Analyze

I published this news article about a hunger strike against Formosa Plastics that occurred in Texas this fall. Despite the extremity of a 30-day hunger strike, the protesting tactic has not gained attention from national media outlets. At the time I published this article, two small environmental organizations had announced the beginning of the strike, but none continued to cover the event in the unfolding weeks. While activists are driven to take on dangerous protest tactics, little communication of these tactics has carried across mass media.

The article itself introduces Formosa Plastics through its reputation as a "serial offender" of environmental and workplace safety regulations. I list several statistics on legal fines that Formosa Plastics has accumulated overtime, using these quantities to demonstrate the scale of their harm to environmental and human health. An important limitation of this storytelling strategy, however, is that many of Formosa Plastics' actions go undocumented, and even when documented, do not lead to legal consequences. Furthermore, we should still strive to acknowledge the harms committed by Formosa Plastics that are technically within legal limits.

The complaints of Duplin County residents and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network about general permitting for hog farms in Eastern NC. These permits would give way to more ground and water pollution due to the relaxed regulations on corporate farms that hold multiple different numbers of livestock. Plans for the implementationa pipline called the "Grady Road project" interrupt the family and small scale farms in the ares. A quote from the Duplin County NAACP president Robert O. Moore says:

"The corporation has refused to implement any technology to clean up the water, citing the cost of doing so was too expensive. Yet the cost of this biogas project rivals the cost that would have been to implement cleaner and safer technology to ensure the safety of those living near these operations."

Many local groups in Eastern NC counties have previously tried to receive assistance to help with their agriculture waste managment systems, yet fall short due to many government officials only focusing on corporate farms. 

Read more at the link: https://southerlymag.org/2022/03/24/biogas-could-do-more-harm-than-good…
 

Early local organizing that uses conflict and difference as a way to generate transformative solutions. Solutions that serve more then one worldview instead of growing otherness, separateness, and hierarchy. In the book Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown, brown states... 

At the human scale, in order to create a world that works for more people, for more life, we have to collaborate on the process of dreaming and visioning and implementing that world. We have to recognize that a multitude of realities have, do, and will exist.

An example of success using this strategy is the Dogwood Alliance in joint with other partners who put a stop to a wood pellet mill in Lumberton, NC. The article located on the Dogwood Alliance webpage about this victory states the following. 

THE CLOSURE OF THIS FACILITY IS ALSO A WIN FOR OUR CLIMATE. THE BURNING OF THESE PELLETS WOULD HAVE ADDED THOUSANDS OF TONS OF CARBON DIOXIDE TO THE ATMOSPHERE, THE EQUIVALENT OF 155,580 CARS ON THE ROAD.

Link to this webpage: https://www.dogwoodalliance.org/2022/04/statement-wood-pellet-mill-stop…

In an article written in August 2022 details the complaints of residents of Duplin County and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network in response to a general permit for hog farms in Eastern North Carolina that would pollute the ground and water by relaxing regulations on farms with varying numbers of livestock. A quote from Sheri White-Williamson, cofounder of the Community Action Network, says, 

“A general permit is a one-size fits all system, regardless of the number of animals you have,” she said. “That doesn’t seem to make good environmental sense. At the very minimum we would like to see the denitrification system that has shown to be better for taking care of the toxins that come out of this process. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened.”

Local groups urge the DEQ to set regulations on a case by case basis depending on the size of biogas operations and should require cleaner systems and ways of getting rid of waste.

The article is linked here:https://coastalreview.org/2022/08/groups-challenge-ncs-biogas-general-p…

This July 14th news article (Oglesby 2022) mentions the The Waterkeeper Alliance as a stakeholder group commenting on biogas projects:

Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental group, also criticized the general permit, calling it “woefully inadequate” and saying it fails to assure compliance with water quality protections required under North Carolina law.

Note that the case study for Calhoun County, Texas revolves around a clean water lawsuit against Formosa Plastics, led by a group of actvists associated with the Waterkeeper movement. See the essay The Waterkeepers Win.

From a recent news article (July 12, 2022):

On July 1, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ)—the state’s environmental regulator—issued general biogas permits for swine, cattle, and wet poultry operations, allowing them to bypass individual water quality review and public hearing processes when installing an anaerobic digester on their lagoons. The permits are in effect until Sept. 2024.

[...]

The permits reduce communities’ ability to weigh in on individual projects and will fast-track biogas operations in the state. Environmental groups heavily opposed the draft released in February. 

See the first part of the article series here.

Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan journalist and author tweeted: 'There were two anti-police brutality protests in Nairobi today. The one featuring white people made it's way to the US embassy undisturbed. The one led by working class and poor folks ended in teargas and arbitrary arrests.'

On March 25, 2020 the Kenyan government imposed a curfew to limit movement in Nairobi to prevent the spreading of COVID-19. In the ensuing months, the police 'enforced' the curfew by killing as many people as COVID-19 in Nairobi. The police have had a long and bloody history in Nairobi. Missing Voices Kenya have documented the shocking number of people who have lots their lives to police brutality over the years. Although groups in poor neighbourhoods such as Mathare have long held protests against police violence, the recent murder of George Floyd in the US has lent momentum to this movement. Thus, these groups took to the street to walk to the apartment where Yasin Moyo, a 13 year old playing on his balcony was killed by police, to demand that Black lives mattered- everywhere. The protests ended in the police tear gassing protestors.

A separate group comprising of many white protestors marched to the US Embassy to protest extrajudicial killings in the US and Kenya. From reports I have been reading about the protests on Twitter, these groups were left unharmed by the police. It is thus important that we recognize the the situatedness of protests agains police violence in different parts of the world, and the specific histories and contexts that shape each one of them, while recognizing their common themes.