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https://www.donzigerdefense.com/
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!! Beware of Text Wall !! TLDR summary at the end.
Have you heard of Steven Donziger? Probably not.
Have you heard of the case won against Chevron, formerly Texaco, for deliberately dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste onto Indigenous ancestral lands? Many people haven't. Why? Because Chevron doesn't want you know about it.
So... Here is the story of a human rights lawyer who joined a team to successfully bring the Chevron oil company to justice for causing possibly the worst oil-related disaster ever and how Chevron is now using its vast financial and political power to retaliate and silence him. Oh and refusing the pay the $9 billion settlement to the people of Ecuador.
Steven Donziger is a human rights lawyer based out of New York. In the early 2000's, he travelled to Ecuador to join a team fighting to hold the company Texaco (now Chevron) to account for the Lago Agrio oil field crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lago_Agrio_oil_field
Basically, Texaco dumped approximately 19.3 billion gallons of produced water, with a petroleum content of 500-5,000 parts per million, into 880 unlined open pits where the it could reach streams and rivers relied on by local inhabitants for their drinking water, bathing and fishing. It has wreaked havoc on the local indigenous communities that rely on that water, causing cancers like leukemia to spread like wild fire in them. The number of people affected by this numbers over 30,000 with thousands of cases of cancer linked directly to Texaco's behavior.
It should be stressed that this was not a spill or accident. Texaco DELIBERATELY did this. So a class-action lawsuit was brought by the people of Ecuador against them.
Thinking they would win in Ecuador, Texaco demanded the trial be held there. They bet wrong. In 2011, with the aid of international environmental defense and human rights lawyers (inc. Donziger), an excellent team of Ecuadorian lawyers laid the charges against this evil and won the day. The judge demanded Texaco pay $8 billion to the people affected (that number was later increased to $9.5b) and assist in the clean-up.
To this day Texaco (by this time now Chevron) has not paid a cent. After the judgement, they immediately liquidated all assets in the country and have not done any environmental clean-up, leaving the people of Ecuador to foot the bill instead.
That's not the end of story or the moral putrescence of Chevron, and indeed corporate influence in general.
After the verdict, Chevron decided to make an example of one American lawyer who was most vocal and aggressive in pursuing the case: Steven Donziger. Chevron has brought a civil suit against him to pay for their legal fees. They hired private investigators to track Donziger, created a publication to smear him, and put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms, who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him. As a result, Donziger has been disbarred and his bank accounts have been frozen. He now has a lien on his apartment, faces exorbitant fines, and has been prohibited from earning money. As of August, a court has seized his passport and put him on house arrest. Chevron, which has a market cap of $228 billion, has the funds to continue targeting Donziger for as long as it chooses.
But it gets better. The basis for this attack on Donziger hinges on a false charge of bribary. After the Ecuadorian ruling, Chevron accused Donziger of bribing the court to rule against them. This charge was vague and had only one piece of evidence: The testimony of an Ecuadorian man who claimed he attended a meeting with Donziger and members of the court discussing the bribe. Donziger adamantly denied this claim but was brought before Federal court, and Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who has a long history of siding with corporate interests. When Donziger tried to get the case thrown out, Kaplan slapped him with a Contempt of Court charge. The Federal Prosecutor in New York refused to prosecute him. So Kaplan then hired a PRIVATE law firm to prosecute this charge against Donziger. And not just any law firm: One that ...surprise surprise... has Chevron as a client.
That testimony was later recanted by the Ecuadorian man who admitted he was paid to give that testimony.
So just to recap, a Federal lifetime-appointed Judge is using the lawfirm that defends scumbags like Chevron to silence someone who tried to hold them accountable for massive ecological destruction.
This story is about more than one man, Donziger, of course. It's about preventing private companies like Chevron from interfering with our justice system. It's about keeping corporate power OUT of our justice system. And it's also about restitution and reparation for the damage they have caused - the environmental catastrophe and the pain and suffering of human beings from their reckless behavior.
But Donziger is the focul point here. His rights have been violated. He has been under house arrest for over 500 days, can't work or earn money, and has the might of a mega-wealthy corporation trying to crush him. He needs our help. The mainstream news media has been mysteriously silent on this story. New York Times, Wall Street Journal have done next to no reporting on this. Why is that? It seems like a huge story right? Suspicious.
Do NOT let Chevron get away with this. If they do, it will be a template for other corporate interests to follow. Our rights and laws are not for mega-wealthy corporations to adjudicate. And more importantly, Chevron MUST PAY the people of Ecuador for the damage they have done.
--- TL;DR ---
Human rights lawyer Steven Donziger is being made an example of by Chevron Oil for helping win a massive pollution case against them. They are using their power to collude with a Federal judge to do this and to escape paying for what they've done.
If you want to know more about this important case or if you are interested in helping here are some links:
- https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/
- https://www.freedonziger.org/
- https://www.donzigerdefense.com/
- https://www.makechevroncleanup.com/ - PETITION TO MAKE CHEVRON CLEAN THEIR MESS UP - PLEASE SIGN!
- https://twitter.com/SDonziger - Follow Steven on Twitter for live updates of this case.
Thank you for taking the time to read this!