Snapshot: A Barnful of Data

To document environmental harm by Union Carbide, Formosa, and other industrial actors, Diane Wilson began collecting everything she could get her hands on. Over many years, she has collected leaked company reports, photos taken by workers inside the plant, and recorded interviews with workers, for example. She stores the documents in her home and barn. 

She would bring all this information to mainstream newspapers to correct printed errors about industrial activities. She was sure she would be listened to and that the errors would be corrected. It wasn’t long before she realized that the disinformation was often by intent. This prompted her to start a now decades-spanning news article collection to keep up with it all – “the truth and the lies”, as she puts it.

 In the 1980s, the deregulatory spiral set in motion by Reaganomics was just picking up speed. Public release of environmental hazard data that activated Diane Wilson was part of this “voluntary disclosure” that replaced top-down command-and-control approaches. Activists during this time like Wilson had to learn the data work involved in calling the state out. Communities had to bear the burden of proof and reformat their evidence for different audiences. Community, academic, and government work began to be interweaved to pursue this approach.

 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• Why did Diane Wilson start documenting environmental harm? 

• What were Diane Wilsons’ expectations about mainstream newspapers and why did they change?

• What is “deregulation”? How can deregulation place the burden of proof on environmental harm on communities?