Activists Lock Themselves to Trucks Outside Valero’s Houston Refinery

Activists Begin Sustained Hunger Strike, Demand That Valero Divest from Keystone XL Pipeline

HOUSTON, TX – THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 8:00AM –

Activists Begin Sustained Hunger Strike, Demand That Valero Divest from Keystone XL Pipeline

HOUSTON, TX – THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 8:00AM –-Long­time Gulf Coast activists Diane Wil­son and Bob Lind­sey Jr. have locked their necks to oil tanker trucks des­tined for Valero’s Hous­ton Refin­ery in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Tar Sands Blockade’s protests of TransCanada’s Key­stone XL pipeline. Valero Ener­gy Corp. is among the largest investors in TransCanada’s tox­ic tar sands pipeline that will ter­mi­nate near the com­mu­ni­ty of Man­ches­ter, locat­ed in the shad­ow of Valero’s refin­ery. Not only are Wil­son and Lind­sey blockad­ing the Valero refin­ery, the two life­long friends have also vowed to begin a sus­tained hunger strike demand­ing that Valero divest from Key­stone XL and invest that mon­ey into the health and well-being of the peo­ple of Man­ches­ter.

With a 90% Lati­no pop­u­la­tion, Manchester’s rela­tion­ship with the Valero refin­ery is a text­book case of envi­ron­men­tal racism. Res­i­dents there have suf­fered through decades of pre­ma­ture deaths, can­cers, asth­ma and oth­er dis­eases attrib­ut­able to the refin­ery emis­sions. With lit­tle finan­cial sup­port for law­suits and with­out the polit­i­cal agency nec­es­sary to leg­isla­tive­ly reign-in crim­i­nal pol­luters like Valero, the com­mu­ni­ty suf­fers while Valero posts record prof­its.

“All my life the Gulf Coast has been an envi­ron­men­tal sac­ri­fice zone, and enough is enough,” declared Diane Wil­son, who spent over twen­ty years orga­niz­ing to stop chem­i­cal plants from dump­ing tox­ins direct­ly into Gulf waters. “Key­stone XL will bring to dirt­i­est fuel on the plan­et right down to the Gulf, where already over­bur­dened com­mu­ni­ties like Man­ches­ter will be forced to suf­fer even more. After decades of tox­ic air in Man­ches­ter, I refuse to just let them con­tin­ue to pun­ish this com­mu­ni­ty. I won’t eat until Valero divests from Key­stone XL.”

Wil­son, a fourth-gen­er­a­tion Gulf Coast shrimper, is no stranger to civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. After years of fight­ing indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion in her home­town of Sead­rift, TX, her will­ing­ness to use civ­il dis­obe­di­ence in the strug­gle for clean water and the suc­cess­es it wrought for her com­mu­ni­ty changed the land­scape of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice along the Gulf Coast.

New­ly des­ig­nat­ed by the Water­keep­er Alliance as the San Anto­nio Bay Water­keep­er, Bob Lind­sey Jr. was born and raised in Cal­houn Coun­ty, which has high­est rate of can­cer of any coun­ty in TX. Lind­sey also has a shrimp­ing her­itage stretch­ing back five gen­er­a­tions. His sis­ter has had four episodes of can­cer, and his father and nephew both died of rare dis­or­ders while in their for­ties. All of these dis­eases are trace­able to the chem­i­cal facil­i­ties around which Bob’s fam­i­ly mem­bers lived and worked.

“Me? I’m healthy. They’re the ones I’m fight­ing for. We have to be pre­pared to fight for those who can’t fight for them­selves or who are too afraid to fight for them­selves. That’s why I’m here.”

“Diane and Bob’s deci­sion to hunger strike in protest of TransCanada’s Key­stone XL and chal­lenge Valero’s long­stand­ing dis­re­gard for the health and safe­ty of the peo­ple of Man­ches­ter push­es the bound­aries of the Gulf Coast envi­ron­men­tal move­ment yet again, explains Ram­sey Sprague, a Louisiana Gulf Coast-born Tar Sands Block­ade spokesper­son. “Man­ches­ter deserves jus­tice as do all com­mu­ni­ties treat­ed as ener­gy sac­ri­fice zones. Cor­po­ra­tions like Valero and Tran­sCana­da can­not seem to func­tion with­out vio­lat­ing the health and safe­ty of the peo­ple every­where from Alber­ta to Man­ches­ter.”