Nestled between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is a stretch of land dubbed “Cancer Alley,” where activists blame high cancer rates on nearby petrochemical plants.
Several local groups have sprung up to fight these plants, garnering national attention and funding as they rail against the dangers of fossil fuels, not just in Louisiana, but across the country.
Some of these groups seem powered by the very fossil fuels they oppose.
A Daily Wire review found that the leaders of three Louisiana-based environmental activist groups — Rise St. James, the Vessel Project, and the Descendents Project — take frequent domestic and international trips, jetting around the globe from Europe to the Middle East to Asia.
Collectively, top leaders of the groups have taken dozens of international and domestic trips between 2019 and 2025 while hobnobbing with prominent Democrats and global elites, according to a review of social media posts. Several of the groups are also linked to the group Beyond Petrochemicals, an organization founded by climate alarmist and billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
Activism has opened the door to traveling the wider world for these leaders. One was showered in gifts and treated “like royalty” during a trip to Canada, while another took an excursion to the pyramids during a trip to Egypt for a United Nations Climate conference. Another influencer posted influencer-style videos of the “really nice” private suite she booked for a similar summit.
These globetrotting ways show how “grassroots” activist organizations with ties to powerful leftist donor networks can achieve international reach. Bloomberg or one of his nonprofits has promoted or funded each of the three organizations to varying degrees, illustrating his massive influence as a climate donor.
While they crusade against the petrochemical industry, the leaders of the groups have taken a host of international and domestic trips that suggest they may also be addicted to the benefits of fossil fuels.
Illustration by Daily Wire staff.
Rise St. James
Rise St. James is an organization based in Vacherie, Louisiana, that describes itself as “a faith-based grassroots organization that is fighting for environmental justice as it works to defeat the proliferation of petrochemical industries in St. James Parish, Louisiana.”
The organization was started in 2018 and is a fiscally sponsored project of the Earth Island Institute, a $30 million per year nonprofit based in California. It is reportedly planned to become a 501(c)(3) organization in 2023 and received a determination letter from the IRS during the summer of 2025.
In 2018, Rise St. James successfully mobilized against a $1.25 billion Chinese-owned plastics manufacturing plant that was set to come to the area. That fight was in part funded by Bloomberg. The organization also fought against a $9.4 billion plant from Formosa Plastics with help from Bloomberg.
“It’s a very expensive fight,” Rise St. James President Sharon Lavigne told The New York Times. “So that Bloomberg money has helped.”
Rise St. James is listed as a partner of Bloomberg’s Beyond Petrochemicals, an organization that fights the expansion of the petrochemical industry. Petrochemicals are products made from chemicals from petroleum, natural gas, and coal. They can include things like water bottles, packaging, toys, phone cases, car parts, synthetic rubber (tires), paint, shampoo, medical tubing, disposable gloves, fertilizer, and pesticides.
While previously acknowledging support from the billionaire Bloomberg, Rise St. James says its struggle is against a billion-dollar industry.
“History has shown that advocating for communities with fewer resources against multi-billion-dollar industries often invites criticism and scrutiny,” Rise St. James told The Daily Wire. “Unfortunately, environmental justice movements frequently face efforts to shift attention away from the issues and toward personal attacks or mischaracterizations.”
Lavigne has taken trips to Italy, Egypt, and Abu Dhabi since 2019, at the same time as she said she would like to see “the end of fossil fuels.” These trips have been documented on social media posts from Lavigne and her organization. Rise St. James said that “most” of the trips taken were paid for by whichever organization invited Lavigne.
“Because of this recognition and the importance of the issues facing St. James Parish, Ms. Lavigne is regularly invited by organizations and institutions to share the experiences of residents living in communities impacted by heavy industrial development,” Rise St. James said. “In most cases, travel associated with these speaking engagements is arranged and paid for by the host institutions or organizations extending the invitation, which is standard practice for invited speakers.”
Lavigne at 2024 Time 100 Gala: Photo by Taylor Hill/FilmMagic.
In March 2022, Lavigne traveled to Abu Dhabi for a Forbes summit dedicated to female leaders, according to her Facebook page. She posted multiple photos wearing Rise St. James shirts from various sights in the Middle Eastern nation. The event featured talks from female celebrities and failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Later in 2022, Lavigne traveled to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, for the 2022 United Nations climate conference known as COP27, an event where the government and business elites fly in to lecture the public about greenhouse gas emissions.
At the conference, Lavigne and her team hosted a space that provided “a platform for the global climate justice movement and amplifying the voices of those most impacted by the climate crisis, including representatives from the Global South, the U.S. environmental justice movement, and Indigenous peoples.”
Her team reportedly hosted a panel with then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan. Rise St. James boasted that the event drew “large crowds.”
While in Egypt, Lavigne rode a camel and visited the Great Pyramids of Giza, according to an Instagram post. The distance from Giza to Sharm El-Sheikh is about 322 miles, or about 5.5 hours of driving.
In March 2025, Lavigne and her granddaughter, Asha Lavigne, an office administrator for Rise St. James, flew to Italy to spend a week in Rome for the Taproot Earth’s Frontline Peoples’ Jubilee Convening on Global Climate Reparations. Rise St. James said the purpose of the conference was to “envision climate reparations through collective healing and repair.”
Photos posted on Facebook showed Lavigne and a board member of Rise St. James touring outside St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.
Organizers said the conference was “catalyzed by the Catholic Church” and “moved past the barriers of language, the challenges of race, the differences of religion and came to agreement around the accountability and repair needed for a just future.”
The conference was awash in leftist ideology, with a push against colonialism and calls to challenge “the political borders that limit our rights and abilities.” It called for the Catholic Church to “advance a decolonial, re-indigenized ethic of Catholic Social Teaching and practices that recognizes Black and Indigenous spirituality, cultures, and their relationships with nature and share its access to resources and research with these communities.”
Lavigne took a second trip to Italy in September 2025, where she was accompanied by another family member, Shamyra Lavigne-Davey, who was listed as the executive assistant of Lavigne at Rise St. James.
The organization said Lavigne had been “invited to serve as a visiting professor, lifting voices from Cancer Alley onto the world stage and linking grassroots struggles with global movements for climate and environmental solutions.” The organization added that she was expected to meet with Pope Leo XIV.
Apart from frequently traveling abroad, Lavigne has taken multiple trips to both New York City and Washington, D.C., for climate-related protests, according to social media posts. In February 2024, she and daughter Shamyra Lavigne Davey were in D.C. to call for an end to exports of liquid natural gas.
Other posts show protests in New York City (2019) and D.C. (April and October 2021) to highlight a few.
Credit: Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Repairers of the Breach.
Lavigne is well-connected with influential Democrats. In April 2023, she visited the White House for an event with former President Joe Biden on an executive order he signed on “environmental justice.” She was again pictured with Biden and Bloomberg in September 2024.
That same month, Lavigne “hit the red carpet” for the TIME100 Climate Leadership Forum during Climate Week in New York City. She said at the time that “environmental justice” was about ensuring that no one, “especially those of color,” suffered because of where they lived.
Lavigne and her daughter Shamyra traveled to New York City in December 2024 to present in front of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. Shamyra gave testimony on “reparations for climate and environmental harms.”
Lavigne and Shmary were back in New York City in April 2025, where they attended another TIME 100 event, which they described as “where global influence meets unstoppable purpose.”
When questioned about the frequent flights, Rise St. James said it was “misguided” and “misinformed” to suggest that Lavigne’s use of fossil fuels was hypocritical.
“Attempts to frame environmental advocates at Rise St. James as hypocrites for using fossil fuels in their daily lives are misguided, misinformed, and reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and goals of this movement,” the organization said. “The work of Rise St. James is not about eliminating everyday energy use overnight. It is about ensuring that communities are protected from harmful industrial pollution and have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect their health, environment, and future.”
The Vessel Project
Another Louisiana-based climate group is the Vessel Project, which describes itself as “a grassroots mutual aid, disaster relief, and environmental justice organization” and that it “realizes the intersectionality of the challenges that plague BIPOC communities and works holistically to achieve environmental and climate justice, voting rights, and access to housing, energy, clean water, safe fresh produce, and healthcare.”
The Vessel Project, which is also promoted by Bloomberg’s Beyond Petrochemicals, is run by Roishetta Ozane, another activist with a penchant for global and domestic travel. The organization is fiscally sponsored by the Institute for Enhanced Equity, which told The Daily Wire it does not provide any funding to the group.
Like Lavigne, Ozane also traveled to Egypt for COP 27, where she spoke and presented, according to a Facebook post. While there, she posted a video on Instagram showing her “really nice” Sharm El Sheikh hotel suite, starting with a tour of the bathroom. At the conference, the Vessel Project said that Ozane was demanding that Biden declare a climate emergency and “that our elected officials put an end to the extraction of fossil fuels.”
She flew business class on her return trip, according to a social media post.
According to social media, Ozane also planned to travel to Dubai for COP28 to “demand that the US and other governments phase out fossil fuels.”
In a Facebook post from December 2022, Ozane said that she traveled to D.C. several times, canvassed in Rehoboth, Delaware, went on a cruise, supported “BIPOC” businesses, and boasted that she could now “officially say GOOGLE ME,” an apparent reference to her burgeoning importance.
Credit: Photo by Brian Stukes/Getty Images.
Social media photos indicate that the cruise was to Mexico. She also took vacations to Universal Studios in California in 2024 and 2025, when she got the VIP tour.
In a similar post from December 2023, Ozane said she had traveled to a dozen states and four different countries — Canada, Japan, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Photos of her trips to Japan (June 2023) and Malaysia (June 2023) show pictures of the food she ate and what she saw.
Traveling to Europe in March 2024, Ozane intended to protest at the European Gas Conference in Austria. Ozane said the conference was canceled when organizers “heard we were coming due to the ‘potential of violence or harm’ from protesters. That means our voices are being heard because how ironic that the companies that are killing us are afraid of us.”
Ozane did take a selfie inside the Austrian parliament with leftist member of parliament Lukas Hammer. She captioned her Instagram post on the visit with the words that she didn’t come to Austria “just to ‘play.”
In September 2025, Ozane went to Toronto, Canada, for an anti-Israel protest where people held up signs that said “Stop Starving Gaza.” While in Canada, Ozane said that she “had the most delicious strawberry short cake from the hotel.”
On her second day in Toronto, Ozane said she “felt like royalty” as she spoke to a group of retailers of Lush Cosmetics North America, a company that makes vegetarian skincare products.
“I’ve felt like royalty the entire time I’ve been here from the amazing welcome, great food, standing ovation after my speech and the overload of gifts and products I’m bringing home with me,” she posted on Facebook.
The Descendants Project
The Descendants Project, founded by sisters Joy and Jo Banner, is an organization focused on the “intergenerational healing and flourishing of the Black descendant community in the Louisiana river parishes.”
One of the group’s goals is to “eliminate the narrative violence of plantation tourism and champion the voice of the Black descendant community while demanding action that supports the total well-being of Black descendants.”
The construction of the Descendants Project headquarters was funded in part by the Bloomberg Family Foundation.
Like their fellow Louisiana-area climate activists, the Banners have jetted around the world to protest fossil fuels from Europe and Asia to Africa and South America.
In August 2022, the Banners traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, where they discussed “Cancer Alley” and “environmental racism in Louisiana.”
Traveling with Beyond Petrochemicals executive director Heather McTeer Toney, the Banners took a trip in June 2023 to Paris, France for a United Nations event on a global plastic treaty. They posted a video with the Eiffel Tower in the background.
One month later, in July 2023, the Banners were back in Geneva for a United Nations discussion on chemicals. They said they ”we’re in the room to make sure our health, lives, and happiness are front and center!”
Joy Banner: Credit: Photo by Erika Goldring/WireImage.
A few months later, in November 2023, Jo Banner traveled to Geneva for a conference on international business and human rights.
That same month, Jo Banner went to Nairobi for anti-plastic protests. While there, she planted a few trees.
“Today I experienced African soil in my hands for the first time planting trees in the Gong forest,” she said. “Yet, the more my hands became covered in the dirt, the cleaner my hands felt. This is the power of returning to the earth, especially for me the earth of my ancestors, and forging new roots in our efforts to protect our pasts and futures.”
In May 2024, Jo Banner flew to Bogota, Colombia, for a discussion at the U.S. Embassy. While there, she said she discussed her “concern for the many environmental and racial injustices we continue to face due to the actions of our government.”
Visiting Busan, South Korea, in November 2024, Jo Banner attended a session of a United Nations gathering for a proposed global plastics treaty. Banner was part of the U.S. “Environmental Justice” delegation.
In June 2025, she traveled to Tanzania to give the keynote address at a symposium hosted by the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Health Academy. They spoke on their “mission to eradicate the historical and environmental legacies of slavery in our little corner of the world.”
“We often forget to connect the threads of slavery and the historical mass production of sugar and other foods to the environmental and nutritional harms that are negatively affecting our community,” they posted on Facebook. “The extraction of millions of people’s labor for profit led to the greed for fertilizer, pesticides, and other chemicals to replace the ‘free labor’ of slavery.”
In August 2025, Jo Banner returned to Geneva for two weeks for more negotiations on a plastic pollution treaty.
The Banners also frequently find themselves with notable leftist celebrities from Jane Fonda to former Vice President Al Gore.
According to an IRS tax filing, both Banner sisters were paid $105,416 in salary for their work with the organization in 2023, roughly $40,000 more than the median income for the area they work in.
A Family Affair
In addition to worldwide travel, leadership at all three groups appears to have family members working for their organizations.
Vessel Project Founder Roishetta Sibley Ozane lists four individuals with either her maiden name (Sibley) or last name (Ozane) as “organizing fellows” or on the outreach team.
Family members of Sharon Lavigne of Rise St. James have key roles in the organization. A now-deleted webpage from Rise St. James reviewed by The Daily Wire lists Shamyra Lavigne-Davey as Sharon’s executive assistant and Shamell M. Lavigne as the organization’s Chief Operating Officer. Both women are Sharon’s daughters. Her granddaughter, Asha, was referred to as an office administrator and went on a trip to Rome with her for the organization.
The Banner’s Descendants Project lists their brother Verdell as their industry research consultant.
While flying around the world to various climate activist events, all three have consistently criticized the oil industry.
“I would like to see the end of fossil fuels,” Sharon Lavigne said in March 2023. “If that’s going to make me live a longer life, breathe clean air, drink clean water, they should shut them down.”
Ozane has made similar calls. “When will it end? No more fossil fuels. Enough is enough. We don’t need anymore,” she wrote on Instagram in March 2023.
The Descendants Project has said that the world has an “addiction to fossil fuels” and is “enslaved” to using plastic. They called for the “total end to the production of all forms of plastics.”
.png)
.png)
