Dear Mr. David Michaels,

We are the Injured Workers United from Calhoun County, Texas. We are writing this letter in the hope that we can have a meeting with you to express our concern about the Formosa Plastics facility in Point Comfort, Texas. We are former and current workers of Formosa who formed a group in order to support each other through our disabilities, illnesses, financial hard times, and the experience of working under a company that, we believe, has shown, and continues to show, a high disregard for its workers, community, and the environment.

Some of us have been working at Formosa Plastics, Point Comfort, Texas since the plant’s start up in l981. Many of us have given eighteen years, twenty years, twenty-five years, and twenty-seven years of service to a company that has shown a consistent callousness for the worker and a dangerous inaptness about how they run their company.

Recently, the EPA hit Formosa Plastics with a $13 million penalty. This is not news to us. Almost all of us are whistle blowers. We have documented unreported EDC releases, unsafe towers, tack welded ladders, and uncontained vinyl chloride leaks so plentiful that the alarms were shut off in the control room. These complaints were sent to Formosa’s management, where they went nowhere. A few more of us were whistle blowers for the state and federal agencies and provided information in 200l for the wastewater investigation in which the FBI subpoenaed Formosa’s wastewater documents. That went nowhere, too. A toxic investigator said in our last meeting with him in 2009 that even though the EPA/FBI/Texas environmental task force had a case against Formosa, the investigation was dropped.

Certainly, the violations haven't stopped. We suppose that is the reason for the recent $13 million settlement/Consent Decree against Formosa Plastics. I guess even the EPA gets fed up. Recent findings by EPA investigators at the Formosa facility in Point Comfort, Texas showed extensive Clear Air Act leak detection and repair violations, including failure to properly monitor leaking components (500 in one unit), failure to include chemical manufacturing equipment in its leak detection and repair program, and failure to timely repair leaking equipment. The inspectors also found “extensive” leak detection and repair violations, as well as other hazardous waste violations at the site and wastewater discharge violations.

In January 2009, the science journal Ecotoxicity, published a report by scientists at Texas A&M. The report revealed changes in chromosome structure and other genetic damage in cattle as far as six miles downwind of Formosa. The changes in chromosome structure and other genetic damage can increase the animal’s risk of cancer and reproductive damage. Because of the strong, steady wind from the southeast, researchers expected that if Formosa Plastics was the main culprit, then cattle located downwind or northwest from the facility would show larger genetic disturbances. The results provided a “strong indication of increased damage.” Wesley Bissett, lead study author and veterinarian at Texas A&M College of Veterinarian Medicine, said the cattle with the DNA damage were “orientated around the Formosa facility, with the highest damage occurring with those nearby and those downwind.” Bisset reported damage to cattle both within close proximity of the Formosa facility and in areas where the prevailing winds would blow the toxic gases.

In October, 2009 the EPA conducted a meeting in Port Lavaca, Texas regarding Formosa’s extensive ethylene dichloride contamination that has been caused, in part, by their process exceedances, overflows, spills, and general inadequate housekeeping that has forced closure of a nearby state rest area on Highway 35, buy-out of subsequent nearby property, and the contamination of the groundwater in 2 millions part per billion and nearby Cox Creek in the thousands part per million. The safety of local water wells is unsure at this time.

Our reasons for writing are several. We believe that Formosa’s poor environmental record can only mean that their occupational record is equally suspect. We, ourselves, are proof of it. Many of us have documented thrombocytosis, neurological damage, cognitive impairment, severe peripheral neuropathy that can only be treated with a surgically implanted plant that delivers morphine to the spinal nerves 24/7. One member is now in the hospital undergoing repeated surgeries to remove cancerous tumors. Another member has a friend in his unit that died from brain cancer. Another worker that sniffed the leaking valves and flanges, for which the EPA recently cited Formosa, died of angiosarcoma, liver cancer. A number of workers have developed knots on their heads and have been told by friends to get a biopsy, but they haven’t because they are afraid of what they will find. Brain Cancer.

The concern abut brain cancer among the workers has been so severe that Formosa sent out a memo to all the vinyl employees that they were bringing in a doctor who could talk about brain cancer. Basically, the doctor told the concerned workers that there was no link between vinyl chloride exposure and brain cancer. Who knows what caused it. Probably the barbeque they ate. Too much water. After all, the dose makes the poison.

One of our injured workers was involved in Formosa’s daily logging of vinyl chloride leaks in the PVC unit. He said the leaks ranged from 1.2 to 7 to 13 to 35 to 177 to 987 to 2,000 parts per million, and this for every hour of very day of every year. And he was there for 25 years. Another time EDC (ethylene dichloride) was sent in error to the PVC/VCM unit and the workers waded in the stuff for three days with nothing but rubber boots and gloves to protect them. Another time, the wastewater line was tied into the drinking water line and the workers drank wastewater-tainted coffee. This worker’s last act at Formosa was after a supervisor requested he falsify a four-ton vinyl chloride release so that the company could report 2.79 pounds to the EPA.

Randy Smith, vice president and general manager at Formosa Plastics, Point Comfort, Texas recently, and in reference to the $13 million settlement, said, “there is no significant environmental or health issues.” That is ludicrous and deserves a response. It is one of the reasons we are requesting a meeting with you. Hopefully you can help us understand why OSHA in Corpus Christi has responded to every complaint we have sent them (eight in one year's time) with a letter to Formosa, then subsequently closing the case.

Our group is currently consulting scientists from Tulane University, Texas A&M University, and University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston who have scientific knowledge and expertise regarding exposures, health effects, and risks that many of these chemicals have. The hospitals in Taiwan call the worker illnesses related to Formosa the “Formosa Syndrome.” We have the same problem here in Texas.

It is our hope to meet with you when you come to Texas in April, 2010. Many months ago we wrote the Corpus Christi, OSHA office and game a similar list of complaints and requested a meeting. A divisional officer told us they couldn’t give us a meeting, but they were sending one of our items of complaint in a letter to Formosa. We never heard another word. We are tired of waiting to be heard. Looking forward to your response.

 
Please Respond To:

Injured Workers United
PO Box 1001
Seadrift, Texas 77983
injuredworkersunited@gmail.com
wilsonalamobay@aol.com

日前，台北市敦化北路台塑集團總部大樓和長庚醫院門前，人來人往對著「百萬人搭公車也不敵一根煙囪」的公車廣告詞議論紛紛，斗大鮮紅的「恥」在灰黑底色的六輕煙囪上特別凸顯，三個雲林小孩悲怨的眼神呼喊「還我乾淨的土地空氣水」。這是環保團體刊登「台塑集團獲國際頒發黑星球獎」的公車廣告。事隔一日，「恥」字被挖掉了，連客運公司都聲明「不是他們做的」！究竟是誰擁有這麼大的力量操縱媒體、干預人民言論自由？台塑揚言控告廣告委刊人，環保團體則邀請台塑集團出席於5月19日NGO會館舉辦此一獎項的頒獎典禮。

Following a transnational nomination and selection process, in November 2009 the German Ethics and Economics Foundation (ethecon) chose the management of Formosa Plastics to receive the Black Planet Award for 2009. They include the Y. C. Wang Family, Formosa Plastics President Lee Chih-tsuen, and other Formosa executives. Previous recipients of the award include these other industry leaders: US based pesticide, fertilizer, and genetically modified seed producer Monsanto; Swiss food processor Nestle; and US based military contractor Xe/Blackwater.

2009年11月德國倫理暨經濟基金會(ethecon) 經過跨國提名與決選程序，將「2009黑星球獎」(Black Planet Award 2009)頒發給台塑集團的經營者們－王永慶家族、台塑董事長李志村及相關的經營管理者，該獎項歷年得獎者為美國孟山都、瑞士雀巢、美國Xe／黑水國際，分別是基因改造及農藥肥料工業、食品工業、軍火工業的龍頭廠商。

Texas's Calhoun and Wharton Counties, both hosts to some of Formosa's US factories, designated 19 May "Yung-Ching Wang Day" as an “honor” to the group, but Taiwan's NGOs have chosen this day to hold the Black Planet Award presentation “disgrace” ceremony. The ceremony will serve as the commencement for a series of the group’s actions with the goal of publicizing "Taiwan's Disgrace" throughout Taiwan, the birthplace of Formosa Plastics Group. The campaign hopes to alert Taiwan's policymakers, relevant government agencies, and society at large in order to prevent Taiwan ending up "conquered by petrochemicals." Member organizations of the union include ethecon Foundation, Texas Calhoun County Injured Workers Union, Taiwan Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, Mercy on the Earth Taiwan, the Green Party, Taiwan Watch, Green Formosa Front, Taiwan Matsu's Fish Conservation Union, Taiwan Sustainable Union, Yunlin County Offshore Aquaculture Association, Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries, Green Citizens' Action Alliance, and Raging Citizens Act Now.

台塑美國廠所在的德州CALHOUN及WHARTON兩郡將5月19日定為「王永慶日」，台灣社運團體選在這一天舉辦頒獎典禮，作為「台塑總體檢全球大聯盟」系列的起跑行動，向台塑集團的發源地－台灣及其政府決策者、行政主管機關、社會各界發表這項傳遍國際社會的「台灣之恥」，以避免「石化亡國」的後果，該聯盟由倫理經濟基金會、德州卡杭郡職災受害工人聯盟、蠻野心足生態協會、地球公民協會、綠黨、看守台灣協會、綠色陣線協會、台灣媽祖魚保育聯盟、台灣永續聯盟、雲林縣淺海養殖協會、工作傷害受害人協會、綠色公民行動聯盟、人民火大行動聯盟等組成。

The award ceremony will begin with the showing of a film in which US environmental activist Diane Wilson presents the award. Ms. Wilson is also the 2006 recipient of the positive Blue Planet Award. She became famous as the little shrimp who resisted the enormous whale that is Formosa Plastics. The Chinese language version of her book detailing the struggle, An Unreasonable Woman, is on sale in Taiwan, and she's already received the support of many impassioned individuals in printing and widely disseminating the book. Robin Winkler, chairperson of Wild at Heart, will read aloud the open letter from ethecon to Formosa Plastics, and Lee Ken-cheng, executive director of Mercy on the Earth, will read aloud an open letter from Taiwan's NGOs to Formosa Plastics.

頒獎典禮一開始，先播放美國環運人士Diane Wilson頒獎影片，黛安女士也是2006年正面獎項Blue Planet Award得主，她以小蝦米對抗台塑大鯨魚而聞名，中文版「不講理的女人」已經在台上市，並獲得許多熱心人士助印廣發。蠻野心足創會理事長文魯彬宣讀ethecon國際組職給台塑的公開信，地球公民協會執行長李根政則宣讀台灣民間團體給台塑的公開信。

As expected, representatives from the government and Formosa Plastics did not attend. An actor portraying President Ma Ying-jeou bestowed the award on the resurrected spirit of the late founder and chief executive of Formosa Plastics, Wang Yung-ching. Also 24 groundwater samples collected from private wells of people who live in the area around the Renwu Plant were presented. Pollution levels 300,000 times greater than government standards are ironclad proof that Formosa Plastics truly deserves this Black Planet Award. The government, however, persists in declining to order cessation of the plant's operations.

政府代表和台塑代表如預期並未出席，扮演馬英九總統的成員頒給復活的經營之神王永慶，而採自仁武廠周邊民井地下水24支水樣，污染超標三十萬倍也是台塑獲獎「實至名歸」的鐵證，但政府堅持不會勒令停工。

Gloria Hsu, professor of atmospheric science at National Taiwan University, pointed out that Formosa Plastics Group’s emissions account for more than a quarter of Taiwan's total greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental debt it creates is far greater than its contribution too economic growth. Chien Hsi-jie, Fair Tax Union spokesperson, complained that Formosa Plastics Group enjoys exhaustive tax breaks, and denounced Taiwan as an island of injustice on which the government has been hijacked by corporate villains. Herlin Hsieh, Secretary General of Taiwan Watch, explained that the entire life cycle of PVC is extensively damaging to the endocrine and reproductive systems of children, and Formosa Plastics is the world's number one producer of PVC. Huang Hsiao-ling, Secretary General of Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injury, further described the occupational injury situation of Formosa Plastics Group. Lin Jin-lang, chairperson of Yunlin County Offshore Aquaculture Association, pleaded for the local livelihoods that have been sacrificed for Taiwan's Sixth Naphtha Cracker petrochemical complex.

台灣大學大氣系教授徐光蓉指出，台塑排放超過台灣四分之一的溫室氣體，環境負債遠遠大過其對經濟成長的貢獻。公平稅改聯盟發言人簡錫堦，批評台塑集團享盡租稅優惠，控訴這是政府被綁架的不義之島。看守台灣協會秘書長謝和霖分析PVC整個生命週期，廣泛地危害孩子們的內分泌及生殖系統，而台塑是全球最大PVC生產廠商。工傷協會秘書長黃小陵也說明台塑集團工作傷害的狀況。雲林縣淺海養殖協會理事長林進郎，則為被六輕犧牲的地方生計請命。

Pan Han-sheng, Green Party convener, stressed that if the advertisements are removed under pressure from Formosa Plastics, it would represent an expropriation of the people's freedom of expression and that the national constitution will become a corporate "royal decree" (財團的「王法」). He also announced that on 25 June environmental activists will attend Formosa Plastics Group’s stockholders meeting to bestow the award. It will be the third such small stockholder green action following others in 2000 and 2006.

綠黨召集人潘翰聲強調，若是公車廣告受到台塑壓力被撤下，人民的言論自由將被剝奪，國家的憲法變成由財團的「王法」。並預告將於6月25日至台塑股東會頒獎，這是2000年、2006年以來第三度綠色小股東行動。

Press Release Contact: Taiwan Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, 2382-5789, Janis Wang

新聞聯絡：台灣蠻野心足生態協會2382-5789王佳真

WHEN: May 24, 2010 at 11:30 am

Naked, dripping with oil and dragging nets full of dead fish, CODEPINK activists will expose the atrocities of BP's latest and greatest drilling disaster on the Gulf Coast.

“We will lay bare the naked truth of ‘drill baby drill’,” says CODEPINK cofounder and environmentalist Jodie Evans. “What is more indecent–our bodies or the horrific effects of BP’s naked greed and our nation's obsession with oil?”

The protesters will mourn the deaths of the 11 workers and devastation of wildlife and livelihoods all along the Gulf Coast. They will call for BP to be held accountable, for an end to offshore drilling and for a total restructuring of our energy towards renewable sources.

“At the BP headquarters we will put our bodies on the line to hold BP accountable for the rape and plunder of our planet,” says Diane Wilson, a fourth generation fisherwoman from the Gulf. “We call for stripping BP of its corporate charter and seizing its assets to pay the victims, clean up the Gulf and try to restore the devastated wildlife.”

“We’ll be exposing BP for what it is—a criminal company that ignored crucial safety issues, cut corners, and spent millions lobbying Congress to fight regulations,” says CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin. “BP has a sordid history of recklessly pursuing profits at the expense of workers’ lives and the environment, and it’s got to stop.”

We deliver this award to the Formosa Plastics Group for the reasons set out in this open letter in order that your true nature can be seen by all sectors of society.

1. Profits Before Human Rights; Profits Before Democracy

In 1989 the People’s Liberation Army bloodily suppressed a student movement in Tian An Men Square in what has come to be known as the Tian An Men Massacre. While the world gasped at the atrocities committed by the Chinese government and all foreign commerce and investment came to a halt, your enterprise, the Formosa Plastics Group became the first major company to invest in China without any thought or concern for the severe human rights abuses of your host. You displayed absolute disregard for democratic principles and indeed you profit from the butcher’s of Beijing.

2. “Formosa Plastics: We Make the Earth Miserable”

As the worlds largest producer of PVC you have spread your products around the world by giving producers of plastic piping, flooring, medial products, toys, shoes, stationary products and all other manner of goods, the means to befoul the health of present and future generations. The dangers of PVC throughout its life cycle are well established, including the fact that the production and disposal sites all contain high concentrations of dioxin and are sources for endocrine disruptors and environmental hormones causing sex changes in men and increases in the incidence of breast cancer in women. Yet despite the international consensus, Formosa Plastics, your attention has only one target and one goal – make as much money as possible with as little attention and expenditure on the social and natural environments.

3. You Have Wrung Taiwan’s Largest River Dry

Even with your vast wealth and power you have forced the government to build the Jiji Wier and a special pipeline so that you can extract 345,000 tonnes of water a day; your pipes that run through farmers’ fields and take their water leave them with no choice but to pump from the aquifers resulting in our country’s worst land subsidence and condemning the area to becoming a barren desert of dust storms.

4. You Blacken the Skies and the People’s Lungs

In June 2009 Public Health Professor Chan Chang-chuan of National Taiwan University reported a “significant correlation” between your Sixth Naphtha Cracker Plant in Yunlin County and cancer rates among residents in the nearby townships of Mailiao, Taisi, Dongshih, Lunbei and Sihhu.

While you may sneer at academics, you can not deny that beginning with the discharge of VOCs from this plant in 1999 the incidence of liver cancer in Taisi Township has increased thirty percent and over-all cancer incidence increased eighty percent. In order to avoid the stench from your toxic discharge, school children must plug their noses and cover their mouths with facemasks. You blacken the skies and blacken the viscera of all who live within reach of your effluents.

5. You Disregard Global Warming as You Produce Even More Emissions

Through its fourth phase, the Sixth Naphtha Cracker Plant (6th NCP), along with your neighboring power plant (the world’s fifth largest CO2 polluting power plant) produce sixty eight million tonnes of CO2 annually, one quarter of Taiwan’s CO2 emissions. But you aren’t satisfied with this achievement, as you go forward with plans for the fifth phase of the 6th NCP ignoring the crisis facing humanity and your contribution to climate chaos.

6. Your Legacy of Polluting Water and Soil will go on for Millennia

In April 2002 vinyl chloride levels in the groundwater at your plant in the Lin Yuan Industrial Park outside of Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan were in excess of standards resulting in the declaration of a 32 hectare plant as a “control site”; in March 2007 10.8 hectares of your Cianjheng plant was cited as a soil pollution control site due to excessive levels of zinc and mercury contamination.

Then in March 2010 the news broke out of one of the worst groundwater pollution cases in Taiwan’s history: – the groundwater beneath the VCM plant producing PVC your Renwu Plant tested for levels of 1,2-dichloroethane at 302,000 (three hundred and two thousand) times the legal limit, ten other toxic substances were far in excess of the standards, and the 35.38 hectares had already been declared as a “remediation site”. You were aware in 2002 of the problem, but engaged in a cover up for eight years threatening the health of all inhabitants in the area as well as the 1,390 hectares of farmland in the plant’s vicinity.

7. The Ten Thousand Year Legacy of Your Industrial Waste

In 1998 with blatant disregard for the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal your company surreptitiously shipped 2,799 tonnes of mercury contaminated waste to Kampuchea killing at least one worker who was exposed, and resulting in evacuations of thousands of others bringing the entire nation of Taiwan into international disrepute; in early 1999 another 8,700 tonnes of mercury-laden hazardous waste was discovered in the township of Liyushan in Pingtung, southern Taiwan and while all the evidence pointed to your culpability, in the end you collected a stipend from the government in the amount of 90 million dollars (about 3 million US dollars). The lunatics are indeed running the asylum!

8. You Are Liars and Cheats

In order to win the support from the people of Yunlin County, for your offshore petrochemical park-currently the site of the 6th NCP, you promised to build a medical center, a retirement area, shopping centers, nursing school, transportation center, a seaside resort, the Chang Geng Memorial Hospital and a whole new Mailiao City. You promised to bring 37,500 employment opportunities to the area. These promises have all ended up as bounced checks. How are you any different from a gang of con artists?

To the Black Hearted Formosa Plastics Group: Where is your conscience?

You have enjoyed to the maximum the support and subsidization by the Taiwan government while the legislature does what it needs to support you. Yet, you have nothing to show as far as giving back to either the land or the people of Taiwan. Your voracious appetite for growth continues to escalate unabated, externalizing the social and environmental costs while engaging in a protracted war on transparency and truth, a campaign of lies and deceit, corrupting society into one that asks only about profit, one that never questions values. Formosa Plastics, you have truly arrived at the pinnacle of avarice and evil, taking your place as the leader among the blackest of the black hearted Taiwanese industrialists.

Your vast wealth comes from fossil fuels, but even if you were to spit out the entire amount of money that you have made from this exploitation, it would constitute but a tiny fraction of the cost of restoring the skies, the rivers, the ocean and the land.

As you scramble over the estate of the deceased Y.C. Wang, we hope you will at least give some consideration to the environmental debts that your company has incurred to the Earth and its inhabitants during Y.C. Wang’s lifetime.

This open letter is addressed to Formosa Plastics, but it is also an appeal to the government of Taiwan to remove the cangue of misery that it has been working, through its laws and dispensations, tailor made at Formosa Plastics behest, ruining the lives of untold numbers of our current and future generations.

And to Formosa Plastics, we conclude with a bitter plea that you reflect on your behaviour, put aside your weapons of slaughter, and stop your pillaging of Taiwan at once, and for all.

I learned a lesson or two on the bay. How to spot shrimp from a mile away. (Look for the sea gulls!) What does a watermelon smell on the bay mean? (trout just threw up) How to tell if a squall was gonna knock your boat over or lay down as harmless as a kitten. (anybody’s guess) But the best lesson that came home to roost was that boundaries were lies. There was no separation or division. No brick wall that divided San Antonio Bay from Esprito Santo Bay. Nothing to keep the sky from the water or the wind from the sea. Nothing to keep one person from a billion others. There was just flow and continuity of water and moon and dolphins and ratty ole captains in ratty ole shrimp boats hauling boogie across the bay to find those most elusive shrimp.

A sister bill, HB 3654, requires county jails to have a plan for medical care of pregnant inmates in county jails as well as requiring administrators to include the number of pregnant women in their population reports. Presently there are NO numbers on pregnant inmates or the number of infants born in jail. Also, under current law, there is no mandate for medical care or nutritional supplements for pregnant inmates. Diana Claitor, executive director of the Texas Jail Project who worked with Texas ACLU staffer Matt Simpson to create the initial drafts for both bills, said many people believe all of the above will occur automatically. But in her experience, unless there is a law on the books, it won’t be considered a priority or even considered at all. Texas county jails hold up to 80,000 inmates a night and approximately 14 percent of those are women. Claitor said, “The public has no idea how many young mothers and their babies come out of jail injured or traumatized.”

Most jail health-care systems function independently, have no checks and balances, and are isolated from the outside medical community, except for inspections by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards which typically look for problems with male inmate overcrowding and fire exits. It doesn’t help that jail administrators and staff are prone to lump complaining inmates into one big group: whiners- liars- and troublemakers. That’s why an inmate with a serious illness and injury can suffer without treatment, often until they are dying or dead.

Claitor said, “I can say with utter conviction that just because you ask for medical care or even beg for medical care in Texas jails, there are plenty of times when you’re not going to get it. Period. If it doesn’t happen when a person is convulsing in seizures or going into a diabetic coma [see a federal report on Dallas County Jail: http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/split/documents/dallas_county_findlet_12-8-06.pdf], it is certainly not likely to happen when a pregnant woman says she is not getting enough food or that she’s in pain and bleeding.”

The Texas Jail Project, a volunteer jail advocacy group that is based in Austin, became increasingly aware of cases on pregnant women through a ‘listening project’ publicized through their website (www.texasjailproject.org). Families and friends were encouraged to email and phone about problems pregnant women faced in county jails, including shackling during childbirth.

Shacking during labor and delivery can cause intense pain, cramping, swelling, reduced circulation and increased risk of thrombosis or blood clots. It can interfere with appropriate medical care, be harmful to the health of the mother and infant, and violate the dignity of the pregnant inmate. It is not uncommon for a shackled inmate to soil herself or her bed sheets because she could not get unshackled quickly enough to get to the bathroom.

One such victim of this practice was Shanna (not her real name) at the Lew Sterret jail in Dallas, Texas, in 2009. She wrote an eloquent letter about what it was like to spend a month in Parkland Hospital eight months pregnant and with a staph infection. She was transported to the hospital with chains around her legs, hands, and lower waist, although she was charged with a non-violent crime. When she reached the hospital she was escorted down a long hallway with people looking at her like she had just killed someone. For one whole month, Shanna was without TV, phone, or books and chained to her hospital bed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Even though Shanna’s ankles and feet were badly swollen and she had developed bedsores, the guards refused to allow her to walk around. A doctor had to intercede on her behalf in order for Shanna to be allowed to walk in the hallway, her hands and feet still chained to a long monitoring pole.

An inmate we will call Roberta was a trustee for three months at Harris County’s Baker Unit last year. She described her wait for medical attention sitting on the floor next to a woman who was pregnant with twins. The pregnant woman had waited 5 or 6 hours to see a nurse. She was cramping, in pain, bleeding through her pants onto the floor, and extremely upset. Roberta said she remembered the woman repeating how scared she was that she might lose her babies. Roberta and the other waiting inmates kept telling the guard to take the pregnant woman first, but the guard only replied with something along the lines of, “Shut the f… up!”

Claitor was contacted in March of this year by a woman in Henderson County Jail who said her pregnant daughter had requested to see a doctor four times but had yet to see one. She was having a fever, discharge, swollen glands, and she was six months pregnant. Her daughter ended up in the emergency room where the nurses told her she was dehydrated and undernourished. Luckily, she had only a few days before her release and her mother had her in the doctor’s office the next day. But what if she had another two months to serve?

Women in jails differ from their male counterparts in more ways than that they can get pregnant and give birth. Women's crimes are less likely to be violent and more likely to be motivated by poverty and addiction where drugs are often used to medicate the pain of abusive relationships. Women are seldom drug dealers or traffickers. When they do commit a violent offense, it is often against a man who abused them. They rarely pose a violent threat to the general public. Jailed women also have more challenges to overcome in dealing with their pregnancies and their birth experiences. Their pregnancies are often high-risk and complicated.

Frankie was 24 years old and six months pregnant with her first child when she was picked up on a warrant in Victoria, Texas and thrown into jail. Frankie had a rare uterine condition and so, immediately, she began bleeding. When she notified the guard, the guard demanded that Frankie show her the bloody underwear. Frankie’s condition worsened further: her water broke. But the guard said Frankie was hallucinating and that she wouldn’t have the baby for a month. Then the guards decided that Frankie was faking and a troublemaker so she was put into isolation and threatened with a taser gun if she didn’t go. Frankie proceeded to go into labor in an isolated cell and, with a breech birth, the baby died. Frankie was not even allowed to attend the baby’s funeral.

Last year, 19-year-old Amber was in the Ellis County Jail when she was 10 weeks pregnant. Recently, however, Amber brought the story of her experience to the Texas capitol, where she helped HB 3654 pass the scrutiny of the House County Affairs Committee. Her voice trembling at times, Amber described her stay at the jail. She said no one seemed to care that she needed prenatal vitamins, the right food to eat, or milk to drink for her baby to grow normally. She never saw an obstetrician or had any prenatal checkups. For several weeks she bled and spotted and she reported that to the guards. The guards in turn would call the nurse who gave her Tylenol. She finally saw a doctor who told her that he did not think she was pregnant or even had a uterus. A nurse listened to the baby’s heartbeat and told her she could not hear the baby’s heartbeat. She thought the baby might have died. Amber called her mother and begged her to do something. She became so upset that the jail put her on suicide watch in an isolation cell where she bled even more. After her release, Amber’s baby, Zannah, was born, weighing 6 lbs and 6 ounces. To this day, Amber said, she still worries that something might not be right with Zannah as she grows older because of the neglect and unhealthy conditions that she suffered in the Ellis County Jail.

Amber summed up her unsettling testimony before the Texas legislature in April by saying, “Babies deserve to be taken care of no matter what the mother has done. The baby is not responsible.”

These stories are only too common because many jail administrators, without rules and guidelines, fail to do the right thing for the women in their care and the babies they carry. However, even in the midst of the chaos of a Texas legislative system that was overburdened with bills and dominated by controversy, an unlikely coalition– the Catholic Conference of Texas, Texas ACLU, Texas Right to Life, and Texas Jail Project– worked on passing two small bills that may start Texas on a path to more healthy moms and healthy babies.

During the long tedium of one House committee hearing, Representative Valinda Bolten asked a pointed question of Adan Munoz, the director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. He was providing background information when Bolton abruptly asked, “How long have county jails in Texas been housing incarcerated women?”
Munoz replied, “As long as jails have been open.”
Bolton said, “So…we don’t really have the answer to why it’s taken ‘til 2009 to address this issue of the medical needs of pregnant women.”

It is a question and answer that is long overdue.

Speaking of mental and hungerstrikes and those airports. After my 31 days of fasting against Dupont (by the way, Dupont considered my hunger fast an act of terrorism. their words not mine) I had to climb on a plane outside of Washington DC and fly to Houston, Texas. I needed someone to go with me to the ticketing counter because I couldnt understand compound sentences. You know, two sentences with an 'and' between them. It was too much information and my poor brain could not compute. Finally, I made it to the plane and was fixing to store my suitcase in the luggage compartment when I stood transfixed with the word " PUSH" on the overhead compartment. PUSH? PUSH? What was push?

Diane Wilson is a longtime environmental activist. She is the author of An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas and Holy Roller: Growing Up in the Church of Knock Down, Drag Out; or, How I Quit Loving a Blue-Eyed Jesus. Diane is on a hunger strike to create awareness about global warming.