Show 3: Bhopal, India 21 Years Later

Corporate Watchdog Radio commemorates the worst industrial disaster in history: a preventable catastrophe whose human and environmental costs are still rising 21 years later…a monumental failure of corporate responsibility for which the company has still not appeared for its criminal trial….and a tragedy whose lessons have still not been learned by the chemical industry—leaving the US and the rest of the world every bit as vulnerable as Bhopal, India was on December 2nd, 1984. The Bhopal Chemical Disaster: its victims, its heroes, and its warning, this week on Corporate Watchdog Radio.

Host Sanford Lewis interviews some of the crucial voices in the fight for justice in Bhopal against Dow Chemical (the owner of the former Union Carbide plant)Sathyu Sarangi, director of the Sambvhvana Clinic in Bhopal, who describes the health crises of Bhopal survivors and their children, and the remarkable international struggle of Bhopali women to call Dow Chemical to account; Jayanthi Reddy, a University of Michigan student leader who wants Dow Chemical—headquartered in Michigan—to clean up its act;Rick Hind, director of Toxics Programs for Greenpeace, and a world authority on how easy it would be for a Bhopal-scale disaster—or worse!—to occur in the US, either by accident, negligence, or terrorist intent; Lois Gibbs, the former Buffalo housewife who brought the toxic outrage of Love Canal to national attention, and who now the runs the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice to help other communities protect themselves from industrial contamination;and Diane Wilson, author of the celebrated new book An Unreasonable Woman. A poor Texas fisherwoman who became a crusader against the chemical companies polluting the Gulf Coast waters where she made her livelihood, Diane is at this moment hot on the trail of Warren Anderson, the man at the helm of Union Carbide when their Bhopal plant exploded. Diane has a few questions she’d like to ask him about justice for Bhopal and why he refuses to return to India to face trial as he had promised.


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