In June of 2010, Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, appeared before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to answer questions about the massive spilling of oil into the Gulf of Mexico after a BP well exploded two months earlier. Hayward was just beginning to speak when Diane Wilson—her face and hands covered with a dark substance intended to look like oil—stood up and began shouting.
“You need to be charged with a crime!” she called out, before eventually being removed and then arrested by Capitol police.
A week earlier, Wilson had been arrested at a Senate hearing while protesting Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s successful blocking of a bill that would have lifted the cap on the amount of money BP could be called on to pay for cleanup in the Gulf.
Wilson has been arrested dozens of times over the years while advocating for the environment, prisoners’ rights and peace. The Texas native began life, like three generations of family before her, fishing for shrimp off the Gulf Coast; she turned to activism as she became aware of the toxic pollutants released into those waters by nearby plants and refineries. In 2002, she helped found CODEPINK, a self-described “women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end U.S.-funded wars and occupations, to challenge militarism globally, and to redirect our resources into health care, education, green jobs and other life-affirming activities.”
Wilson tells her story in several memoirs she’s written, including An Unreasonable Woman: The True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight for Seadrift Texas and Diary of an EcoOutlaw: An Unreasonable Woman Breaks the Law for Mother Earth.
This week, Wilson will be in the Valley to speak about her work at an event held in celebration of International Women’s Day. The talk will take place on Thursday, March 8 at 6:30 p.m., at the Friends Meeting House at 43 Center St. in Northampton. Organizers invite attendees to “stay after the talk to party and sing.”
Wilson’s speech is not the only local International Women’s Day event planned. Earlier that day, from 4 to 5 p.m., activists for peace will gather to hold signs on the Northampton Rail Bridge at Main and Pleasant streets. The following day, March 9, protesters will join a “Women Say NO to Nukes” demonstration at the Vermont Yankee Power Plant at 2:30 p.m. (with carpools leaving the parking lots of Spare Time Bowling in Northampton at 1:30 and the Big Y in Greenfield at 1:45). For more information on any of the events, contact Priscilla Lynch of Western Mass CODEPINK at 413-625-9242, or at priscillalynch@earthlink.com.
