Let No One Lose Heart
74-year-old, retired grandmother of 12, Sharon Lavigne, thrusts herself into environmental activism and sets out to take down the poisonous fossil fuel industry in the Gulf South. Her quest is long and difficult, but she battles on because the stakes – her health and home – are too high to lose heart.
74-year-old Sharon Lavigne is on a mission to protect her health and her home from the threat of industrial pollution. This once quiet but ever-faithful grandmother of 12 is from a small rural farm-town along an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River where toxic emissions have caused so much sickness, it’s earned the nickname “Cancer Alley.” Across decades, Sharon has buried friends, watched helplessly as her children and siblings fell sick and battled illnesses of her own.
When she learns that a foreign petrochemical corporation plans to build the largest plastics plant in North America just two miles from her front door, she thrusts herself into activism and begins to organize, demanding accountability from industry and elected officials at every level of government. For Sharon, the harm that industrial polluters and their enablers have caused to everything and everyone she can see and touch is a moral outrage against justice – an evil that she’s determined to dismantle.
Her quest is long and difficult. And despite Sharon’s many significant wins against the fossil fuel industry, the impact of decades of environmental injustice and industry interference in her community are impossible to escape. The irreparable damage that’s already been done to her lived environment is apparent and palpable. Yet Sharon remains certain that saving her community from industry is God’s calling on her life, and despite losing friends, love, and many battles in the righteous war she’s waging for justice, she fights on because the stakes are too high to lose heart.
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