Getting Naked to Expose BP

Diane Wilson, a fourth
generation shrimper from the Texas Gulf and a founder of CODEPINK, has been
watching the BP spill and the botched clean-up with a mixture of dread
and anger. After all, it's her livelihood and that of her community
that's at stake. "I've lived all my life in the Gulf Coast, in the oil,
chemical, and gas hellhole we call an energy corridor," said Diane
Wilson with her Texas twang. "I've been fightin' these polluters for 21
years. But this BP spill is the nail in the coffin of the people who
make their living along the gulf coast. This is our 9/11 in slow
motion."

Diane has been incensed by the cavalier attitude of BP
CEO Tony
Hayward, who said that the largest oil spill in US history is a tiny
speck in the vast ocean. "He had the nerve to say that those miles upon
miles of underwater oil plumes that stretch to who knows where and do
who knows what to the fisheries, the ecosystem, and Gulf
of Mexico for possibly generations, is really going to have a 'very,
very modest impact.' Sittin' there listening to BP's lies made my
blood boil," Diane fumed. "I realized I better get off my butt and do
somethin' about it."

This
61-year-old grandmother of five is all about action. To protest
chemical companies polluting her bay, in 2002 Diane climbed a chemical
tower, chained herself to it and then did a 30-day water-only hunger
strike. As a CODEPINK cofounder who tried to stop the invasion of Iraq in 2003, an invasion she knew was
all about oil, Diane got arrested confronting Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld at a Congressional hearing. Then she scaled and tied
herself to the White House fence (and almost got shot by a sniper). She
even traveled to Iraq when the U.S. military was about to attack,
putting herself forward as a human shield.

So Diane put out a call for people to join her in Houston on
Monday, May 24, to protest at the BP headquarters. Looking for a
creative way to expose the company's criminal behavior (and entice the
media, who rarely cover protests in Texas), Diane was inspired by the
example of a group of women from Nigeria who took over a Chevron oil rig
and threatened to strip naked if the company didn't hire more local
workers and invest in the community. Faced with just the threat of
nudity, Chevron gave in.

"If the Nigerian women could use their
bodies on the Niger Delta, why can't we do it in downtown Houston?"
Diane reasoned.

Diane doesn't take nudity lightly. She didn't grow
up in a hippie commune, but in a fundamentalist Pentecostal family in
rural Texas. "I was taught that flesh is sinful, it's the devil. I was
so modest that if my sister said the word 'bra', I would climb under the
table. I was horrified by anything intimate. So for me, using nudity to
expose the truth about BP was WAY outside my comfort zone. But I
realized that it's the destruction of our ecosystem by corporate greed
that's obscene, not a woman's body."

To prepare for the action,
Diane got 100 pounds of fish from her fishing buddies, old fishing nets
to drag the dead fish and fake oil to dump on them. She and one of her
daughters made beautiful signs saying "Expose BP" and "The Naked Truth
about Drill, Baby, Drill" and put them on big sandwich boards. "You
could say we was cheatin' because we decided to use sandwich boards to
cover our private parts, but that's about as nude as those of us from
Texas can get," laughed Diane. "We'll leave the full-on nudity to the
women from California."

The
action was superb.
About 100 people showed up from all over Texas and six other
states--including California. Some people wore pasties that said "No
BP", some dressed as fishermen, oily birds and fish. Diane put on her
white rubber fishing boots, smeared herself with oil and wore a sandwich
board that read "Expose BP's Obscene Side." Two imposter oil workers in
BP uniforms doused the group with fake oil, causing the birds and fish
to recoil and die on the sidewalk. The police and BP security stood by
watching, as nice as could be. It was obvious that BP higher ups had the
good sense to tell them that arresting protesters would not help their
image.

The group was having fun mocking
BP, but when Diane took the megaphone to speak, the tone changed. "I
am here because I'm outraged," she said, her voice shaking, tears
welling up in her eyes. "My family has lived on this gulf for 100 years,
we've been fishing these waters for generations and now we're seeing it
decimated. All we're getting from BP is lies. We're not getting any
answers from the government. That's why people have to hit the streets
to demand solutions."

After the action, I sat down with Diane to
hear her solutions and ideas for future actions. "BP should be shaken
down like a rotten fig tree," she said. "The government should seize
their profits and use them for the clean up and then to invest in clean
energy. We should shame those senators who want to stop the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act legislation that
would raise oil companies' liability from a pitiful $75 million to $10
billion. And we should demand that our government stop offshore
drilling. No new permits, period. We have to seize this moment to move
our country away from fossil fuels that are responsible for
environmental devastation and wars."

CODEPINK has asked our
supporters to email letters to Senator Murkowski, asking her to stop
blocking the Big Bailout Prevention Act. It's time to protect the
fishermen, the coastal residents and the wildlife, not the corporation
at fault for the disaster. But for Diane, sending emails is not enough.
She is calling on people throughout the country to boycott BP-not just
passively, but by getting out to BP gas stations to protest and educate
their communities on the company and the catastrophe. CODEPINK supports
her call to action and is providing resources for action on our website. We'll
also be bringing Diane to Washington, DC, to confront Congress, the
White House Administration, and BP executives with the crude awakening
about Big Oil.

"Pass out fliers to drivers. Ride your bikes around the stations. Get
creative. Hey, maybe you even want to do your own nude protest," she
grins. "Expose BP. Expose that Drill, Baby, Drill means Spill, Baby,
Spill. After all, what's at stake is nothing less than our planet. And
that's the naked truth."