To Love A Community is to Heal A Community
Miss Sharon Lavigne and Shilpi Chhotray on community organizing and keeping the faith
As the Founder and Director of the faith-based organization RISE St. James, Miss Sharon Lavigne works with her community in St. James Parish, Louisiana, leading the fight against the petrochemical industry. In 2019, Miss Sharon led a successful coalition to protect her community in “Cancer Alley” from the construction of Formosa Plastics, a $12 billion dollar petrochemical plant.
Too often, Black communities like St. James Parish are considered disposable by both elected officials and extractive industries. Over the years, Miss Sharon has watched her home transform from a safe haven into industry’s backyard. It’s a situation made only more precarious by intensifying hurricanes.
In this powerful conversation, Miss Sharon and Counterstream Co-Founder Shilpi Chhotray sat down during NYC Climate Week to discuss disaster resilience, climate reparations, and faith as a guiding light.
Remembering Katrina
Shilpi: Miss Sharon, you are a lifelong resident of Louisiana and someone who is deeply committed to caring for your St. James Parish community. Hurricanes have been a through line across your advocacy; in fact, Hurricane Ida blew the roof off your own home in 2021. We were chatting for People over Plastic Season 1, Episode 1, when that happened, and you called in from your car. Despite the destabilizing impacts, you've continued to show up for environmental justice. How do you stay steady in a changing climate? And what practices, relationships, or places help you fortify yourself for the fight?
Miss Sharon: My faith in God. I know Hurricane Katrina was the worst ever…
Shilpi: It was like 1,800 people, wasn't it, that were killed?
Miss Sharon: Yes, so many people died, yes. So many people were displaced, and so many people lost loved ones. Some people couldn't find their loved ones for a long time. I have family out there in New Orleans, and we watched some of it on TV. We didn't watch much of it because we didn't have electricity at that time. And we saw some of it on TV, how the police officers came and pointed guns at the people in New Orleans who were misplaced. They called them refugees. They were not refugees. And General Honoré came in and he helped organize with his troops, and he told them, these people need help….
“I heard them say New Orleans was a party city and they’re trying to get the devil out of it [because Mardi Gras] is a devil’s holiday. But how can they say that when they went to Mardi Gras?”
It was awful and all we could do was pray for the people up there. People were sent to other states to live until they could get New Orleans back on track again.
Shilpi: How were they sent, like a one-way bus ticket?
Miss Sharon: Yeah, a one-way bus ticket. A lot of people got on buses. One of our friends by the name of Sylvia McKenzie, she was working with RISE, she came up to help us back in 2019. She helped us with our march and everything, and now she has cancer. She's fighting for her life with cancer. After Katrina, she and her family were transferred to another state, because they didn't have homes. Some of the homes were blown away. Some of the homes were underwater.
Shilpi: I have a question about that time. When you were hearing about it from your friends in New Orleans and when you were watching it on TV, at that moment, were you connecting the dots to climate change?
Miss Sharon: At that time, I wasn't.
Shilpi: I don't think most people were!
Miss Sharon: I wasn't at that time, because we heard so many stories about Hurricane Katrina and we didn’t know if they were true. We heard that they blew up [the levees] so that the water would [flood] the people. I heard them say New Orleans was a party city and they're trying to get the devil out of it [because Mardi Gras] is a devil’s holiday. But how can they say that when they went to Mardi Gras? When I was a little girl, I went to Mardi Gras every year…and when I got married, we'd pack up the babies, the bottles, the diapers, and we went to Mardi Gras….
Claiborne Avenue, Tremé. A young stepper leads the way for a brass band. Claiborne Avenue once served as the cultural heart of Tremé, with dozens of businesses and Oak trees lining the street. In order to construct Interstate 10, part of Treme was razed, fracturing the community. Despite this destruction, the street remains a major gathering place for the neighborhood. Photograph by Brandon Holland.
Love and activism
Shilpi: So as an organizer, one of your guiding principles, and I love this so much, is that to love a community, is to find ways to heal the community. And I say this one because too often conversations about climate injustice and disaster focus only on destruction and its aftermath. But love as an ethic, as an energy, as a spirituality is just as central. How does loving action shape your activism? And also how can we move more of us to center love rather than only fear, anger, or anxiety in climate work?
Miss Sharon: I think we have to talk to the community, to engage ourselves more in activities involving the community. A lot of people don't understand what's going on, so it's our job to educate them, [because] the more they learn, the more they will begin to love the community themselves.
But you have to know your community and know everything that's going on in your community in order to build capacity with other organizations to work together to learn to love your community. If you don’t build capacity, teach the community, educate them, how are you gonna love it?
Shilpi: That's so true. Where do you think you learned that foundation? Who instilled those values in you so deeply?
“I want us to rebuild our community again. I want us to get rid of all these polluters who are polluting us and once we get them out of here, we’ll be able to feel a closeness again to our community and to the people that live there.”
Miss Sharon: I love where I'm from and I have a feel for my community. I was raised over there. Parents were raised over there, grandparents. I raised my children in St. James and it’s a place—before industry came—like no other. We all got along. Everybody shared things with everybody in the community. We shared our garden. When we killed the cows and the hogs, we shared [the meat] with people that came to help my daddy with these things.
Shilpi: This was on your land too, wasn't it?
Miss Sharon: It was on our land. We had a lot of land. The community would come to our house and play. We all loved each other. We all got along, and look how many years it took for us to realize that we were being poisoned. So, I want us to rebuild our community again. I want us to get rid of all these polluters who are polluting us and once we get them out of here, we’ll be able to feel a closeness again to our community and to the people that live there.
Shilpi: I love that. I want to talk a little bit about the role of faith, because I think [faith is central to] a lot of what you're talking about right now. You helped to birth RISE St. James, which is so much rooted in faith, and it’s that faith that has helped you remain steadfast in the fight to stop the construction of Formosa in 2019…and continues to shape your grassroots work [today]. How can faith in a higher power, or in each other, help us build stamina for the long arc of organizing?
Miss Sharon: RISE St. James, we started off through faith, and that's why we have been successful. Because we know in our hearts that we couldn't do this ourselves. First of all, we didn't know anything about the environment, anything about climate change, we didn't know anything about anything! We just was blind to the fact that we were being polluted. We didn't even know we were being polluted until we saw all the funerals.
Shilpi: The plastics piece came in later, too.
Miss Sharon: We had to find the root cause of what was getting us sick. And we found out that the industry that was making plastics, that was what was making us sick. So that's the root cause. Then we found out that the politicians, they were another cause, because they get kickbacks from the industries [in our community].
Shilpi: RISE has taken many different routes over the years, but the core value system has remained the same. What is the role of RISE at this time? What are your three core priorities? You've named some of them with these politicians. You gotta get them out.
Miss Sharon: That's one.
Shilpi: The fight with Formosa is ongoing, even though the permits have stalled…
Miss Sharon: First priority is to get Formosa out, change the laws, change the way that St. James politics work. Let them realize that we are people and that we love our community. And if they can't support us and protect us, we want them out.
Shilpi: Yes. Vote them out.
Miss Sharon: Vote them out. Vote the politicians out. Find somebody that's going to work for us, speak for us. Like me (laughs). If I have to run, I will run. If that's what it's going to take to keep Formosa out, I will do it. I don't want to run because I like doing RISE. But if I have to, I will.
Shilpi: The best politicians are community organizers, hands down.
Family Ties
From left to right: Shilpi Chhotray, Shamyra Lavigne, Jeff Weiner, and Sharon Lavigne at NYC Climate Week where this conversation took place. Photo by Jeff Weiner.
Shilpi: You've talked a lot about how RISE is set up with your daughters at the helm. It's so much a family organization. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Miss Sharon: When Shamyra saw I was tired, Shamyra came on board. And when Shamell saw we were beginning to get grants, she said she would come on if she can get a salary. And we got the grants, and so Shamell came on after that. We tried to hire people, put out the job application, but nobody from St. James applied. They didn’t have the skills!
Shilpi: Are a lot of the community members working for the industry?
Miss Sharon: A lot of people in St. James work outside of St. James in industry. My brothers went outside of St. James to get a job in the industry…
Shilpi: How do they feel about your work?
Miss Sharon: One of them said, we can't stop the plant. And my other brother said, whatever Sharon wants, I'm with her. That's Milton.
Shilpi: That's a good brother.
Miss Sharon: He was right there with me when I started…we're a year and a month apart. So he's right there with me but he's disabled right now. But he's here with me, and he gave me my strength….My daddy and my mama kept the family together. We were always going to church.
Shilpi: That's why it runs in your blood.
Miss Sharon: Yes…and then we said the rosary every day. My daddy would, at five o'clock in the evening, [invite] some of the neighbors [to] come over and just say the rosaries…. So maybe all those prayers were built up inside of me.
Shilpi: That's right.
Miss Sharon: Because a friend of mine would say, girl, you have enough prayers to put in a layaway. She would tell me that. That's my friend, Faye. She passed away. And I would tell her, I say, girl, I'm going to Adoration [a chapel] to pray. I would go sit down there and pray and talk to God. Oh girl. You just walk into that place. It's like you're walking on holy ground. You feel the spirit of God…
Shilpi: You immediately feel centered.
Miss Sharon: Oh you immediately feel it. It's quiet and you're just talking to him. And when nobody's there with me, I talk loud.
…
But Formosa will not speak to me. They would talk to the councilperson, so I asked the councilperson if you can get me a meeting with the [Formosa] HR lady, Janile Parks. Never got a meeting. [The councilperson] met with her, but he never let me meet with her.
Shilpi: This is why you need to be in that role, so you can be having the direct convo…
Miss Sharon: They're not gonna talk to me, but I wish they would talk to me so I could tell them off. I could tell them a thing or two. Tell them this is my community…why would you want to come poison my people?
Shilpi: I want to talk a little bit about Katrina and the petrochemical connection. So in many ways, Hurricane Katrina was a man-made disaster, compounded by decades of political and petrochemical decisions…that treated certain people and places as sacrifice zones [as] we're seeing in Cancer Alley. What happens when we treat one another as disposable? And how does your work challenge the very idea of disposability?
Miss Sharon: The petrochemical [industry] in Katrina [was] just like a genocide…because [the politicians put into power by the fossil fuel industry constructed the] canal to make sure the water go on the Black people…and to me, that's genocide. The same way with the petrochemicals. You're putting the petrochemicals in a black community. That's genocide, you want us dead.
Shilpi: I agree with you. I think that's absolutely the connection.
Miss Sharon: I think it is a connection….[Katrina] wouldn't have been as bad if that canal hadn't broken. That's when it flooded the people's houses, five feet and all.
Shilpi: They were abandoned and like you said, there was a police state, instead of helping people that lost everything…
Miss Sharon: They were drawing guns on the people…
Shilpi: Well, this is that question around treating one another as disposable.
Miss Sharon: As disposable. Yes.
Shilpi: I think we should touch on this too. So, as more communities face climate disasters, many worsened by petrochemical extraction, we need to be better at supporting one another in these precarious times. What do you see as the connection between the so-called natural disasters and the plastics industry? Because we're not really connecting the dots there.
Miss Sharon: We can't help when a hurricane comes. It's not our fault. But because of climate change, we have more hurricanes, and they are more intense. Like they might stay a long time now. That's why my roof came off my house. If it would have been just come and go, I could have saved part of the roof or whatever….
It took two whole years before I got back in my house.
Shilpi: Two years, Miss Sharon?
Miss Sharon: I didn't have the money. The insurance company wouldn't pay.
Shilpi: I know, our colleagues started a GoFundMe for you…
Miss Sharon: But it took two years, two years. GoFundMe was, I think, around $30,000. The insurance company gave me $33,000, and my house was devastated over $200-something thousand.
Point Aux Chene in the wake of Hurricane Ida, southeast Louisiana. Home to descendents of several tribes including the Chitimacha, Atakapas, and Choctaw. Due to a combination of pipelines, canals, and climate change, this unincorporated community faces looming environmental degradations ranging from saltwater intrusion to coastal erosion. Photography by Brandon Holland.
Shilpi: This is Hurricane Ida. And where did you go those two years?
Miss Sharon: My granddaughter, Asha.
Shilpi: [And so] you were working on RISE that whole time at your granddaughter's house? Your family is the best.
Miss Sharon: Yes indeed, girl. I was on the Zoom calls and everything else. And then the [insurance company] gave me a trailer to stay in.
Shilpi: Why would you want to stay in a trailer?
Miss Sharon: The trailer [was so small]. I got claustrophobia and I had to get out of there.
And there are people [from Hurricane Ida] who are still not in their homes. I have a member of RISE. He's a former student of mine. He had a trailer, the trailer was turned over. He didn't have insurance, so he's renting somewhere….
I stayed out for two years and then we had to sue my insurance company. That's when they paid me some money, and luckily I had the Goldman Environmental Award. This was all happening at the same time. So I used that money to start myself before the insurance company started to pay.
Shilpi: But imagine if you didn't get that Goldman money.
Miss Sharon: Then I would have still been out of my house.
Shilpi: Let's talk about FEMA a little bit. The last the time I had you and Shamyra on the [People over Plastic podcast] Shamyra was talking a lot about the big gaps in FEMA, like language translation, making it so cryptic that everyday people can't understand how to access FEMA, even though it's supposed to be there for the people….
Now we're in a moment when many of the systems we rely on in crisis—even though they weren't perfect to start, we know that—are breaking down. FEMA has long been ineffective [but] now faces threats of being shut down entirely. Federal cuts have left state and local emergency departments vulnerable. Valencia Gunder, from The Smile Trust, she’s in Miami and works in disaster relief, says, ‘we are our own first responders.’ And I thought about you when [I first read] that quote. What does that mean to you? And what role does community preparedness play in meeting ongoing crises like hurricanes?
Miss Sharon: We do hurricane preparedness. We give things to the community to prepare them for hurricanes. But I think our parish should do more. Because funds come from the federal government for the communities, and I don't think they issue the funds to everyone. I think that they need to do more for the elderly and the poor and the disabled. When we received supplies after Hurricane Ida, we distributed to the elderly first and disabled first.
Shilpi: And you know where they are in the community, so you're able to be that first responder.
Miss Sharon: I know, yes….
The parish usually alerts people to tell them if they think they should pack up and leave. But a lot of people don't have the funds to leave. Go where? You don’t have the money for a hotel.
Shilpi: Like you said, then you're a refugee in your own community.
Miss Sharon: Yes. It's hard. It's really hard. When they had this explosion from this plant [not too far from me] the people that's well off, they packed up and left. One man said, how could he leave? He don't have the money. He don't have the money for a hotel. And he inhaled all [those toxins]. And some of the oil is still in the water
Shilpi: It's still in the water?
Miss Sharon: Yes! They didn't clean it up real well. The fish gonna be full of oil. I'm telling you, the wealthy people left.
Shilpi: We see this time and time again.
Miss Sharon: You see, that wouldn't be me. I wouldn't want to leave my community without helping them.
Shilpi: So I want to mention Power in the Storm. It's this disaster equity toolkit we did with the NAACP [that] gives very practical tools before a crisis hits: who to call, how to be resourced and stocked…because the NAACP is very aware that…it's on the communities to come up with their own preparedness.
[This issue of Peace & Riot zine is very much an extension of Power in the Storm]. So I want to hear from you, how do the concepts of peace and riot show up in your own work?
Miss Sharon: I have a peace of mind knowing that Formosa is not coming. That's the peace. And the riot means we have to continue to fight. Because if we don't continue the fight, they'll come in. If they see nobody fighting it, they're going to slip on in there. So yes, it's peace and riot.
Shilpi: I love that, Miss Sharon, that is so good.
Miss Sharon: Yes, indeed.
Shilpi: You've mentored and inspired so many of us over the years. I think I've told you you're one of the main reasons we started People over Plastic and then Counterstream. What lessons do you want younger organizers, media makers, activists to carry forward from your own work?
Miss Sharon: I was asked that question in Italy [when I went there to] talk to the young people about their activism… and I told them to put God first in whatever you do. That’s the main thing, that's number one. And then learn, read, find out the facts before you get out there to start speaking…if you know something is accurate, you speak on that. You know it's not accurate, do your research to find out the true facts before you get out there and start speaking because they are looking for you to mess up. Don't give them anything to come back on you for.
Shilpi: So much of the success of the Formosa case was having the legal support…How did that process work for you? Because I feel like so many grassroots fights have a great need for legal representation, but they don't always get it. But it can really be the catalyst of what pushes us into victory.
Miss Sharon: Well, we went to Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, and the students did it, the student attorneys.
Shilpi: Wow. So it was a pro bono relationship!
Miss Sharon: Yes, student attorneys, yes. Then we got the judge, Judge Trudy White. She's the one who read every line, every sentence. And her judgment was for Formosa to leave.
Shilpi: I hope that can give people a lot of hope.…
When you think about your legacy in St. James and beyond, what do you most hope to leave behind for your community?
Miss Sharon: I hope to leave my community with clean air and clean water and I hope these industries shut down and pack up and leave. Take their equipment with them…and give us our land back. I want us to be able to build up our little community…where we have 12 industries within a 10 mile radius. I want that cleaned up even if I'm dead and gone, somebody should be able to clean it up. That's what I want so we can live again. So we can live off the land again, we can have palm trees again…
What have industries done to destroy my trees? They destroyed my lemon tree. They destroyed the orange tree, they destroyed my plum tree, my fig trees. I went and bought the plants [but] they die. I can't get any figs anymore… You open it up and it’s dry inside.
Shilpi: Can I ask you your thoughts on reparations?
Miss Sharon: I want the people to be compensated in my district for all the losses that they had in their families. The ones that’re suffering, the ones that have to go to chemo…the industry don't pay for anything. Don't ever think that. And the government doesn't either….
So I think these people need to be compensated for all the poison that they put on us. How many millions of dollars are [they] pouring into the fifth district in St. James Parish for all our loss, for all my fig trees, all the plants and everything? They owe us something, they need to pay up.
Shilpi: I 1,000% agree with you. I do think land back and reparations needs to be [a critical part of] climate conversations… I keep hitting this message across the board. And a lot of folks in the environmental movement don't like hearing those two phrases….
Miss Sharon: Just like I said…my community is dying. It's literally life or death. And I keep telling them, if we don't stop the pollution, we're going to die before our time….
I feel like this fight is getting even stronger. And I feel like we're going to get more people on board with this fight and I hope that the people that's not 100% with us back down and go do something else and stop getting money from oil and gas and pretend like [they’re] helping us. I don't want people in my circle that's not fighting for the same thing I'm fighting for come into our conversation and water down our fight. Because I've seen that before. We've seen it.
Sharon Cayette Lavigne, a native of St. James, Louisiana, dedicated 38 years to teaching Special Education in the St. James Parish school system. After being compelled to protect her community from Formosa Plastics, she founded RISE St. James in 2018 and retired in 2019, embracing the transformative journey as a pioneering environmental justice advocate.
Sharon’s unwavering commitment has earned her international recognition, including the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize (June 2021). Her accolades include the Laetare Medal (Notre Dame University). In 2024, she was named among TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.