DIANE WILSON
Diane comes from a dynasty of shrimp fishermen. She is a career fisher woman. Diane took on Formosa Plastics Corporation when the company polluted her home town of Seadrift Texas, and nearby Lavaca Bay on the Gulf Coast. She joined forces with Formosa workers and NGO’s in Texas, and won $50 million to clean up the mess Formosa made. It’s the largest environmental settlement to an individual plaintiff in the USA. Diane is still trying to work with Formosa to figure out how to clean up its horrible mess in her home town and in Texas’ Gulf Coast.
NANCY BUI
Nancy became a boat person, along with her two very young children, after the end of the Vietnam war. Her children barely made it with her to the USA. She started from scratch literally, raised her children, went back to school and became a successful entrepreneur. Her love for Vietnam burst back into her life when Formosa Plastics Corporation built a steel oplant in her native land, and massively polluted both the land and sea in Vietnam. Out of compassion for her people, Nancy Bui co-founded the Justice For Formosa Victims Association. Nancy and Diane WIlson have worked together, and Nancy also works with Echo Lin in Taiwan, to bring Formosa to justice.
ECHO LIN
Echo Lin (Lin Jen Hui) is an environmental activist in Taiwan. She and others have worked with the villagers and farmers of Taiwan to force Formosa Plastics Corporation (Taiwan-based) to clean up the messes it has caused all over Taiwan, and to make reparations to the Taiwanese people it has harmed. When she foud out about what Formosa had done with its steel plant in Vietnam, she went to work to force Formosa to accept the blame for the disaster and to to pay a very large settlement to the Vietnam government. Currently she’s working on getting money from that settlement to the people in Vietnam who suffered the most from the catastrophe of 2016.
SHARON LAVIGNE
Sharon’s forebears lived in St. James Parish Louisiana for generations, farming and enjoying a healthy life. Then Formosa Plastics and other fossil fuel industries took over in St. James and other towns along Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, turning an 85 mile stretch of coastline into what is now dubbed “cancer alley”. Sharon and her group Rise St. James stopped a planned massive new Formosa petrochemical complex, and will continue to fight Formosa until it’s gone. Sharon was awarded a 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize for her work.
GLORIA MAJIGA KAMOTO
Gloria, another Goldman Environmental Prize winner for 2021, is in her early ’20’s. She organized a movement in her country of Malawi, to urge climate action, and to support the Malawi government’s banning of single use plastics and plastic manufacture. Gloria wants to work with activists internationally, to go after companies like Formosa, that dupe developing nations into accepting polluting plastics manufacture.