Despite raid on climate camp, activists link up with Mississippi fence-line community
— Climate campaigners this weekend Saturday (August 10) held an online conversation with community activists in Gloster, Mississippi, who shared their experiences of resisting a polluting wood pellet factory owned by UK multinational Drax. The UK climate camp, planned to take place last weekend near Drax power station, was cancelled after a pre-emptive raid by police.
The 22 arrestees have since been released, but the police impounded essential infrastructure, effectively shtting down the event. Nevertheless, the event went ahead after moving indoors.
Gloster is a low-income, mostly Black community in Amite County, Mississippi. In 2015, Amite BioEnergy, a part of the Drax Group, started making wood pellets in Gloster. Biomass wood pellets are compressed dried wood chips and sawdust, compressed into pellets at high pressure. The Drax factory received a permit to emit up to 25 tons of harmful air pollutants and 249 tons of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) per year. But since 2016, Drax has consistently gone over these limits, in one instance being fined $2.5 million. This was the largest in a much longer series of fines for environmental violations by various companies operating wood pellet factories in the US.
In the online event, the campaigners from Mississippi discussed the physical and mental health effects of persistent air pollution, including the highest rate of mortaility from heart disease in the state of Mississippi. The community has no local medical doctors, and residents have to spend hours commuting to access medical. According to local resident Jimmy Brown, “our legislators aren’t doing us any justice because they didn’t inform any citizens about what going on, so that’s up to us”.
Activists on both sides of the Atlantic vowed to hold Drax accountable. “We cannot let them continue to put profit over the planet and over our people”, said Gloster organiser Krystal Nicole Martin, “they need to leave tour community”.
~ Jane Alison
