M a r k D i l l e y

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DIANE WILSON
Author of AN UNREASONABLE WOMAN:
A TRUE STORY OF SHRIMPERS, POLITICOS, POLLUTERS AND THE FIGHT FOR
SEADRIFT, TEXAS
THURSDAY, MAY 10
7:00 pm
General Lectures Building NW corner of Warren
and Anthony Wayne Drive/ Third Avenue
Wayne State University Campus

Free and open to the public
Lecture and booksigning
Sponsored by the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, Wayne State
University
BOOKBEAT, Colleen Kammer and Carey Loren

Author, Peace Activist & American Hero
DIANE WILSON, Live in Detroit THURSDAY MAY 10th

Diane Wilson, author, founder of CODE PINK, Environmental & Peace
Activist will speak on Thursday May 10, at 7:00 pm in the General
Lectures Building NW corner of Warren and Anthony Wayne Drive/ Third
Avenue, Wayne State University Campus, in Detroit. This event is free
and open to the public. Books will be available for signing at the
event. Help us spread the word! This will be an exciting event and a
great opportunity to see how one person can make a difference and truly
change the world.

This talk and booksigning are Free & co-sponsored by the CENTER FOR
PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES, Wayne State University
and THE BOOK BEAT bookstore.

IN ADDITION A SECOND APPEARANCE:

Diane Wilson will also be speaking at an intimate breakfast sponsored
by WAND on FRIDAY MORNING, May 11th, 2007 at 8 a.m., at Glen Oaks
Country Club, 30500 W. 13 Mile Rd., Farmington Hills, MI.

Breakfast is $40.00, (save $5.00 by bringing a picture of your child).
Students! are $20.00. Send checks payable to WAND Semich, send to: WAND
SE MICHIGAN, PO BOX 2577, Southfield, MI 48037. WAND's mission is to
empower women to act politically to reduce militarism and violence and
redirect excessive military resources to unmet human and environmental
needs.

"We're losing ground. This planet is losing ground. So things need to
happen and they need to happen quick. Our message should be loud and
clearthere comes a time when the home needs protecting and the line
needs drawing and anybody that dares cross it acts at their own peril."
-- Diane Wilson

Fourth-generation shrimper Diane! Wilson had no idea how her life would
change when she called a meeting in 1989 to discuss how expanding a
plastics manufacturing plant might affect the environment in her
coastal Texas county. She just wanted honest discussion of things
anyone who lived in Calhoun County would care about: the impact of a
Formosa Plastics expansion on the health of the people who lived there
and on the livelihood of those who fished the bay.

Wilson couldn't know that her dog would be shot in her yard, she would
become a pariah in her own community, and someone would attempt to sink
her boat with her on it. She couldn't know that she, with just a
high-school diploma and a dislike of chemistry, would become conversant
in chemical compounds and their health risks, file her own legal
briefs, and learn more about corruption of public officials than anyone
wants to believe. She couldn't imagine that what she was starting was a
new life path that would fortify her sense of p! urpose and draw
international networks of support. As Wilson writes in her 2005 book,
An Unreasonable Woman, "Risking one's life can be strangely liberating."

Praise about Unreasonable Woman, Diane Wilson's first book:

"I believe the book will become a classic, not just of the
environmental movement, but of American lit, as well. It is the rare,
clear, moving voice of a working-class woman goaded into action against
the greatest massed forces in the world today: globalized corporate
greed backed by government power." --Molly Ivans

“...An Unreasonable Woman will stand as one of this nation’s greatest
works of nonfiction. I have never read a book quite like this one, and
worry already that I might not yet again. This is one of the most
powerful works of nonfiction I can remember reading in many years. In a
cynical age, amidst such ramp! ant loss and destruction, it’s easy to
regard Diane Wilson’s book as simply a masterpiece, and to let it go at
that. But we owe it more. This book inspires in us the courage to
believe—to remember—we can still change the world.”
—Rick Bass, award-winning author of The Hermit’s Story and Colter: The
True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had

"Texas is famous for its tall tales, but they pale in comparison to the
true tale of Diane Wilson. Hers is a mind-bending story of corporate
intrigue, government shenanigans and all-around political dirty tricks.
This is a book about one of our greatest local heroes that could just
give Texas a good name for a change."
--Jim Hightower, author, Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush

Learn more about Diane Wilson's amazing odyssey at: AN UNREASONABLE
WOMAN WEBSITE. Read an online interview with Diane at AN UNREASONABLE
WOMAN FOR THE EARTH.

When Wilson told her story at the 2001 Bioneers Conference of
environmental activists and scientists, she challenged listeners to
become unreasonable in their defense of the Earth. A new group,
Unreasonable Women for the Earth, immediately formed, and Wilson says
members in eight countries supported her hunger strike against Dow
Chemical. She co-founded another network of women activists, Code Pink
for Peace, in 2002.

In December 2005, Wilson began serving a four-month jail sentence for
civil criminal trespass when she chained herself to a Dow Chemical
tower in August 2002. The jail term opened a new chapter in her
activism, as she advocated for better conditions for other women
imprisoned in the V! ictoria County jail. -- Source: AMERICANS WHO TELL
THE TRUTH. Diane Wilson was one of 50 American Portraits featured in
the Award winning book Americans Who Tell the Truth.

"In 2001, there was a speaker at Bioneers named Diane Wilson, a
fourth-generation fisherwoman from the Texas Gulf who discovered that
her county was the most toxic in the country. She started educating
herself and doing direct action. Through her activist work, she was
able to get two zero-discharge agreements signed by multinational
chemical companies.

When Diane spoke at Bioneers, she closed her remarks by paraphrasing
George Bernard Shaw: "A reasonable woman adapts to the world. And an
unreasonable woman makes the world adapt to her. So, I encourage you
all to be unreasonable, because the world! really needs us." At that,
she got a huge standing ovation. All weekend long, women came up to her
with tears in their eyes thanking her for what she had said. --Nina
Simmons "mother of the bioneers movement" Source: CONSCIOUS
ENLIGHTENMENT PUBLISHING.

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Center for Peace & Conflict Studies
Wayne State University
Detroit