Diane Wilson's blog

When I did my first hunger strike on a shrimp boat in Texas in l991, a savvy, environmentalist friend said it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard of. Nobody did hunger strikes in Texas. Maybe in California or India, but certainly not Texas. Another thing, he said, an activist never does what her community isn’t ready for. And my little Gulf coast fishing community was not ready for what I was fixing to pull. Still I sat on a Gulf shrimp boat in Lavaca Bay—two strikes against me-- until a local shrimper threatened to threw me overboard if I didn’t get off his dang boat.

I had never done a hunger strike before. I was a woman shrimp boat captain. What the heck did I know of civil disobedience? I grew up in the '60's, alright, but I wasn’t a flower child. In the 60’s I was a solitary teen who loved the hot Texas bays and spent half my time sitting in the tide. No wonder I loved shrimping. But there comes a time, as it does in most people's life's, when the home needs protecting and the line needs drawing, and anybody who doesn’t act, acts at their own peril.