Thank you, Ms. Sharon Lavigne, Founder of RISE St. James, and a 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize winner, for your inspiring inaugural lecture in the Fall 2021 Environmental Fridays Guest Lecture Series. Her lecture can be viewed on YouTube here.

Her talk focused on the struggle to halt the establishment of another chemical factory in her neighborhood and to empower her fellow citizens to rise up and stand up for themselves in the face of environmental racism and the killing fields of Louisiana’s 'Cancer Alley.' See more about this grassroots struggle in St. James Parish, Louisiana, led by Ms. Lavigne on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTmyawguy9E&t=16s. You can also keep informed about RISE St. James at https://www.facebook.com/risestjames.

Thank you also to Ms. Shamyra Elizabeth Lavigne, daughter of Ms. Sharon Lavigne, for co-hosting this first session of Environmental Fridays. Shamyra, granddaughter of a Civil Rights Activist, is a 2014 graduate of Southern University and Executive Assistant of RISE St. James. As of 2020, she is a Certified Life Coach and Owner of Shamyra Elizabeth Coaching, L.L.C. 

You too can join the fight in support of RISE St. James by writing to Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and U.S. President Joe Biden urging them to cancel the proposed building of the Formosa plastics plant in St. James Parish.