's considered a bad actor. So
[4:10] Speaker 1: Formosa looked around the world for a place to expand,
[4:14] Speaker 1: maybe somewhere with weaker environmental regulations, and they found it
[4:19] Speaker 1: in the American South. But while state officials welcomed them
[4:24] Speaker 1: with open arms, they may have underestimated local residents.
[4:29] Speaker 7: And this isn't just any plans, but it's being called
[4:31] Speaker 7: the largest facility in the States producing products like plastic
[4:35] Speaker 7: bottles and grocery bags. So what's at stake for people
[4:37] Speaker 7: like Sharon, who have called Saint James home all our
[4:40] Speaker 7: life and who really benefits from the petrochemical industry.
[4:44] Speaker 1: Almost immediately, the community in Saint James Parish started asking
[4:49] Speaker 1: questions about how exactly this new plant for Moosa was
[4:53] Speaker 1: planning was going to benefit them. Sharon Levine saw nothing
[4:58] Speaker 1: good about the plan right from the jump.
[5:01] Speaker 8: When I heard that for most was coming into Saint Jane.
[5:04] Speaker 8: The governor announced it in the spring of twenty eighteen,
[5:07] Speaker 8: That's when I first heard about it. And then in
[5:10] Speaker 8: the fall of twenty eighteen, that's when I started righting
[5:13] Speaker 8: the James. I started in my house. It was about
[5:17] Speaker 8: almost ten of us in here, and we were all
[5:20] Speaker 8: roused up because we wanted to do something about it.
[5:23] Speaker 1: Sharon was born and raised in Saint James. She spent
[5:26] Speaker 1: most of her life as a school teacher, but today
[5:29] Speaker 1: she's the leader of the community's opposition to Formosa. I
[5:33] Speaker 1: reached her by phone on a hot day in Louisiana,
[5:36] Speaker 1: and she told me it was her daughter who first
[5:39] Speaker 1: told her about the Formosa project. They call it the
[5:43] Speaker 1: Sunshine Project, and then Sharon saw it on the news
[5:47] Speaker 1: that night. It was presented like a done deal. The
[5:51] Speaker 1: parish council, the governor, everyone had signed off on it.
[5:55] Speaker 1: But within weeks, Sharon had invited her neighbors over to
[5:58] Speaker 1: her house to talk about what they were going to do.
[6:01] Speaker 1: That day, she started a faith based activist group to
[6:04] Speaker 1: fight the project, Riise Saint James, and she's devoted every
[6:09] Speaker 1: minute of her life to the effort ever since. Rise
[6:13] Speaker 1: joined up with other groups in the area and they
[6:15] Speaker 1: started marching, protesting, and looking for legal help. Within a
[6:21] Speaker 1: few months, Formosa was back on the local news, but
[6:24] Speaker 1: this time the story was Sharon and her opposition to
[6:28] Speaker 1: the project. Here she is on WWLTV.
[6:31] Speaker 5: When they say it for Mosa was coming in looked
[6:34] Speaker 5: like something inside of me. Just click because it's coming
[6:37] Speaker 5: right next to me. It's almost two miles from where
[6:42] Speaker 5: they want to build.
[6:43] Speaker 1: Sharon lives in Saint James Parish, right in that bullseye
[6:48] Speaker 1: and Rolfuss was talking about. It's smack in the middle
[6:51] Speaker 1: of what's called Cancer Alley on the Gulf Coast, a
[6:55] Speaker 1: stretch of the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New
[6:59] Speaker 1: Orleans that's currently home to more than two hundred oil refineries,
[7:04] Speaker 1: petrochemical plants and manufacturing sites, and no surprise, some of
[7:09] Speaker 1: the highest cancer and asthma rates in the country. Sharon's
[7:13] Speaker 1: a retired school teacher, and she remembers what life was
[7:17] Speaker 1: like before her home earned the nickname Cancer Ali. It
[7:21] Speaker 1: wasn't even that long ago.
[7:23] Speaker 5: When I was a little girl. We had beautiful trees
[7:28] Speaker 5: for corn, trees, fruit trees. My daddy raised our foods
[7:33] Speaker 5: and we lift off the land. Everything was full, vibrant
[7:38] Speaker 5: and so pretty, the green grass and everything. Then back
[7:44] Speaker 5: in the sixties, that's when the first industry came down
[7:47] Speaker 5: in Saint James.
[7:48] Speaker 1: The bulk of that industry is concentrated in the black
[7:51] Speaker 1: neighborhoods of Saint James Parish. If you look at the
[7:55] Speaker 1: demographics of the parish, it seems very mixed, almost exactly
[8:00] Speaker 1: fifty percent black fifty percent white.
[8:02] Speaker 9: But those chemical facilities are also concentrated in the districts
[8:07] Speaker 9: of Saint James Parish that are predominantly black.
[8:10] Speaker 1: This is Jane Patten. She was born and raised in
[8:13] Speaker 1: Louisiana and now works as both a campaigner for the
[8:16] Speaker 1: Center for International Environmental Law and as the director of
[8:20] Speaker 1: no EAIST Louisiana.
[8:22] Speaker 9: So the parts of Saint James Parish that are predominantly
[8:25] Speaker 9: white have significantly fewer and in at least the case
[8:30] Speaker 9: in the case of at least one district, there are
[8:32] Speaker 9: no chemical plants in that majority white district. And yet
[8:36] Speaker 9: the two majority black districts in Saint James have almost
[8:39] Speaker 9: all of the petrochemical footprint, plastics production capacity, an aluminum plant,
[8:46] Speaker 9: there are several oil refineries, so this is a very
[8:50] Speaker 9: significant industrial footprint and it's very visible when you're driving
[8:55] Speaker 9: around the parish. So as the local community in Saint
[9:00] Speaker 9: James likes to say, Saint James's full.
[9:04] Speaker 1: Over the past few years, local resistance has been mounting
[9:08] Speaker 1: and the region has attracted national attention from environmental law
[9:11] Speaker 1: groups too. Here's Julie Teal Simmons with the Center for
[9:15] Speaker 1: Biological Diversity.
[9:17] Speaker 10: You were at a meeting in Texas about the oil
[9:21] Speaker 10: and gas industry and the petrochemical build out, and I
[9:25] Speaker 10: met with Anne Rolfuss of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and
[9:30] Speaker 10: was just astounded to hear about this new plastics plant
[9:34] Speaker 10: proposed for Saint James Parish, Louisiana.
[9:37] Speaker 1: Anne Rolfus is the founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade,
[9:42] Speaker 1: an environmental justice nonprofit in Louisiana. She's the woman we
[9:45] Speaker 1: heard from at the top of the episode talking about
[9:48] Speaker 1: the fight against Bayou Bridge, that southern leg of the
[9:51] Speaker 1: Dakota Access pipeline that was built through Saint James. So
[9:56] Speaker 1: Anne and Julie were talking and it didn't take long
[9:59] Speaker 1: for all of them and Julie, Sharon and Jane to
[10:03] Speaker 1: start working together. At the time, in twenty eighteen, several
[10:07] Speaker 1: nonprofit organizations and community groups had started fighting new permits
[10:12] Speaker 1: for facilities in Cancer Alley and tax breaks that the
[10:15] Speaker 1: oil industry was looking for in the area too. More
[10:19] Speaker 1: on that. After the break.
[10:33] Speaker 9: In twenty sixteen, the governor, in response to a lot
[10:37] Speaker 9: of organizing and advocacy, the Louisiana Governor John Bell Edwards
[10:42] Speaker 9: issued an executive order changing the way that the exemptions
[10:47] Speaker 9: for local property taxes were granted. So instead of having
[10:51] Speaker 9: a state board do it and they always got a
[10:53] Speaker 9: rubber stamp, they then had to get approval from each
[10:56] Speaker 9: local permitting authority, and the industry didn't like that so much.
[11:01] Speaker 1: This is Jane Patten again.
[11:03] Speaker 9: And so since that executive order has been put in place.
[11:05] Speaker 9: They've been trying to push legislation through the state legislature
[11:10] Speaker 9: to centralize the decision making, to try to actually put
[11:15] Speaker 9: the original terms of the taxi emption program back in place.
[11:18] Speaker 9: There was a whole constitutional amendment that was voted on
[11:22] Speaker 9: last year that tried to put the actually a more
[11:27] Speaker 9: generous version of the pre existing taxes emption program in place,
[11:30] Speaker 9: and they lost, and that again was due to really
[11:35] Speaker 9: significant local organizing. It was actually really tied in by
[11:38] Speaker 9: that time with the campaign against Formosa because the Formosa
[11:42] Speaker 9: plant is within its first ten years of existence supposed
[11:45] Speaker 9: to get approximately a billion dollars in local tax breaks.
[11:49] Speaker 1: A petrochemical plant that the community doesn't want that will
[11:53] Speaker 1: be a significant source of income for the company and
[11:57] Speaker 1: of pollution for the region is getting a one billion
[12:01] Speaker 1: dollar tax break over its first decade of operating. That's
[12:06] Speaker 1: after tightening the laws around tax breaks to industry.
[12:09] Speaker 9: And they're going to be building in a parish that
[12:11] Speaker 9: is really strapped for cash, a parish that is having
[12:14] Speaker 9: to fire thirty of its public school teaching staff this
[12:18] Speaker 9: school year because they don't have enough funds to pay them.
[12:22] Speaker 9: And Formosa is actively trying to not have to pay
[12:26] Speaker 9: their local property taxes, and of course they're not more
[12:29] Speaker 9: guilty of that than any other industry actor. They all
[12:31] Speaker 9: don't want to pay their property taxes, but that doesn't
[12:34] Speaker 9: help a local community.
[12:35] Speaker 1: Julie Teel Simmons organization had been working on various issues
[12:39] Speaker 1: in the Gulf Coast ever since the deep water oil
[12:42] Speaker 1: spilled back in twenty ten, but it hadn't gotten involved
[12:45] Speaker 1: in any of the Cancer Alley fights until the FOREMOSTA
[12:48] Speaker 1: proposal came along.
[12:50] Speaker 10: This foremost a plastics plant proposed for Saint James Parish,
[12:54] Speaker 10: is on a twenty four hundred acre site and the
[12:57] Speaker 10: build out of the facilities it will have fourteen different plants.
[13:02] Speaker 10: It literally is bigger than some many Louisiana towns and
[13:06] Speaker 10: it really is an industrial city that we're.
[13:08] Speaker 1: Talking about over in Texas. Diane Wilson heard about it too,
[13:12] Speaker 1: and she was worried.
[13:14] Speaker 2: Those people in Louisiana, in Saint James Parish, in that
[13:18] Speaker 2: little that's what they got to look for.
[13:20] Speaker 3: They got no idea.
[13:23] Speaker 2: It will destroy everything.
[13:24] Speaker 1: They got everything. Sharon Levigne has already seen her community
[13:32] Speaker 1: emptied out as industry has come in and with Formosa,
[13:36] Speaker 1: enough was enough. Sharon's deeply religious, and she says God
[13:41] Speaker 1: told her to fight this one. I feel like you
[13:43] Speaker 1: guys have been a lot more successful than many other
[13:45] Speaker 1: communities fighting these things. Why do you think that is?
[13:51] Speaker 8: I think because he's God's combined.
[13:53] Speaker 1: It's a little hard to hear Sharon in this recording,
[13:56] Speaker 1: but she says Rise has been successful because they've been
[13:59] Speaker 1: clued to God and what they're doing. Early on, the
[14:03] Speaker 1: community groups opposing FORMOSA linked up with environmental law groups
[14:07] Speaker 1: like Julie Peel Simmons group, the Center for Biological Diversity.
[14:11] Speaker 10: We started looking into it, and we've worked with golf
[14:14] Speaker 10: groups a lot, for example on the BP oil spill.
[14:17] Speaker 10: And this facility, though, just presented such an intersection of
[14:21] Speaker 10: all the issues that we care about. So this facility
[14:24] Speaker 10: would not only be built on top of wetlands and
[14:27] Speaker 10: adjacent to the Mississippi River and adjacent to really important
[14:31] Speaker 10: national estuary, but it also would create a massive amount
[14:35] Speaker 10: of air pollution. It's going to be it's the single
[14:38] Speaker 10: largest proposed source that we've been tracking of greenhouse gas
[14:42] Speaker 10: emissions in the country. It's going to be permitted to
[14:45] Speaker 10: it has been permitted to emit thirteen point six million
[14:48] Speaker 10: metric tons of CO two every year. It's the equivalent
[14:51] Speaker 10: of three and a half coal fired power plants. Just
[14:54] Speaker 10: to give you some context.
[14:56] Speaker 1: Today, there are several different lawyers fighting FORMOSA on multiple fronts. Simmons'
[15:02] Speaker 1: group is focused on a federal complaint against the Army
[15:05] Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers, which was in charge of issuing Formosa
[15:09] Speaker 1: permits to build on wetlands in Saint James.
[15:12] Speaker 10: Obviously, this project sits right on the Mississippi River, right
[15:16] Speaker 10: next to the levee, and there are wetlands on site
[15:18] Speaker 10: and adjacent to the property that connect to this national estuary,
[15:23] Speaker 10: and fishing grounds and recreational grounds that folks like to use,
[15:27] Speaker 10: and obviously will also impact the Mississippi River, and they
[15:30] Speaker 10: want to build a dock and do a lot of
[15:33] Speaker 10: work that will impact waters and wetlands. So the Army
[15:36] Speaker 10: Corps still has jurisdiction over that that is not delegated
[15:40] Speaker 10: to the States. So we commented on the proposed permit,
[15:45] Speaker 10: obviously opposing it for a whole host of reasons.
[15:48] Speaker 1: Then there were the local permits that Louisiana's Department of
[15:52] Speaker 1: Environmental Quality had to issue for the project.
[15:56] Speaker 11: So we were approached by a local resident who has
[16:00] Speaker 11: lived in Saint James all her life and was concerned
[16:03] Speaker 11: about particularly the environmental justice aspect of Formosa's proposed plan
[16:09] Speaker 11: because her community, which is predominantly African American, has been
[16:14] Speaker 11: overburdened with industrial pollution.
[16:17] Speaker 1: This is Kimberly Terrell with the Tulane University Law Clinic.
[16:21] Speaker 1: The woman she's talking about there isn't Sharon Levin, but
[16:24] Speaker 1: she is a member of Sharon's group Rise Saint James.
[16:28] Speaker 1: The first chance the public got to formally voice their
[16:31] Speaker 1: opposition to the project came when Formosa applied for its
[16:35] Speaker 1: air permit.
[16:36] Speaker 11: So the first thing we did was the attorneys at
[16:39] Speaker 11: the clinic submitted comments on Beverly's behalf regarding environmental justice
[16:45] Speaker 11: concerns for Formosa's air permit. You know, that was important
[16:50] Speaker 11: to raise those issues before DEQ made its decision in
[16:54] Speaker 11: order to be able to challenge that decision.
[17:00] Speaker 1: One of the things that Terrell and her colleagues argued
[17:02] Speaker 1: was that Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality ld EQ had
[17:06] Speaker 1: looked at outdated information to determine the environmental justice impact
[17:12] Speaker 1: of the Formosa plant. Here'sterrell's colleague Devin Lowell.
[17:16] Speaker 12: This petition just challenges deq's environmental justice analysis that they
[17:23] Speaker 12: did and put in analysis there in air quotes. DQ
[17:27] Speaker 12: in this decision used outdated cancer risk information to the
[17:31] Speaker 12: claim that there was no evidence that the nearby community
[17:36] Speaker 12: already faced a disproportionate burden from air pollution, but that
[17:40] Speaker 12: information was outdated when they made the decision. There was
[17:43] Speaker 12: updated information that showed that in fact, the community of Welcome,
[17:47] Speaker 12: which is closest to the proposed facility, actually faces cancer
[17:52] Speaker 12: risk in the eighty six percentile from air toxics, which
[17:55] Speaker 12: is much higher than the state average.
[18:00] Speaker 1: And Rolfus is involved in that suit too, as is Simmons,
[18:04] Speaker 1: who's working on both the state and federal fights. Despite
[18:07] Speaker 1: a lot of opposition, the Army Corps approved Formosa's permit
[18:12] Speaker 1: to build on those wetlands in September twenty nineteen.
[18:17] Speaker 10: This decision was one of the worst I've seen. They
[18:20] Speaker 10: issued a very very short decision document that just had
[18:24] Speaker 10: so many holes in it. And so in January of
[18:27] Speaker 10: twenty twenty, we went to federal court. We actually filed
[18:30] Speaker 10: in the District of d C where the headquarters for
[18:33] Speaker 10: the Army Corps is, and we filed a lawsuit challenging
[18:37] Speaker 10: the Army corps issuance of this permit on many many grounds,
[18:41] Speaker 10: and there are violations of law under the Clean Water Act,
[18:45] Speaker 10: but also the National Environmental Policy Act and the National
[18:49] Speaker 10: Historic Preservation Act.
[18:50] Speaker 1: Both the federal and state cases are ongoing, but Formosa's
[18:54] Speaker 1: opponents have stacked up some wins. A judge just ruled
[18:58] Speaker 1: in the state case that Luisiana de Eq has to
[19:01] Speaker 1: go back and look at current information to make a
[19:04] Speaker 1: decision on the environmental justice impact of the plant, and
[19:09] Speaker 1: the Army Corps has put a halt to building on
[19:11] Speaker 1: those wetlands because the facility wasn't just planned for wetlands,
[19:16] Speaker 1: it was planned for old plantation sites.
[19:19] Speaker 10: There was a discovery that there are at least two
[19:23] Speaker 10: cemeteries of former slaves unmarked burial sites on that site,
[19:29] Speaker 10: and there are several other anomalies on the property, which
[19:32] Speaker 10: is the word archaeologists used to define areas that can't
[19:35] Speaker 10: be ruled out as significant historic properties. So we also
[19:40] Speaker 10: had a claim in our lawsuit stating that the Army
[19:43] Speaker 10: Corps violated the National Preservation Act by failing to adequately
[19:48] Speaker 10: assess and protect those sites.
[19:51] Speaker 1: That made this a constitutional case too, and the Center
[19:54] Speaker 1: for Constitutional Rights came on board to help.
[19:58] Speaker 13: And so we've been assisting Rise Saint James in other
[20:03] Speaker 13: ways or helping them unnurse the information about the burial
[20:06] Speaker 13: site on the property make sure that they can have
[20:10] Speaker 13: access to those sites.
[20:13] Speaker 1: This is Pam Speace, senior staff attorney with the Center
[20:17] Speaker 1: for Constitutional Rights. She filed a public records request to
[20:21] Speaker 1: see if she could figure out if Formosa knew about
[20:24] Speaker 1: the graveyard before it submitted its plan.
[20:28] Speaker 13: What we know from the public records request is that
[20:31] Speaker 13: the company was actually wanting to remove cemetery if they
[20:35] Speaker 13: found it on the Acadia plantation, because where that site
[20:39] Speaker 13: was located is where they wanted to place a utility
[20:42] Speaker 13: plant that would power the because this complex is so massive, right,
[20:46] Speaker 13: it's going to need its own utility plant, and that's
[20:49] Speaker 13: exactly where it was going to be located.
[20:51] Speaker 8: So if they found.
[20:52] Speaker 13: Graves on that site, they were in the position of
[20:55] Speaker 13: having to either reconfigure all of the site plans or
[21:00] Speaker 13: seek permission to remove those remains, which would have been
[21:03] Speaker 13: a really big deal. So I would imagine it's because
[21:06] Speaker 13: either they just didn't think about it and didn't think
[21:09] Speaker 13: it's worth reporting out and nobody would care, or they
[21:12] Speaker 13: realized that people would care a whole lot and didn't
[21:16] Speaker 13: want to call too much attention to it.
[21:20] Speaker 1: Whatever happened, it was good enough to pause the project
[21:23] Speaker 1: at least a bit that the Army Corps permitted until
[21:27] Speaker 1: next year. But it was more than just a delay.
[21:31] Speaker 1: This news also brought a lot of negative attention and
[21:34] Speaker 1: national press to the project. When Sharon Levine wanted to
[21:38] Speaker 1: have a Juneteenth celebration at the site of the graveyard,
[21:41] Speaker 1: her petition was initially denied, but she fought that decision
[21:45] Speaker 1: and she won. She and her group had that celebration
[21:48] Speaker 1: first in twenty twenty and again this June.
[21:53] Speaker 8: Oh, we're saying we had a whole agenda insane and
[22:01] Speaker 8: opening prayer and like to turn.
[22:03] Speaker 6: This into sacred ground by a blessing with holy water.
[22:08] Speaker 8: The minister's just the grave site. Some people give some
[22:14] Speaker 8: accountability of what they experience in Saint Change, and some
[22:19] Speaker 8: are little history of different things in Saint James.
[22:23] Speaker 1: For Spees, it's sent a powerful message.
[22:26] Speaker 13: Well, I think the graves have done something very profound.
[22:30] Speaker 13: They have really erased what was an imaginary line between
[22:36] Speaker 13: the past and present.
[22:38] Speaker 7: M I.
[22:40] Speaker 13: You know, I think it made it. It's all, it's
[22:44] Speaker 13: all very present right now. That's the you know. And
[22:48] Speaker 13: I certainly think for folks and Rhymes and in the community,
[22:54] Speaker 13: the rediscovered connection to these graves is so profound and
[22:59] Speaker 13: it it gives them more strength and courage and commitments
[23:06] Speaker 13: to the struggle, and they certainly I don't think there's
[23:08] Speaker 13: any way you can divorce what's happening now in terms
[23:12] Speaker 13: of the sighting of these facilities and who's burying the
[23:15] Speaker 13: biggest burdens from the history of slavery in that area.
[23:19] Speaker 8: It's all.
[23:21] Speaker 13: There's a straight line connecting at all.
[23:28] Speaker 1: Next time on drilled what happened when the pandemic made
[23:31] Speaker 1: plastic a little more appealing.
[23:34] Speaker 14: There's a remarkable instance of this where you have an
[23:38] Speaker 14: industry representative actually fantasizing, and I'm using this word very advisedly,
[23:43] Speaker 14: fantasizing that they'll be able to get the public to
[23:46] Speaker 14: rep bananas and apples in plastic packaging in the name
[23:50] Speaker 14: of hygiene and finding the COVID canda and if there's
[23:54] Speaker 14: any And I think that that is a testament to
[23:59] Speaker 14: how oh, really optimistic the industry is about how it's
[24:04] Speaker 14: going to be able to exploit COVID nineteen to fill
[24:07] Speaker 14: that gap in plastic demand.
[24:16] Speaker 1: Drilled as an original production of the Critical Frequency Podcast Network.
[24:21] Speaker 1: The show is reported, written, and hosted by me Amy Westerveldt.
[24:26] Speaker 1: Additional reporting this episode from Sarah Dern in Louisiana. Our
[24:30] Speaker 1: producer this season is Juliana Bradley. Our editor is Julia Ritchie.
[24:35] Speaker 1: Our theme song this season is Death Song by b Beamon.
[24:39] Speaker 1: Additional music for the season composed by Elliott Peltzman. Our
[24:43] Speaker 1: artwork for the season is done by Matthew Fleming. Our
[24:47] Speaker 1: First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton at the First Amendment Project.
[24:52] Speaker 1: You can find additional reporting and photos for this season
[24:56] Speaker 1: on our Twitter feed at we Are Drilled or online
[25:00] Speaker 1: at drillednews dot com. If you're a fan of the show,
[25:03] Speaker 1: please consider supporting us in two ways. One, if you
[25:08] Speaker 1: want to spend some money and get some extra bonus
[25:11] Speaker 1: content at early episodes, check out our Patreon at patreon
[25:15] Speaker 1: dot com slash Drilled. You can also support us by
[25:18] Speaker 1: giving us a rating or review in Apple Podcasts. It
[25:22] Speaker 1: really helps us find new listeners and combat the army
[25:26] Speaker 1: of climate and are trolls that are constantly trying to
[25:29] Speaker 1: tank our ratings. Thanks for doing that, and we'll see
[25:33] Speaker 1: you next week.

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