Women Who Risk Everything to Defend the Environment

#TIA – This is eye-opening for any not aware that its become a dangerous world out there for those trying to save the environment, with emphasis on the women who’ve become most vulnerable.

LeeAnne Walters has had her house broken into, her tires slashed, and the lug nuts loosened on her vehicle. “I had a stalker at one point,” reveals the award-winning activist, who in 2015 helped expose the Flint, Michigan water crisis. “My husband had his livelihood threatened to the point where I had to pause everything to ensure the safety of my family.”

Walters is one of hundreds of women around the globe currently facing oppression, persecution, violence—even murder and assassination—for defending the environment. Cherri Foytlin, an advocate for climate justice who is fighting the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Louisiana, recently had her cat poisoned to death. She has also had a brick thrown through the window of her car and endured numerous death threats made against her and her husband. Meanwhile Tara Houska, who was charged with criminal trespassing after protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016, remembers being zip-tied and locked in a dog kennel when she was arrested, and strip-searched.

Read more at Harpers