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Derwin Areno
The directors of Pittsburgh Plate Glass, which runs a petrochemical plant in DeRidder, have close ties to the local and state governments. At a community meeting in 1987 they pretended not to know how the bayou became polluted, until Lee Sherman—who they ordered to illegally dump the toxic materials and fired when he got sick from them—got on stage and told the crowd the truth.
PPG Management Quotes in Strangers in Their Own Land
The Strangers in Their Own Land quotes below are all either spoken by PPG Management or refer to PPG Management. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2 Quotes
In the life of one man, Lee Sherman, I saw reflected both sides of the paradox—the need for help and a principled refusal of it.
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In this passage, Hochschild talks with Lee Sherman, an ex-employee of PPG. He suffers the consequences of unregulated industrial pollution—he got sick when PPG asked him to dump toxic waste in the bayou, and then the company fired him because it did not want to pay his disability benefits—yet he votes for candidates who want to further deregulate polluters. In this way, Lee is an environmentalist who opposes environmental protection policies. This embodies the Great Paradox as viewed through Hochschild’s “keyhole issue” of industrial pollution: people who could benefit the most from government intervention—and whose problems arise precisely because the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint
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PPG Management Character Timeline in Strangers in Their Own Land
The timeline below shows where the character PPG Management appears in Strangers in Their Own Land. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2 – “One Thing Good”
...and NASCAR driver, but now “he is happy to be alive” after working at the Pittsburgh Plate Glass factory for years—in fact, all of his old co-workers have died.
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Sherman became an environmentalist in the 1980s after leaving PPG, but now he is an activist for the Tea Party. Hochschild wonders how Sherman squares...
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...was the perfect match for a job “fitting and repairing pipes carrying lethal chemicals” at PPG.
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...safety equipment; a half hour later, “the plant blew up” and five people died. At PPG, this lack of safety equipment was standard—for years, Sherman repaired pipes with his bare hands...
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The day after that spill, PPG management ordered Sherman to “take on another ominous job.” He would sneak out with a...
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Seven years after PPG fired Lee, fish started dying en masse in the Bayou d’Inde. A government task force...
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Lee Sherman tells Hochschild about a public meeting organized to address the contamination. PPG and state officials sat together on stage, telling “about a thousand angry fishermen” that their...
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Lee feels that PPG made him do their “moral dirty work” and then “discarded” him like “a form of...
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...man” and claims to be seeking vindication against the government, just like he did against PPG. Both wronged him, Hochschild suggests, but at least PPG gave him a good paycheck and...
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Chapter 3 – The Rememberers
...are dead. Harold and Annette live just downstream from the spot where Lee Sherman dumped PPG’s toxic waste and just across the Bayou d’Inde from the place where three generations of...
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Chapter 4 – The Candidates
...to alarm us,” and Hochschild gives the example of a 2013 explosion at the old PPG plant, after which regulators claimed to detect nothing out of the ordinary.
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Chapter 5 – The “Least Resistant Personality”
Hochschild wonders why companies like PPG would specifically choose to build plants in Louisiana. She discovers the answer in a consultant’s...
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Chapter 8 – The Pulpit and the Press: “The Topic Doesn’t Come Up”
After Lee Sherman exposed PPG’s illegal dumping, he joined the environmental activist organization RESTORE. In 1997, he helped sick Condea...
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Chapter 9 – The Deep Story
...they are siding with big businesses against the government—even Lee Sherman still holds stock in PPG. Finally, Hochschild wonders what kind of “deep story self” sustains the Tea Party’s “extraordinary determination”...
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Chapter 16 – “They Say There Are Beautiful Trees”
...they did not completely seal the waste they left behind. Plus, Axiall—the newest iteration of PPG—is building a new factory on the other side of the Arenos’ house. The noise has...
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