The Continuing Conspiracy of Louisiana's Cancer Alley

With distinct food, history, and world-famous culture, Louisiana is one of the most unique states in all of the union. It also has some serious problems. In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel dive into the ongoing -- terrifyingly real -- conspiracy of Louisiana's Cancer Alley.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeart Radio.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Guys, I think we're
all fans of New Orleans. Have all of us been
to New Orleans at some point?

Speaker 4 (00:51):
Absolutely one time? And the weather was horrible and I
still had the time of my life. Did you go
on some something magical about it? I don't remember. It
was raining the whole time, is what I was getting.
It smelled like p y, But I think that's, you know,
business as usual. It's just a magical place. I had
a fabulous time. There's something about that that city.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
What about you, Matt, Yeah, I've certainly been to New Orleans.
I've also got several friends who live in the Baton
Rouge area kind of south of the city over there,
And what we're talking about today is directly between those
two cities.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Right. Yeah, the first time I went to New Orleans, guys,
I was actually kidnapped by a girl I was dating.
And like you said, Noel particular smell not my favorite weather.
But what a what a unique place and a good
friend of our show. The creator of the Missing series,

(01:49):
John Wollzac, and his partner have spent a lot of
time not just in New Orleans but in the area
will be exploring tonight. It's just it's fast fascinating because
Louisiana has such a distinct, distinct status for many good
things and for many terrible things. Throughout the United States,

(02:12):
there's not a place like it.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Well, we got that thing, the Mississippi River. And if
you grow up in the United States, you often hear
this term about being east or west of the Mississippi River, right,
And the Mississippi River is a big deal. So how
big it is and how important it was to the
development of this old United States and all the industry
that it encompasses.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, and go ahead.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
You can't get away with saying I was kidnapped by
a girlfriend without explaining a little bit of it to us.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Oh yeah, Well that's the that's the headline, and I
appreciate it. Matt. I think the statute of limitations has
passed once long ago during a birthday when cars were
still a thing. By that point, my sweetye at the
time said we're going to do something special. Just hop

(03:05):
in the car. I'll tell you where to go. And
we were based in Atlanta, Georgia, and she kept saying
go west, and you kept going west. Yeah, just so
And no interstates. We were not taking interstates. We were
going through back roads. That's where the creepy gas station
encounter happened with Dwight Yoakum's thousand miles from Nowhere and

(03:30):
eventually we landed in one of the most distinctive cities
you will see in the entirety of this country. So overall,
throughout all the less than six but more than four
kidnappings I have encountered, that was like, by far and

(03:50):
away the second best one.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
Cool is there a gun? Or oh no, no, you
just you got your car with her and essential.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Kid Yeah, yeah, yeah, wholesome, wholesome. I mean, we know
that Louisiana has look. New Orleans is a world famous city,
but Louisiana is a lot more than New Orleans. There's
a lot of land between Baton Rouge and the world
capital of New Orleans as far as people perceive it.
But it's also it's been beset by tremendous serious systemic

(04:24):
problems since its foundation. Widespread slavery, the eradication of native populations,
income inequality that will probably astonish most of our American
listeners even today. It's also the victim of a genuine
conspiracy that is continuing now as we record on Monday,

(04:45):
May eleventh. This is the story of Cancer Alley. Here
are the facts. Going back to what you said, bat
we got to talk about the Mississippi River way before
the dawn of the United States, way before the Europeans

(05:08):
were a thinged on this continent. The Mississippi River determined
trade routes. Fun fact, this is one of the only
places in human history where the population independently figured out
how to domesticate plants. That's how far back it goes.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
It's an incredible river as far as rivers go. Looking
at it from Google Maps, just watching it stretch and
stretch and stretch and wind and just you know, I'm
in this version of Google Maps, I'm looking at just
taking it from New Orleans and then following it north
as it snakes all throughout. It is just a glorious thing,

(05:52):
going across all the way on the side of Arkansas
and Tennessee, going all the way up where we now, wow.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Good lord, Minnesota maybe, oh.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, going through Missouri, going up through Iowa, Wisconsin. Basically
all the states that are around there have their border
on this river. Well, I mean, that's why they look
kind of funky.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
It played a huge role in, you know, America becoming
America in the first place because of the Revolutionary War.
In eighteen fourteen, we took a little trip along with
Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississippi. You might know that
song from the spectacular Johnny Horton known as the Battle
of New Orleans, which was a big deal.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, And these formations of what we call states today
and these adventures of pioneers past, we have to realize
they were strolling onto the stage very very late in
the play, very late in the game, because evidence of
plant cultivation, evidence of civilization grounded a rarian civilization. It's

(07:00):
back thousands of years, like six thousand or so years ago,
maybe fourth millennium BCE. As we would call it now.
And it's strange because even now in twenty twenty six,
it is difficult to talk about Louisiana without also mentioning
the Mississippi River. It's kind of I would pause it.

(07:22):
It's kind of like visiting New Orleans and still somehow
not hearing jazz. You guys have both been We know
it's impossible to not hear jazz. And we've also got
to throw to one of our favorite stories from our
super producer Tennessee. Tennessee, you went on a riverboat cruise

(07:46):
not too long ago. Was that on the Mississippi. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (07:49):
I've been on I think three riverboat cruises on the Mississippi,
all what you might consider old people cruises where I
was the youngest person by thirty five years. One of
them went past cancer Alley that we're talking about today.
And it's strange because I saw a plant. It was

(08:10):
a neoprem plant, and it looks.

Speaker 6 (08:15):
So ominous from far away.

Speaker 5 (08:17):
As you get closer, especially at night, it's like green
lamps all around the facility, and you know a lot
of fog from the production and it looks like a
big city out of nowhere almost. It kind of looked
like a skyline in the dark.

Speaker 4 (08:33):
It makes me think of a lot of the crazy
overhead shots and the first season The True Detective that
I think we all love so well. That really shows
that kind of line where nature and industry kind of collide.
New Orleans is a great example of that. Are just
at that part of Louisiana in general. Tons of all
of these production plants and then all of these natural
marshes and incredible wildlife refuges and all of that, but

(08:56):
they all sort of somehow exist in the same ecosystem
and are going to talk about today. Sometimes that can
cause problems.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
One hundred percent. And before we move on Tennessee, please
please please do share with our fellow listeners your favorite
entertainment on those riverboat cruises. You know I'm thinking of that.

Speaker 6 (09:16):
Would be the Mark Twain impersonator who freestyles for an
hour and a half just whatever comes to his mind.
He has no script.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Impressive, he's not doing like Samuel Clemens's.

Speaker 6 (09:29):
Work kind of but okay, it's like he goes into
a flow state and kind of fever dreams out a
bunch of different Mark Twain stuff.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
That sounds quite fun.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
I think we might have to go.

Speaker 4 (09:42):
Do you think there's a union for historical impersonators. There
must be, that's a great question. There must be, And
we do know that there was a great union that
is part of this story. It is the Allies versus
the Axis Power World War two. This is when a

(10:03):
wartime economy is what you'll read basically if you look
into this wartime economy leads to a boom in the
oil and gas industry. This leads to the creation of
multiple refineries all along the Mississippi River, particularly located at
the Gulf Coast or near the Gulf coast, maybe between

(10:26):
Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It's perfect for transportation. And
throughout the nineteen fifties, a lot of people who were
well to do in those two towns had what we
call nimby not in my backyard, and they were able
to take those cases to court. They were able to
pay off the right politicians, the right corporations. They can

(10:49):
touch people in Baton Rouge and in New Orleans and
move these refineries and their support structure away from these
heavily pots populated areas to less densely populated places. So
this is where we see a renaissance or a boom
of industries and plants finding smaller communities between those two

(11:14):
big towns to call home. These are often situated on
former plantation sites right the home of chattel slavery. They're
next to towns with majority black populations where they're literally
in these towns, and we're talking about towns with populations
of less than a thousand people. In some cases, those

(11:34):
people are frequently impoverished. They are starved for economic opportunity.
Everybody is searching for a job. Unemployment is very high.
Most importantly, they are unable to fight back against these
big corporations. And then, you know, as we said earlier,
you fast forward a few decades. You see petrochemicals and

(11:57):
fertilizer operations growing in the Stale area. There is a
laundry list of stuff they make and a laundry list
of byproducts created in the process. Chlorine fertilizers, yea, many
of these things used for laundry.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Before we get into that list, guys, there is a
sentiment that you can hear from a lot of individual
human beings who currently reside in some of the parishes
within this alley, like Saint James parish, or Saint John
the Baptist parish, whose families have lived there for generations,
and there are stories of, you know, only one generation ago,

(12:37):
maybe one and a half generations ago, the parents of
these people who are now speaking, who were kids at
the time, saying, oh, our parents were so excited when
some of these companies were coming through, especially in their town,
because it meant, oh, we actually have a place to
work now, and this could be a really good job.
This is a factory job, and a time when that

(12:58):
was a hard thing to land unless a factory came
to you basically, or you're just you're traveling essentially.

Speaker 4 (13:05):
And it's such a devil's bargain. I think we're gonna
get to I mean, you're absolutely right. Mat on the surface,
it appears to be okay, industry is coming to our community.
We're going to have job security moving forward. But of
course the corporations don't really you know, clue you into
some of the downstream consequences. And I was joking about

(13:25):
some of these chemicals being used in laundry and talking
about like industrial laundry, industrial processes, things like chlorine, you know, nitrogen,
nitrogen for exactly virayl chloride, polystyrene, chloroprene, and you know
a ton more.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
And polystyrene, by the way, is the official name for styrofoam.
And you probably if you got something using styrofoam as packaging,
you probably got it from Louisiana if you live in
the United States. Up until fairly recently, this is the
stuff a country needs to function. But it is not

(14:05):
the stuff, folks, that you want leaking into your backyard,
into your air, into your drinking water. The problem is,
and the problem has always been that since the construction
of these refineries in the call it World War two,
call it post World War two. Since the construction of

(14:27):
these refineries, these substances, these pollutants were infiltrating constantly at
what appeared to be at alarming rate. As far back
as the nineteen seventies, the EPA was noticing some serious pollution.
There was one report that looked at the drinking water

(14:47):
of New Orleans and they said there are sixty six
separate types of pollutants in the water that everybody is drinking.
If they drink tap water, they should not be there.
They also went to a place in the Baton Rouge
metro area called plaquemine, and they found that there were

(15:09):
thirty one separate what they call lethal chemicals in the air.
So not just a bad spell from a paper mill
or your Kodak factory like my family grew up with,
or not just a dog food factory, but things that
the government agrees will hurt you if you breathe them in.

Speaker 4 (15:32):
Isn't it sad and funny that like distrust in public
drinking water has directly led I think in no small
part to the boom of like bottled water largely manufactured
by companies that are responsible for the distrust in public
drinking water.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, like most def said in New World Water, everybody
check out that song. It aged terribly well.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
Well or in the Mister Shows sketch where they goes well,
sue the pants off of them and then we'll sell
them pants.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah. So the most deathline is the type of cats
who pollute the whole shore line then repurify and sell
it for a dollar twenty nine. He wrote that way
back before the current inflation kicked in. With bottled water,
which is its own back of badgers.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
And some of the pollutants that end up in the water,
in the air and the soil in the bodies of
the mothers who are attempting to birth a child, are benzene, chloroprene,
ethylene oxide, formaldehyde. The list goes on and on and on.
And it's stuff that causes things like low birth weight,

(16:39):
causes things like miscarriages and other birth defects, causes cancers
of all different types. And it's just there, and it's
being pumped into the water, in the land and the
air constantly. And if you take a look at Google Maps,
as we were talking about before, start in New Orleans
and follow the Mississippi River and just count for yourself

(17:02):
how many massive complexes just appear to be major chemical
plants as you're going along that river before you get
up up there to baton rouge, and it will blow
your mind when you see the scale, like Dylan was
talking about the scale of these things, and then just
how freaking many of them there are.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, and we also know this is not a new problem.
Even back in nineteen seventy six, the Coastguard flagged this
because they had some folks grabbing sediment samples from the
river from the Mississippi near one of these sites. And
these guys who, by the way, or underwater ended up

(17:47):
with second degree burns on their hands because the river
was that beat me here, Jordan and Dyllan, the river
was that up. By then, things were already pretty terrible
for a lot of us in the region, before a
lot of us in the audience were even born. It's

(18:08):
phenomenally tragic how often evil things become normalized. Regular fires
at oil refineries became an expected, if unwelcome part of
life for people living in towns like Good Hope in
the early nineteen eighties, and residents activists are trying to

(18:29):
organize the best they can, but they are so outmatched
by the deep pockets of the oil, gas and chemical industries.
They continue operating, They expand without abatement. The money is
too good, and companies like Dow have a lot of it,
also multinational companies. Then you know when in the nineteen eighties,

(18:51):
this is when a lot of people in these victimized
areas start noticing that some animals and plants are coming
less common. The air that used to smell so sweet
now carries a tang of rotten eggs and sulfur.

Speaker 4 (19:08):
Yeah, this is about the time it takes to really
start to see these knock on consequences. They also started
noticing strange patterns of various health conditions, particularly some of
the things that Matt was talking about, cancers, miscarriages, but
also chronic asthma, other respiratory upper respiratory infections like bronchitis,

(19:30):
chronic coughs, childhood asthma, persistent sinus infections taking on their own.
Any one of these things maybe not a cause for
alarm or searching for some sort of you know, cause,
but taken all together and seeing the prevalence of all
of them, it really starts to make people start asking

(19:50):
some questions.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, and we got to keep in mind that a
lot of these people see these growing signs of disaster.
They know that the the larger media is ignoring what
is happening. They know that local politicians are ignoring what's happening.
But we also have to exercise empathy and remember a
lot of these people could not afford to move, even

(20:14):
if they desperately want to. I would say they were targeted,
to be quite honest.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
Yeah, And a lot of people that were interviewed by
the EPA and by Human Rights Watch for several documentaries
that were made a couple of years back, that kind
of coincided with us a lawsuit and then again in
twenty twenty five. We're gonna talk about that in just
a minute here, But there are a lot of individuals
who are either the heads of grassroots organizations that they've

(20:41):
created in the different parishes, or just parents, often parents
of kids they are talking about. They don't want to
leave because their families have been here for again decades,
So it is it feels imagine just being told, well,
you gotta leave though, because you know business, so your

(21:01):
whole family's got to go, and you're done with this
whole land that you own here. The craziest thing in
some of those documentaries is talking about these debilitating things
like asthma, that these chemicals can bring about in somebody,
or at least I was gonna say, aid in bringing
about in somebody cause damage to a human being so

(21:24):
that they experience asthma. A lot of it has to
do with proximity to these plants, and often in these
smaller towns in these parishes. There's footage of it. They
show a place called the fifth Ward Elementary School. It's
located exactly four hundred yards from the fence line of
a giant chemical plant. And then you wonder, why are

(21:46):
a lot of the kids having problems running around the track. Oh,
it's they're just complaining about their chest hurting all the time,
being unable to breathe fully. And they're right there, They're
literally right there next to the plan.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
And this was something people knew about way back again,
decades ago before some of us watching this on Netflix
were born. And we're happy you're here, thanks for tuning in.
By nineteen ninety eight, people started calling one area of
Saint Bernard Parish Cancer Alley, and so, like you are saying, Noel,

(22:24):
people begin tracing these bizarre incidents of environmental degradation and
anomalous medical conditions up and down the Mississippi, and they
discover again and again similar correlations between those incidents and
the location of petrochemical plants.

Speaker 4 (22:45):
So, after some of these incidents begin to be investigated,
the bounds of this cancer Alley starts to grow. In fact,
from that area in Shall matt to an eighty five
mile stretch along the Mississippi from New Orleans up to
back and Rouge. Further investigations would also propose a larger

(23:06):
kind of umbrella region referred to as Greater Cancer Alley,
extending west along the Gulf Coast into Texas. So this
area was of course an important region for economic growth
in the United States. But as is often the case,
this kind of rapid progress comes with a price. By

(23:30):
twenty twenty one, there were nearly one hundred and fifty refineries,
plastic plants, and chemical facilities occupying the alley. Despite massive
outcries from some of the locals that we're talking about
who were seeing these adverse health effects, activists acting on
their behalf and researchers, there was sadly nothing being done

(23:52):
to help with the problem. And I mean I got
to ask, where's the EPA and all of this.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Guys, Oh, they're there, They're around, and there are some
very good people at the EPA. We were saying, hey,
this is crazy. This rate of cancer is ten times
what it should be. And they were also roundly ignored
pretty often by everybody but community activists. So our question
is what happened with cancer rally, what if anything has

(24:20):
been done about it. We'll be right back afterward from
our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. Pardon my cat here, folks,
But the first thing we have to acknowledge is that
Louisiana is one of the worst polluted states in the

(24:41):
entirety of the United States and remains so today. The
story we told you at the beginning is true. The
big refinery boom occurs around World War two post World
War two economic boom. But the reason the pollution exist
in this area specifically today, it dates back inextricably to

(25:06):
the days of chattel slavery. Well.

Speaker 4 (25:08):
I mean, it's another one of those examples of how
the prison system sort of replaced chattel slavery in many ways,
creating another revenue stream that essentially was a stand in
for chattel slavery. You could argue too that the moving
into these impoverished areas largely occupied by you know, black Americans,

(25:29):
is another example of that where it's like, well, we're
not enslaving you, but we're still killing you, ruining your lives,
and taking away your livelihoods by ignoring your humanity m exactly.
And we're seeing it again now. I mean, we're seeing
it now with all of these redistricting issues and you know,
voting rights acts being shut down, all of that. I mean,
it's just another example of how can we further ignore

(25:53):
an entire section of the population just because they don't
have as much money as the billionaire class.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Because they can't fight back. Right'd like to shout out
the Descendants Project. You can read about them and we
recommend looking into their work as well as other community activists.
They are outmatched the odds or against them. This one
is led by two twins, Joy Banner and Joe Banner,
and they talk at length about the long running reason

(26:27):
why these big companies, US based and multinationalists we'll see
targeted these communities. Joy Banner notes, quote the industrial pollution
and proliferation that we are surrounded by now is something
that started hundreds of years ago. Because this area of

(26:47):
Louisiana wasn't always called Cancer Rally. It used to be
just known as the plantation Ground because there were a
ton of sugar plantations there right, which depended upon enslaved
people to operate. And the depredations against these communities continue today.
A ton of the people affected in Cancer Alley like

(27:10):
are overwhelmingly descended from those original enslaved populations. This is inescapable.
This is why the UN holds Cancer Ally a case
of environmental racism.

Speaker 4 (27:24):
And just to give a shout out to a podcast
that we discussed Big Sugar, which was an exploration of
the sugar industry as it exists today by the incredible
reporter Celeste Hedley. And you know, even that industry as
it continued to exist post slavery. Basically it was just
an extension of slavery itself with the horrific conditions people

(27:48):
prone to, debilitating injuries in human living conditions. I don't
mean to get on a soapbox or sidetrack us too much,
but I just think these things are connected. It's like
a history lesson kind.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Of you know, think about reasoning that big business has
been using for hundreds of years. We need these chemicals,
we need these products, We need that GDP boost, we
need the taxes, we need all these things. It has
to happen, guys. We have to build new plants to
process all this oil we're bringing in into usable gas

(28:21):
for our cars. We got to do it. We got
to do it. Somewhere. Where should we put it? Is
it Is it any surprise that the big businesses that
have been around for hundreds of years chose this area
to put those those chemical processing plants in. Doesn't it
seem like it's kind of the thing that they do.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yes, agreed, and well put Also, notice the reason we
were saying cultivating plants as far as six thousand something
years ago. Now that people in power are just cultivating
a new kind of plant, you know. And to your point, Noel,
we have seen similar cases across the United States and
indeed across the world. Already disadvantaged populations get pushed continually

(29:07):
to the side of negotiation and conversation by corrupt politicians,
by corrupt officials, comptrollers, we could say, and profit seeking companies.
They're more than happy to ignore or suppress the reality
of pollution for as long as possible. But we can
pause it, and we do so in tonight's episode that

(29:28):
cancer ALLI may be tragically unique. In the following. While
there is much more attention being paid to this growing
disaster which continues today, it is still getting worse. We
got to go to Pro Publica. I know we all
read this when Pro Publica journalist Tristan Barro, Laila Junes,

(29:50):
and Joan Miners wrote a phenomenal investigation back in twenty nineteen,
and they point out stuff is still getting being worse
In Louisiana's cancer ally.

Speaker 4 (30:02):
Yeah, it's just another example of like a lot of
these mitigation the efforts are sort of lip service and
or public relations rather than actually changing the way things
are done on a fundamental level. And I think this
quote here speaks to that. Though the air quality here
has improved significantly since the nineteen eighties, as it has

(30:23):
in the rest of the nation, the recent history is
less encouraging, not only as toxic air pollution in Louisiana's
industrial belt rising in absolute terms, the estimated air quality
relative to its peers is getting worse.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Yeah, and there are still new plants being planned. They
are going to be adjacent to, or literally inside communities
that the EPA already believes have some of the most
dangerous air in all of the United States. And Pro
Publica's findings, which you can and should check out in

(30:58):
full online, they agreed with the statements of locals like
the Banner Twins and other community activists. This genuinely feels
like a conspiracy to target predominantly poor and black communities,
and they're targeting them, maybe not for malevolence, but something
worse or convenience of profit. I mean, I think we

(31:21):
should talk about some of the specific statistics.

Speaker 4 (31:25):
What do we say, absolutely, and just too want to
point out that, like as ham strong as the EPA
has been, even in the best of times, you really
have to think about how agencies like that are further
facing dismantling and just being pushed further and further down
in their abilities to actually do anything meaningful.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
And the Devil's advocate bargain of the revolving door. You
having a bad time being the good guy, have a
good time being a bad one.

Speaker 4 (31:52):
Right, which is basically a way of taking somebody away
from the EPA and then helping them work the loopholes
that the person knows about from their time in government
with the actual bad guys. Yes, quote unquote, I mean,
I'm sorry, it's just to your point, Matt off Air,
I think this stuff really pisses you off. It's it's
really hard not to get frustrated.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
I think it's wrong for anybody to not be pissed
off out of this.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
I'm having a hard time making this episode right now
because we just looked at all of the different companies
that are a part of this thing. You look at
the reality that there's if you're in a boardroom somewhere
you go, oh, there's only forty five thousand people living
in this entire area. Shoot, let's build more. Though they're
mostly black and they're mostly poor. Shoot let's expand.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Man.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
You can just you can hear. I can hear the
people making money handover fist producing these things in their
boardrooms making decisions based on the simple metric that there's
only forty five thousand people. Hear that again, only forty
five thousand people. Think about how many people that is,
but also how few people that is if you're imagining

(33:04):
major metropolitan areas, only forty five thousand people in a
fairly large stretch of land, forty those from one major
city to another, and.

Speaker 4 (33:12):
Forty five thousand people who don't have the means or
the resources to fight back against what you exactly do.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Again, Yeah, do you look at this as a shareholder
and you say, what the what are they going to
have the money for a lawsuit? If it's okay with you, guys,
I hate to do this, but I feel like we
have to got to talk about some of these specific
statistics economically and medically that are occurring in cancer Alley.
Is that all right?

Speaker 3 (33:39):
Now?

Speaker 2 (33:40):
We must Yeah, all right, Okay, So as of twenty
twenty six, Cancer Alley is home to, as I mentioned
at the top, no less than thirty six separate superfund sites.
Louisiana as a whole has one hundred and eighteen. Do
we want to do a brief recap of what a
superfund site is per the EPA?

Speaker 4 (34:00):
Yeah, I mean super fun sites can be sites that
are undergoing cleanup processes, oftentimes associated with government activities like
nuclear weapons, manufacturing and disposal of nuclear waste, et cetera.
But they can also be things that are related to
sites that have been polluted and are designated by the

(34:22):
EPA as you know, meeting a certain threshold of dangerous
levels of pollution and requiring cleanup associated from industrial manufacturing
and you know commerce. Basically still think the name is ridiculous.
And I just remember from back in my days reporting
for public radio, the joke in the newsroom was always
that just it sounds like like a carnival or something.

(34:43):
Let's go to the super fun site, you know, no
a d at the end, And it just does feel
like that banality of evil. Even the name, it's like,
does it should be called toxic pollution?

Speaker 2 (34:54):
Holes, you know, like hana Errant banality of evil, yeah,
and others. Statistic would be that if you live in
Cancer Alley, your medium income is forty five thousand US
dollars a year. They're forty percent of the people living
there below the poverty line. While healthcare skyrockets right the

(35:17):
cost of healthcare, and while doctors and nurses and medical
professionals are leaving en mass unemployment is out of control.
Even in comparison to the rest of the state of Louisiana,
if you reside in Cancer Alley, you are thirty percent
more likely to die from lung cancer than anybody else

(35:39):
in the US general population, so much so that it
doesn't matter if you smoke cigarettes. You also will have
a forty percent higher rate of bladder cancer than the
national average.

Speaker 3 (35:52):
Let's just think about that. Bladder cancer, lung cancer. That
means you're just breathing the air or you're just drinking
the water. That is your the big oops, you messed up.
Shouldn't breathe the air, ah, shouldn't have drink the tab water.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Sorry, that's your exposure. Yeah, and you can't really get
away from it, you know, there aren't there for these
sorts of contambinants. Folks, there's not really a life straw
where a brit Or water filter. I don't know why
I said that Australian, but there's not one of those
commercially available filters that can get this stuff clean. And

(36:31):
while you're gonna walk around like you're in fallout and
wear a respirator the entire time, that's very mad Max.

Speaker 4 (36:38):
It ain't far off from that mad max type experience
in the mortality rates in Cancer Ralley about twenty five
percent higher than the state's average, with ten percent linked
to pre term births. Sixty five percent of Cancer Ralley
residents are, as we've indicated up to this point, black
or African American, compared to thirty two percent in Louisiana overall.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
And black residents are fifty percent more likely to die
from cancer than white residents in Cancer Alley. In short,
what we're saying, fellow conspiracy realist, is almost every single
person in this region knows someone who has battled cancer
or has died from it. There is no other way

(37:22):
to explain this than to look at historical maps of
the expansion of these industries and the massive pollution output
of these plants. I don't know about you, guys. One
of the terms I learned that really bothered me in
the weeks we've been researching this is the term sacrifice zone.

Speaker 4 (37:43):
I mean, it says it all collateral damage.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
One of the things in the human rights documentary that
I checked out right before this, that's brought up by
Robert Taylor of Concerned Citizens of Saint John, is that
often residents won't even mention to anybody else that they've
been diagnosed with cancer. They'll kind of hide the fact
that they've been diagnosed with cancer. So it kind of

(38:09):
becomes this the secret around town until a bunch of
people start dying off. And it's this concept that it's
almost like you you're not supposed to talk about the
fact that you have cancer. It's almost like bringing I
don't want to, I don't want to say something superstitious
about it. But it's it's like there's this thing where
often people who live in these areas won't mention to

(38:32):
anyone that they've been diagnosed with cancer, and nobody finds
out until folks just start dying off. But there's something
super almost superstitious.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah, it's an old cultural thing that if you if
you speak or acknowledge something terrible or evil that you
will somehow aid in its manifestation. That's idea, right, don't
speak it up. You might hear that.

Speaker 4 (39:01):
Not to mention, though, is there not still a sense
of this industry being important for one hundred locals and
their livelihoods. So it's this further example of that devil's
bargain where you are now experiencing the ill effects, but
yet you are dependent on your abuser.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
And also we should mention, just to be fair, that
privacy is important. It's a dilemma. I still haven't unbagged
the badgers on this one, to be quite honest, folks,
because you know, your personal life should be your own,
it should be sacri sanct if you don't want to

(39:40):
share it. But also if you share what's happening to you,
you can connect the pieces in this insidious puzzle, right,
and you could take collective action. It's it's so like
again the term. I'm sorry to go back to it,
but I do think we need to all learn this
when sacrifice zones. In twenty twenty two, the You in

(40:03):
the United Nations, the actual one a special rapidoire on
human rights in the Environment looked around the world and
identified Louisiana's Cancer Alleys as a sacrifice zone, defined as
one of the most polluted and hazardous places on Earth,

(40:23):
including part and parcel of This is what they characterize
as egregious human rights violations. So it's easy for a
lot of people, even fellow conspiracy realists in the United States,
to hear about disasters like Chernobyl right, or disasters like

(40:43):
the disappearing lakes in Eurasia and to say, well, that's
not going to happen here, but it is happening here.
It's happening in Louisiana right now as you are on
Netflix or your podcast platform of choice.

Speaker 4 (40:56):
And maybe this isn't inherent in the term, but when
I think of the term sacrifice zone, you sacrifice something
to get a benefit elsewhere. So you know, something has
to be sacrificed in order for the gods to bless
us with whatever the thing is. In this case, the
gods are the chemical companies, and the benefit is the
commerce of it all and the sacrifices of the people

(41:17):
they live in these regions. I mean, whether or not
that's intended in the description, that is what I think
it describes pretty perfectly.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
Ben As you're talking about that in knowl as you're
illustrating there. It reminds me of Beau Paul the Union
carbide in India way back in the day, where that
kind of mass essentially sacrifice via a necessary thing and
then a disaster something terrible occurs. But in this case,
we're not even talking about a plant having a massive leak, right,

(41:47):
or you know, a plant having a singular fire or something.
We're just talking about the effects of having all of
these processing plants there for an extended period of time
doing normal operations. That takes in a while statistically, having
one of these smaller events occur and it just all
it all adds up. It's cumulative.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
But sadly, it takes the big explosion or the Chernobyl
or the whatever to cause enough pr disaster for the
companies to then make an effort publicly with some level
of rollback or change in their policies or whatever it
might be. But then a long enough time goes by,
it does seem that things tend to fall back to
business as usual.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, when the headlines retreat, right, that's when the business
kicks back up. In this report, we're mentioning from the
United Nations in twenty twenty two, the rappets were rights quote.
The continued existence of sacrifice zones is a stain upon
the collective consciousness of humanity. It represents the worst imaginable

(42:49):
dereliction of a state's obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill
the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. And
this should not be happening here technically, because if you
look at the paperwork, if you look at the laws,
and you look at what the politicians say, who are

(43:10):
themselves often shareholders, by the way, on paper, the United
States has one of the most highly regulated fossile fuel
and petrochemical industries on the planet. But paper is not practice.
These regulations are often poorly enforced, or to your point, Noll,
they are slowly walked back, depending upon whomever is in

(43:33):
charge at the local, state or federal level.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
I'm I'm glad the paper plants are just down the way.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
Yes, yeah, same saying, there's a dog food plant too.
It smells amazing on Thursdays. I'm glad, Matt that we
mentioned Human Rights Watch earlier because part of their lead
up to several of their documentaries or the video Works
was an investigation went from two years, from twenty twenty

(44:03):
two to twenty twenty four. They visited so many sites
in the alley. They interviewed officials, locals alike, they consulted
with the EPA, and what they found was disturbing. We've
got a direct quote from their investigation which you can
read in full online. We can just paraphrase it here.

(44:24):
They were finding these plants so close to private homes
and public goods, playground, schools, senior centers like retirement homes,
farms where people are raising livestock or growing crops, businesses
where people go every day. And they said, look, we
walked around and we had the same experience that Dylan

(44:48):
Fagan had Tennessee. They didn't quote you on this, but
what they experienced is very much what you were describing.
They said, we would see these factories regularly, routine emitting
huge burning flares, plumes of black and brown smoke with
who knows what's in it, and there were stains from

(45:09):
crude oil spilled from massive storage tanks. Everything smelled terrible,
and Human Rights Watch also notices that at least a
dozen facilities in Cancer Rally themselves had reported to the EPA. Hey, guys,
we're releasing a bunch of toxic crap that exceeds the

(45:31):
federal limits that we all agreed on. We just want
you to know, and also please keep in mind, just
to be clear, fellow conspiracy realist, that is what those
factories and facilities officially reported. So there is probably called
me a cynic, if we must. There's probably a gap
between what they're reporting what the EPA is see, and

(45:54):
what's actually happening.

Speaker 4 (45:55):
Absolutely, I mean, if that's what they're self reporting, you know,
they're telling the rosie version of that that they possibly can,
and it's already pretty bad.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah, it's like finding It's like finding a kid who
has a bunch of uh has a bunch of like
cookie crumbs and icing on their face and their their
hands and their clothing or covered with cookie crumbs and icing,
and you say, hey, did you eat a cookie? And
they said I might add one or two.

Speaker 3 (46:23):
Jesus comes up to mom and dad it says, hey,
I would like to self report that I did, in
fact have two cookies. And I know that's one more
cookie than I'm supposed to.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Have, right, I know it's one more, but you know
we work together, right mom and dad? And also in
this situation, I'm a billionaire and here's two million dollars
for your campaign of dad.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Just two full containers of oreos in the trash, and
their parents are just like, what in the hell?

Speaker 2 (46:57):
And the thing is we are we are attempting. We
are attempting levity, folks, because we're very pissed off. You
should be as well. The government and industry of this area,
and with the assistance of the federal government in multinational corporations,
they have conspired to ruin the lives of innocent people.

(47:21):
Knowing the problem is not the same problem as fixing
the issue. What if we take a break for a
word from our sponsors and then try to get to
some good news and maybe a thought experiment on the
mechanics of this very real conspiracy. We're back, multi national corporations,

(47:47):
thanks for hanging out. The United States, or at least
the political class, loves you, guys. Thanks for all the
you know, the san Rio gear. Thanks, thanks for all
the cool stuff we can't get here?

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Should we just should we do a quick list of
a lot of them?

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (48:05):
Just the companies?

Speaker 2 (48:07):
Yeah, Shin Tech's one that's a great example.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
Oh yeah, just like uh these come from corpwatch dot org.
There's a list of folks that have factories or processing
plants along the Mississippi River there between those two cities.
Uh balkem b A S F, Chevron, Denka, Dow Incorporated,
Eastman Chemical, N tur G that's E N T, E

(48:30):
R G, y Ivonic with A K Exon Mobile, Formosa Plastics, Honeywell,
Huntsman Corporation. There's so many more guys. Coke Industries, that's
KO c H, Marathon Petroleum, Mosaic Company, Occidental Petroleum, Olin Corporation, Shell,
shin Itsu, solve A, s O, L V A Y.

(48:52):
I don't know that one. Total Energies, Union Carbide, Hey,
I remember that one. Remember Union Carbide from bopol Valero
and Westlake Chemical.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Yeah, and look these folks are these corporations. Look they
are winning the battle. To be quite clear, we know
that they go in often with the full support of
the state or local government decision makers, often without input
from these again often very rural communities, and will only

(49:26):
back off once the communities organize against the odds. This
is very much an uphill battle. One good news example
widely quoted would be Shintech Incorporated. Dow has nothing on Shintech.
Shintech is the largest chemical guy in Japan, and back

(49:50):
in nineteen ninety six, I'm just laughing at it the
way I said. Guy back in nineteen ninety six, Shintech said,
we're going to build three big PVC plants in a
very small town. That town is called Convent. It is
majority black. As of the twenty twenty census, they had

(50:10):
a population of like four hundred and sixty eight people,
very small community. The state said, okay, yeah, you guys,
go ahead, Shintech, move into move into Convent. And Shintech said, okay. Also,
this is going to add six hundred and twenty three
thousand pounds of pollution directly into the air each and

(50:34):
every year, non negotiable. And the good governance of Louisiana said, okay,
that's fine. Convent is not a big voting district for
US because they're again less than five hundred people.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
Ben I didn't realize shin Tech is the US version
of shin Etsu shi n Etsu Chemical Chemical Company Limited.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Again, think of them as like the Japanese DuPont to
the Japanese now the residents. Luckily, in this very small town,
they formed a community action group. If you are living
in cancer rally right now, this is one of your
best moves. Their group was called Saint James Citizens for
the Environment. They spent two years lobbying. They got some

(51:26):
good hearted boffins from Tulane involved. Ultimately they won. Shintech
backed off in nineteen ninety eight they withdrew their plans.
There are other inspiring examples, but to be one hundred
percent honest, as is are remit on this show, they're
not enough inspiring examples. These plants are still getting built.

(51:48):
I'd love for us to talk a little bit about
the mechanics of this conspiracy. It has been franchised, it
has been templatized. It shares a lot in common with
the process of conspiracy. You'll see around the construction of
ice concentration camps or prison camps and prison facilities. We
know this. We talked about this, right.

Speaker 4 (52:10):
So, first, you find a small town, preferably not too
far from a larger city. You want this community to
be economically depressed. Bonus points if there's already existing similar
facilities in the area, makes a lot of sense, seems
like what we've been describing the playbook here. Then you

(52:32):
make some big promises come into the community, like with
the new prison monitrailils maybe, yeah for sure, or a
chemical plant. You spin these tales of economic opportunities, jobs, investments,
tax incentives, boon for the local economy, and knowing Louisiana,
both the prison system and the petro tycoons probably make

(52:55):
some smart campaign contributions along the way to grease the
wheels a little bit.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Right.

Speaker 4 (53:01):
This is sold, of course at this stage exclusively as
a benefit to the public, but this is in fact
a benefit of the public. Will never enjoy those contributions.
That is, you know, this is a whole separate kind
of shadow game that's going on behind the scenes. And
of course those politicians tend to get to call for

(53:22):
that nimby thing that we were talking about earlier, not
in their backyard, so they live nowhere near these communities
that are being affected and are benefiting directly from these
you know, these let's just call them what they are.
They're kind of grease payments, you know, bribes.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Yeah, because everybody check out our previous episodes on lobbying,
it's called bribery everywhere else except for the United States.
We're at the second act in the conspiracy, in the
mechanics of the conspiracy.

Speaker 4 (53:55):
Now, can I just say really quickly, been we've had
to do. We've mentioned this multiple times, various trainings, you know,
FCC trainings and various things like that to make sure
we're a compliance as part of a large corporation. One
thing that comes up all the time that we're never
allowed to do is pay someone to speed up a process. Right,

(54:16):
That's what this is. It's worse, it's way worse, and
it's totally legal. But it is absolutely I mean, I
know we're not saying anything unique, but it is utterly
legalized bribery and it's gross. It's gross.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
It's lobbying in the United States, it's bribery, and the
rest of the world. And now we're at the second
act of the conspiracy. Yes, some of these fans vul
tails appear to be true. There is a huge construction boom.
Job applications are going everywhere. Your cousin is calling you
and saying, man, they're paying X amount per hour. You've

(54:50):
got to get on on this too. If you're local,
it may seem they're promising things on the horizon, especially
if you've been looking for a solid job for several years.
But people notice something is off because a lot of
people who are being paid to do the high end construction,
they're not from your town. They're coming from outside. They're

(55:13):
coming from a different part of the state, the city,
or the world. A lot of the management positions go
to people from beyond your region, beyond the state, outside
of the country. And you're still thinking something's better than nothing, right,
But now we enter the third act of the conspiracy.
This always happens. We've looked at a lot of cases.

(55:34):
Our plant is up and running, it's pooping stuff into
the sky, it's peeing into the water, and the majority
of the local jobs are low level. They're not well paid.
You don't have much in the way of career growth.
You definitely don't have much in way of health benefits
or insurance. And people are getting sick. You live in

(55:56):
this newly affected community. Odds are you know what happened
in nearby towns that got a factory not too long ago.
You've heard stories about childhood afflictions, miscarriages, low birth weight,
mysterious cancer. You got the news that your cousin, your niece,
or your uncle contracted some kind of cancer that just

(56:17):
does not make sense for their age. You start putting
the puzzle pieces together. You look up EPA statistics. You
ask friends and neighbors, several of whom may also work
with you at the plant. You're endangering your job by
doing this, but you decide to organize. You get stonewalled.
That plant keeps pissing and crapping into your environment at

(56:40):
a lightning pace, and more and more stuff in the water,
more and more particles in the air, more pennies, one
cancer at a time, into the pockets of shareholders who
will probably never visit your town while they are alive,
and statistically, their lives are going to be longer than

(57:00):
your life because they don't have to breathe, eat, and
drink the consequences of their own actions. Sorry, I'm off
the soapbox. That's I think that's what's happening. That's the mechanics.

Speaker 4 (57:12):
Hey, you're right, and just see Aaron Brockovich the movie.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
I'm looking at corp Watch's little website here and looking
at BASF the chemical company. There's so many of these
chemical manufacturers that if you go back let's say sixty
eighty years, let's say eighty years. You go back and

(57:37):
you see what they were doing in the nineteen thirties,
nineteen forties, especially one like BASF that was founded in Germany,
and then you see, you know how they used to
produce this little thing called zyklon B. If you know
the history of that chemical, you know the history of

(57:58):
a lot of the chemicals they and then you see
that according to pro Publica in their estimation, BASF, which
has about six plants, it has six plants in the
United States, and pro Publica says that they elevate alone.
BASF alone with their six plants, elevates cancer risks for

(58:21):
an estimated one and a half million people in this country,
not just this area we're talking about, and how horrific
it is and all the mechanisms that been just described
there that they're they're all over this place. And again
like these are a lot of companies that have done

(58:41):
some pretty crazy stuff, because chemicals can be used for
some horrific things.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
Yeah, and I hope nobody tuning insight as a fan
of cyclone beat Uh, you make a great point here,
because this story is happening right now, not just a
multiple communit unities across cancer rally, but in multiple communities
across the United States and indeed across the world. This

(59:07):
term sacrifice zone, guys, I keep going back to it
because it implies that the United Nations is saying some
powerful people have already given up on trying to fix
these problems. That is disturbing. The United Nations is supposed
to do better, right, but so is Uncle Sam. And

(59:28):
there is still hope we can. You know, we'd like
to end on good news.

Speaker 4 (59:33):
Now.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
It's kind of a back and forth. We know that
the EPA in twenty twenty four announced a new policy
again this twenty twenty four, so everybody play along at
home if you live in the US and no how
elections go. Their policy said, hey, two hundred chemical plants
across the country, and probably some of those were the

(59:56):
sixth that you just mentioned, Matt. They said, look, we
I want you to cut toxic emissions. We want to
reduce cancer risk for locals living by these plants by
ninety six percent. This is ambitious. It is also the
first time in more than thirty years that the EPA

(01:00:18):
adjusted their emission standards in this way. So that's a win, right,
But there's a bad news.

Speaker 4 (01:00:27):
Isn't it crazy?

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
You're just you're gonna make these things, but oh gosh,
as a cost of making these incredible chemicals, we got
to create all this poison. What do we do with
the poison? We just emit it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
We just emit it. And you know, the worst part, Okay,
I know we're on Netflix. I don't want to get
in trouble. I don't want us to get us in
trouble for this. But the worst part is we all
know very well that there was a series of meetings
where people said, Okay, we're making this byproduct, is there

(01:01:00):
a way to market it? And then someone looked up
and said, wait do you say it? Like, is there
a way for us to sell cancer causing poison? And
the guy said, I'm just spitball in here.

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
Listen, listen.

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
Oh maybe we can kill I don't know, bugs with it,
or rats, or you know, maybe we can make a
pesticide or an herbicide with sure.

Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
And I mean, and I know there's good people working
for the EPA who are, like, you know, sounding alarms
on this kind of stuff, But just then, nature, our
system isn't designed to stop things like this from happening.
It's just too We're too dependent on it. And again,
I know I'm not saying anything unique or original, but
I mean, good lord, it's it really makes your head

(01:01:43):
spin the more you think about how beholden we are
to these companies and how little power we have to
keep them from like killing actual every Well.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Yeah, they also said, well we can use it as
a pesticide, but also, how would you like to be
mayor of Convent, Louisiana. That's what it's, you know, rain
and hell, big fish in the small ponds. It happens
all the time. It was good news, though, we could

(01:02:12):
say for the EPA to eventually say, hey, guys, get
your together. We don't care where you put it, just
don't put it in the community. You can put your backpack,
you can put your briefcase, but just get it together
and stop making this a problem. Until twenty twenty five,
just last year, the US government said a lot of

(01:02:35):
these lawsuits against big industries are what we call DEI diversity,
equity and inclusion. So we're going to strike back against
these lawsuits. We're going to dismiss them. We're also going
to get rid of those nerds nopel like you were
talking about the good guys in the EPA. Screw them.

(01:02:56):
We're going to get rid of those guys. They read
too many books we study.

Speaker 4 (01:03:01):
What have we been talking about lately, scientists getting killed?

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
I mean, yeah, yeah, exactly. Man. They hit that revolving
door hard and right now. Numerous key roles in the EPA.
If you're in the United States, you pay these people
to protect you from industrial cancers and a lot of
other nasty stuff. Those roles are not filled with experts.
They are not filled with scientists. They are filled with

(01:03:26):
former agents and wait for it, lobbyist of the petrochemical industry.
We got to get a revolving door, man, I don't
know why we don't have one.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
I think this is the year we can finally do it.
We can finally say to these corporations, hey, we really
appreciate all of the X you're making, but if you
can't make that X without emitting a single toxic molecule,
then you can no longer make it. Sorry, We're just

(01:03:57):
gonna be done with that chemical now, We're going to
be done with that technology. It's over because you can
not emit these things. You can do it. It just
eats into the profits. It eats into the profits all
fat cat.

Speaker 4 (01:04:11):
Did you see what Warren Buffett said about like how
we could gain sure we would always have a balanced budget,
Like make make politicians ineligible for re election if we
were a single tes dollar in the red.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
I'm also a fan of I'm also a fan of
every politician not being allowed insider trading. There have to
be campaign reforms, and it'd be pretty sick, by the way,
if there were age limits in Congress. It'd also be
pretty dope if a congress person's salary was tied to

(01:04:44):
the community that supports them, So don't let them make
more than the median wage. Why are all these people millionaires?

Speaker 4 (01:04:51):
That's crazy, I know, but I mean the salary is
sort of like almost dropping the bucket compared to.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Salary and performative. You know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:04:58):
I didn't take a salary.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
It's like when a kid draws a turkey with their
handprint in Thanksgiving. We all have to protect I did
it too. We all have to pretend that it's the
most amazing wh or what's that guy's name who did
the bird book?

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
Auden?

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Oh gosh, we have to pretend it's the most amazing
bird painting ever. But you're right, the salary is malarkey.
We know that the EPA is probably compromised. We know
that there is good news in that. Earlier this year,
just a few months ago, in February of twenty twenty six,
a federal district court ruled that some residents of Cancer

(01:05:41):
Alley can move forward with a lawsuit against Saint James Parish.
And this lawsuit is meant not just to compensate people,
innocent people again who have suffered from this conspiracy. It
is also part of a larger effort to stop the
construction and the existence of these plants in majority black districts.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
Well, I thought it was mostly just to prevent new ones,
because everybody's just kind of got to live with the
bullshit that's already there. That was my understanding. This thing
was just like, stop putting more stuff and expanding on
existing ones.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Yes, stop expanding existing ones. The idea also to bring,
to clarify my point, the idea to bring greater, actual
actionable regulation to all the crap these plants are putting
into the environment. They're also they're noting something very interesting
for all of US fellow legal beagles. They're saying, this

(01:06:39):
is not just a regular people complaining. This is not
a regular NIMBI case. This violates the thirteenth Amendment and
the fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. So it's a heavy claim.
That's heavy water. It was an accidental nuclear joke. But
we do hope it succeeds, and we'll keep an eye

(01:07:02):
on that case because it could set a precedent. That's
the big hope. It can set a precedent for other
cases against the conspiracy in cancer. Ally, one would hope.

Speaker 4 (01:07:11):
I just I don't know, man, I'm losing faith in
the courts. These stays.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
We're just in another you know, we took one hundred years,
went back to the twenties. As we talked about couple
other shows, we do this in cycles. My partner's reading
a whole bunch of books about these cycles that the
US does, where we at some point after their actual workers'
rights and labor movements that come through and are successful

(01:07:35):
to some extent, then we get into a little bit
of trouble financially and there's this decision that gets made. Hey,
the corporations, they know what to do. Let's let them
just go buckwhile out there, do whatever they want, deregulate
them sons of bitches, and just let them run. And
that's where we are and that's what we're doing. And

(01:07:57):
this is what you get. This is the stuff you
get things we've been talking about for the past month
or so. This just this world wherein nothing matters but profit.

Speaker 4 (01:08:07):
And I think there are folks who would gladly justify
it as as as worth it, as.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
We don't actually get affected benefit from our stocks and
their interest.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
Every answer is a penny in your pocket.

Speaker 4 (01:08:21):
But it's the same way as a general might be
able to justify the death of a handful of soldiers
in the interest of the greater good of protecting you know,
America and freedom, et cetera. I mean, I think there
are folks that would make that same argument about these situations.
They wouldn't do it openly, but they certainly would in
their boardrooms.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Well, let me positive perspective here, because corporate freedom may
indeed equate to personal slavery right or the removal of
personal rights. And that's what we're looking at. Because the
United States is far and away one of the best
welfare nations in the country. I said this earlier. As

(01:09:02):
long as you are a corporation, if you were a person,
there are a lot of caveats, a lot of asterisks.
For now, this is the story of cancer Ally, and guys,
we owe a great debt to so many journalists, activists, researchers,
non corrupt officials, and there are a lot and locals
who are fighting for environmental justice even today. We want

(01:09:25):
to hear your thoughts. What is next for cancer Ally?
Have you spent time in the area, what do you
think should be done, and what do you think will
happen next. We can't wait to hear your thoughts. You
can find us online. You can call us on the phone.
You can always send us an email.

Speaker 4 (01:09:41):
You can find us online at the handle those conspiracy
stuff or conspiracy stuff show, depending on your favorite social
media platform.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
You can give us a call. Our number is one
eight three three STDWYTK. When you call in, give yourself
a cool nickname. Let us know if we can use
your name and message on the air on one of
our listener mail episodes that show up in the audio feed.
You want to send us an email, you can do
that too.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Yes, this is one of the best ways to contact
us twenty four hours in evening, seven nights a week.
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive, being well aware yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
rights back. We'll see you out here in the dark.
Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:10:39):
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