We Live Here: Community Power and the Struggle for Environmental Justice

We Live Here: Community Power and the Struggle for Environmental Justice

Community Over Chaos Speaker Series: Part of the 250 Conversations on America Series in collaboration with Dialogue Vanderbilt.

This conversation on environmental justice and community-led resistance in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley will feature Sharon Lavigne and Shamyra Lavigne of RISE St. James. They will reflect on grassroots organizing, environmental racism in their community, and the fight for health equity and dignity in the frontline communities.

Sharon Lavigne, founder of RISE St. James, is a lifelong resident of St. James Parish and a retired special-education teacher turned nationally recognized environmental justice leader. In 2018, she launched RISE St. James to mobilize faith-based and community resistance against the proliferation of petrochemical plants in the region. Her leadership was instrumental in stopping a proposed plastics facility by Formosa Plastics Corp., and her work has earned widespread recognition, including the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize. Sharon’s advocacy is deeply rooted in her faith, her family, and her unwavering belief that her community deserves clean air, clean water, and respect.

Shamyra Lavigne, Executive Assistant at RISE St. James, represents a new generation of environmental justice leadership. Working alongside her mother, she brings lived experience, organizing skill, and youth-driven urgency to the struggle against industrial pollution in St. James Parish. Her work centers community health, environmental equity, and intergenerational organizing in a region long overburdened by industry.

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Host or Publisher James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements