http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18460

The (Recycled) Envelope Please...

Michelle Nijhuis, Grist Magazine
April 19, 2004

The environmental movement often runs on the adrenaline of outrage,
and the past year has provided more outrages than most. The White
House has taken aim -- and fired -- at some of our most powerful
environmental laws. Multinational corporations continue to exert
undue influence on, and in some cases write, regulations meant to
govern them. There are new signs that humans are changing the global
climate, and that species are vanishing -- perhaps even faster than
we had thought. Environmental groups large and small are in full
battle mode.

But for the long haul, environmentalists need more than outrage. They
need hope -- a kind of unflappable, adamantine hope. That's what
sustains the winners of this year's Goldman Environmental Prize.
These seven grassroots environmentalists come from across the planet
-- Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South and Central America,
and island nations -- and this year of terrible news hasn't shaken
their faith. After all, most have persisted through far worse: In
their long battles for environmental protection and justice, these
men and women have been publicly humiliated, jailed, and forced into
hiding. They've faced corrupt governments, foreign occupation, and
decades of civil war. Colombian activist Libia Grueso has lost
colleagues to paramilitary assassins. "If some of us have to die,
that means that some of us have to continue," she says. "We make
every effort in every instance to be happy, despite the things that
occur."

The Goldman Environmental Prize recognizes the perseverance -- and
the very concrete accomplishments -- of grassroots activists
throughout the world. The prize is considered by many to be
environmentalism's highest honor, established in 1990 by Richard and
Rhoda Goldman (Richard Goldman founded Goldman Insurance Services in
San Franciso, and Rhoda Goldman was a descendant of jeans-maker Levi
Strauss). Winners are nominated annually by environmental
organizations, and chosen by a panel of former prizewinners and other
activists. Each winner or team of winners receives a
no-strings-attached award of $125,000. This year's crop was honored
in a ceremony in San Francisco on April 19.

Below is a list of the winners followed by the first in a series of
interviews with the 2004 Goldman winners discussing their victories
and defeats, their plans for the future, and their mystifying,
inspiring optimism.

Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla of Bhopal, India, survived the
1984 Union Carbide gas leak that killed 20,000 people. They're now
leading an international campaign to hold Dow Chemical and its
subsidiary Union Carbide responsible for the horrifying human cost of
the disaster.

Margie Eugene-Richard of Norco, La., took on an oil refinery and a
Shell Chemicals plant that polluted her neighborhood and poisoned her
family and friends. Guess what? She won. [Interview to be published
on April 20.]

Rudolf Amenga-Etego, a public-interest attorney from Ghana, has
mobilized his fellow Ghanaians to demand clean and affordable
drinking water. Most recently, he helped derail a major World Bank
water-privatization project. [Interview to be published on April 20.]

Demetrio do Amaral de Carvalho of East Timor helped win independence
for his Southeast Asian country; now, he's leading its very first
environmental organization. [Interview to be published on April 21.]

Libia Grueso Castelblanco of Colombia has defended the rights of
Afro-Colombians -- and the integrity of her country's biologically
rich coastal rainforest -- in the face of industrial development and
the fallout of civil war. [Interview to be published on April 22.]

Manana Kochladze, a scientist and activist from the Republic of
Georgia, is working to protect the Georgian people and environment
from a $3 billion BP pipeline project. [Interview to be published on
April 23.]

She's the Bee's Knees

Rashida Bee of Bhopal, India, fights against the company that
devastated her community

On the night of December 3, 1984, in the central Indian city of
Bhopal, a massive poisonous gas leak from a Union Carbide pesticide
factory killed 8,000 people. Over the course of 20 years, the
infamous disaster has caused an estimated 20,000 deaths, countless
birth defects, and a litany of other serious health problems.

"The young women who were exposed while they were infants have
different kinds of menstrual disorders, and some are going through
early menopause -- at age 25 or 30," says Bhopal survivor Rashida
Bee. Bee, 48, and fellow disaster victim Champa Devi Shukla, 52, want
justice for those who survived that December night -- and for the
younger generation that continues to suffer its consequences.

The two women are helping to lead an international campaign against
Dow Chemical and its subsidiary Union Carbide. In 1999, they and
other disaster victims filed a class-action lawsuit against Union
Carbide, a case that is still making its way through the U.S. court
system. In 2002, Bee and Shukla organized a 19-day hunger strike in
New Delhi, demanding that former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson
face a criminal trial in Bhopal. They also called for Dow to provide
long-term health care for survivors and their children, clean up the
former Union Carbide site, and supply economic support to survivors
who can no longer work due to illness. That action has been followed
by hunger strikes, protests, and rallies by activists around the
world, an outcry that Forbes magazine has blamed for a drop in Dow's
stock price. In May, Bee and Shukla plan to take their demands to
Dow's shareholders meeting in Michigan.

The pair shared one of the six 2004 Goldman Environmental Prizes,
awarded in a ceremony in San Francisco, Calif., on April 19. Grist
spoke to Bee through a translator.

I realize this may be difficult for you, but would you describe some
of your memories of the Union Carbide disaster?

It is difficult to describe all that we went through that night in
words, but I will speak briefly. We were all sleeping that night, and
suddenly in the middle of the night the children woke up coughing.
They said they felt like they were being choked, and we felt that way
too. One of the children opened the door and a cloud came inside --
we all started coughing violently, as if our lungs were on fire, and
our eyes were watering. One of the kids, who had gone outside, said
everyone was running away and that we all must run away. We did not
know at that time that it was poisonous gas from Union Carbide.
People were saying that a warehouse full of red chiles had caught
fire, because that was how it felt, terribly irritating. Outside,
there was a commotion, with people running everywhere. Our family was
separated, and I with my husband and father started running. We could
only run for half a kilometer because we were inhaling the gas. Our
eyes were so swollen that we could not open them -- when we pried our
eyes open, all we saw were dead children and people all around us.
After running half a kilometer we had to rest. We were too breathless
to run, and my father had started vomiting blood, so we sat down.

How have you and your families been affected by the gas exposure?

At the time [of the gas leak] all of us had to be hospitalized, we
were all having such severe problems. Some of my family members were
missing for a few days, and I had to look at thousands of dead bodies
to find out if they were among the dead. The problems were very
intense and acute at that time, but we did not know that the problems
would last for so long. My father and other people in my family have
had five different kinds of cancers. The young women who were exposed
while they were infants have different kinds of menstrual disorders,
and some are going through early menopause -- at age 25 or 30. So
often they cannot produce children, and the children they do produce
often have birth defects. This is not just in my family but all
around in the community. Many people have tuberculosis because the
gas exposure caused damage to the immune system. So these problems
continue.

I understand your activism began when you founded an independent
union in your workplace. What convinced you to do this?

When I came out of our household after being isolated -- that
isolation was according to traditional Islamic custom -- I started
working. [Editor's note: Bee abandoned this custom because the male
wage-earners in her family were too sick to work.] I met with women
who were in similar or worse situations. I realized that it was not
just the problem of my family, but that hundreds and hundreds of
other families have these problems. I realized that we could and must
come together, that this was a problem common to all of us.

I imagine that it's unusual for women in your community to become
political activists. How have your friends and neighbors reacted to
your work?

I've been fortunate to have a husband who provides full support to me
and is interested in what I do. I have support in my family and in my
neighborhood. People are always surprised at the things I do -- they
wonder how a woman with no education and a background of poverty does
what she does -- but they have come to appreciate that what I am
doing is not just for Bhopal but has meaning for the whole world. Now
I am hopeful that more people from Muslim families, at least in my
neighborhood, will realize that they should not keep women in the
confines of the house.

What can be done to prevent similar disasters?

To insure that Bhopal doesn't occur anywhere else, we must ensure
that justice is done in Bhopal. If there is exemplary punishment of
the corporation and its officials, then other corporations will think
twice before imposing risks on the life and health of ordinary
people. We must spread the word of Bhopal, and make sure that legal
responsibility for the disaster is fixed on the corporation that is
responsible.

What keeps you going?

It is the suffering of people around me that drives me to do what I
am doing. When I realize that families are starving, when I realize
that babies are nursing on poisoned breast milk, I know I cannot stop
and must continue with this.

What will you do with the prize money?

We will put all of this money into a trust, and the trust will
provide medical help to babies who are born with defects. The trust
will also provide employment for people who cannot work because of
sickness. We will also set up a smaller award in our own country for
ordinary people who fight corporate crime.

What does the prize itself mean to you?

This award, it affirms our struggle and makes the issues we are
raising credible. It brings out the truth in our campaign. Dow has
been trying to portray us as a fringe group with unreasonable
demands. This award nails that lie, and shows that our campaign and
demands are based in truth.

Michelle Nijhuis is a freelance writer living outside of Paonia, Colo.