Fighting big plastic — and winning
Sharon Lavigne is keeping chemical companies from building new plastics plants in her community
Sharon Lavigne (second from left) with members of RISE St. James / Image: Gerald Herbert via AP Images
Sharon Lavigne has lived in St. James Parish, Louisiana for her entire life. She’s watched industry move in and shift the way of life from a place with healthy water and soil that produced enough food to feed the town, to a place so polluted its nickname is Cancer Alley. Lavigne spent her career as a teacher and retired to become an activist full time when a Chinese chemical company called Wanhua proposed a plastic plant near her home in St. James.
In 2018, she founded the local environmental justice group RISE St. James. Last year, Lavigne and RISE St. James won the Goldman Environmental Prize. The group led a fight that kept Wanhua from opening a new plant in Cancer Alley. Now they face another challenge. A second company, Formosa Plastics, has plans for a new plant just 2 miles from her home.
We sat down with Lavigne to talk about social justice and the plastics industry and how she’s leading an effort to keep corporations from building more plastics plants in her hometown. Read more about Cancer Alley here.
Industrial plants in St. James Parish / Image: RISE St. James
Q&A
You’ve lived in St. James Parish for your entire life. How have you watched St. James and the surrounding area during your lifetime?
When I was a little girl, we had clean air. We had clean water and productive soil. We planted our food in our gardens and we weren't sick. We drank water from the hydrant. Then, we feel like industry snuck up on us back in the late 1960s and at the time, we thought it was wonderful to have industry in St James, especially in the Fifth District, where I'm from.
And as time went on, more industry came in and we didn’t know the health effects of these industries. When they come in here, they paint a beautiful picture like they want to be good neighbors and they're going to do this and do that for us. But they tell us lies. But now that this pollution has come in, we have so many people sick. So many people are dying. And it's not just safe. It’s like we are a sacrifice for their profits. They are making billions and millions of dollars of our lives.
If we stay here and continue to breathe this dirty air and more industries continue to come in, we’re going to die. It's just that bad. A lot of the young people finish college and they go other places, but many of us don't have the resources to pack up and leave to go somewhere else. So we have to rebuild our community again. We have to get rid of the industries that are poisoning us and using us to make their profits.
#DefundFormosa protests / Images: RISE St. James
I wanted to talk about your activism as well. Was there a certain catalyst or event that really pushed you to become an activist?
Activism wasn't something that I planned to do, it’s something that just happened. I had no intention of becoming an activist. All I knew was that more industry was not coming in 2 miles from my home. That's what I knew in my mind. It wasn't going to happen. Formosa Plastics made a big change in my life. John Bel Edwards, the governor of Louisiana, he made that change, too, because he wanted to put this industry in my hometown, 2 miles from my home. And I ask him why not put it in his hometown? If you want this kind of industry and it's going to bring so much into the state in revenue, put in your hometown.
But he won't put in his hometown because the parish president over there said no when they asked to build the plant there. Then when he came to St. James, our president said yes to having it in our parish. They had a comment period and we spoke up and told them, “No, we don’t want it in St. James,” but they disregarded us. They still voted to put it in here. It was like we were nothing. So many people have already died. You can't name all the people who have died. Both people who lived on either side of me died of cancer.
You did have a pretty significant win. Last year, the plastic company Wanhua was forced to halt their plans for St. James. What did that feel like?
Victory. Yes. And the same thing will happen with Formosa. I'm already claiming victory with Formosa Plastics.
You didn't have any experience as an activist prior to organizing your community against the proposed Wanhua plastic plant. What is your advice to other people who might want to become an activist?
Educate yourself first, and then go out there and do it. I did not have one inkling of experience, but I started going to parish council meetings after I learned about all of these industries and how so many people were sick and dying.
I went out there and I did it. I just started talking and started yelling and started telling people, “We can't have this.” I did videos and live streams to make people aware of what's going on. I organized a little march on September 8, 2018 to protest.
Then in October of 2018, we formed RISE St. James. I was still teaching school then and would teach school in the daytime and do this at night, getting on the phone with different people. Then we planned another march in May 2019. By then we teamed up with some other people from other different parts of council. Our noise that we made against them helped. Nobody had ever protested against industry until we came along and that made a big difference in the council. Then, when we got a lot of recognition and in October 2019, that's when I decided to retire because I couldn't go back to work.
I was tired and I had to make up my mind about what I wanted to do and I wanted to fight. And when I see people dying, that gives me more courage to win a fight.
Image: Julie Dermansky
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