May, 23 2011, 02:25pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Nell Greenberg, Rainforest Action Network, 510.847.9777
Ginger Cassady, Rainforest Action Network, 415.640.7155
Advocates Unfurl 50-foot Banner Message to Chevron on Richmond Bridge
Rainforest Action Network Sends Message: “Chevron Guilty, Clean up Amazon”
RICHMOND, Calif.
At 9:00 am this morning, five environmental advocates with the Rainforest Action Network descended over the edge of the bottom level of the Richmond Bridge and unfurled a 30'x50' foot banner message directed at Chevron: "Chevron Guilty: Clean up Amazon." Today's protest comes two days before Chevron's Annual Shareholder meeting at its San Ramon headquarters. It will be the first shareholder meeting since the company was found guilty of massive oil contamination in the Ecuador Amazon and ordered to pay $18 billion dollars.
Sandwiched between several Chevron oil tankers and the Richmond refinery, the climbers are hanging 100-feet above the Bay and have gone to great heights to send a strong message to Chevron's CEO, board, and shareholders. This is the first time an event like this has happened on the Richmond Bridge.
"Chevron has been found guilty in a court of law of massive oil contamination of the Amazon. I am here to demand that the oil giant finally clean up its toxic legacy once and for all," said Matt Leonard, one of the climbers who is a volunteer with Rainforest Action Network. "Chevron is the largest company in California, and as a California resident I see it as my responsibility to ensure that it no longer gets away with its 'pollute and run' tactics. If it was my family, my community that was being made sick by toxic oil waste, I would hope others would stand up for me too."
In February, Chevron was found guilty of widespread environmental contamination by an Ecuadorian court and ordered to pay $18 billion in compensatory and punitive damages. This is a historic judgment that is comparable in size only to BP's promised $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The judgment found Chevron accountable for the deliberate dumping of 18.5 billion gallons of highly toxic waste into Amazonian ecosystems, contaminating the soil, rivers, and groundwater. Chevron has appealed the judgment.
"Chevron was found guilty because it is guilty. Instead of using its massive profits to employ lawyers, lobbyists and PR flacks to deflect its responsibility, Chevron can and should clean up this horrific environmental disaster," said Ginger Cassady, Campaign Director for the Rainforest Action Network. "It is in the hands of Chevron's board and shareholders to put a stop to this ongoing disaster, which has made children, families, whole communities sick for the last forty years. This has gone on for far too long."
Today's event comes on the heels of a report commissioned by RAN and Amazon Watch, An Analysis of the Financial and Operational Risks to Chevron Corporation from Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco, which found that Chevron's multi-billion liability in Ecuador poses serious financial and operational risk to the company and its shareholders.
Chevron inherited the litigation in 2001 when it absorbed Texaco, which operated in Ecuador between 1964 and 1992 in a concession spanning more than one million acres of rainforest near the Colombian border. Texaco designed, built, and maintained an oil production system of 327 wells. Using antiquated technology and in violation of standard industry practice, the company dumped 18.5 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into streams and rivers, spilled some 17 million gallons of crude oil, and left behind more than 1000 waste pits that continue to leech toxins into surrounding soil and water.
In an open letter released last week that appealed to U.S. citizens, Humberto Piaguaje, Tribal Leader of the Secoya of the Ecuadorian Amazon, along with other indigenous leaders, wrote: "For forty years we have witnessed illnesses, deformities, cancers in our children and our loved ones. Last February, Chevron was found guilty by an Ecuadorean court for the harm it has caused to our people, and to our land. But the company has said that it will never take responsibility for the damages it has caused us. We turn to the people of the U.S. and ask that you demand that Chevron clean up the poison it left in our Amazon home."
Piaguaje and two other Ecuadorian representatives are currently in the Bay Area and will be attending the Chevron shareholder meeting to speak directly to the company's board and shareholders.
The pollution in the Amazon has caused a spike in cancer rates, including mouth, stomach, and uterine cancer and childhood leukemia, as well as an abnormal number of miscarriages. In addition, children whose mothers were exposed to contaminated water have been born with birth defects.
The Amazon rainforest is the world's largest and most biodiverse tropical rainforest, covering an area larger than the continental United States. It houses one-third of the Earth's plant and animal species and produces one-fifth of all its fresh water. Nearly 400 distinct indigenous peoples depend on the Amazon rainforest for their physical and cultural survival.
For more information on Rainforest Action Network's Chevron campaign, visit www.changechevron.org.
To view the open letter to the U.S. from the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, visit www.ran.org/standup
To view the Analysts Report mentioned in the release, visit https://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/chevron-ecuador-risk-analysis-report.html
Live interviews with climbers available
Hi-res photos will be at www.ran.org/chevronguilty
B-roll will be at www.ran.org/chevronguiltybroll
Follow live at @ranactions
Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is headquartered in San Francisco, California with offices staff in Tokyo, Japan, and Edmonton, Canada, plus thousands of volunteer scientists, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens around the world. We believe that a sustainable world can be created in our lifetime and that aggressive action must be taken immediately to leave a safe and secure world for our children.
LATEST NEWS
Amid Spying Fight, House Passes Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act
"As FANFSA and the 702 reauthorization move to the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber need to take a stand for the rights of people in the United States," said one advocate.
Apr 17, 2024
While applauding the U.S. House of Representatives' bipartisan passage of a bill to ensure that "law enforcement and intelligence agencies can't do an end-run around the Constitution by buying information from data brokers" on Wednesday, privacy advocates highlighted that Congress is trying to extend and expand a long-abused government spying program.
The House voted 219-199 for Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (FANFSA), which won support from 96 Democrats and 123 Republicans, including the lead sponsor, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Named for the constitutional amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, H.R. 4639 would close what campaigners call the data broker loophole.
"The privacy violations that flow from law enforcement entities circumventing the Fourth Amendment undermine civil liberties, free expression, and our ability to control what happens to our data," said Free Press Action policy counsel Jenna Ruddock. "These impacts affect everyone who uses digital platforms that extract our personal information any time we open a browser or visit social media and other websites—even when we go to events like demonstrations and other places with our phones revealing our locations."
"We're grateful that the House passed these vital and popular protections," she added. "The bill would prevent flagrant abuses of our privacy by government authorities in league with unscrupulous third-party data brokers. Making this legislation into law with Senate passage too would be a decisive and long-overdue action against government misuse of this clandestine business sector that traffics in our personal data for profit."
Wednesday's vote followed the House sending the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act to the Senate. H.R. 7888 would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens abroad but also sweeps up Americans' data.
The House notably included an amendment forcing a wide range of individuals and businesses to cooperate with government spying operations but rejected an amendment that would have added a warrant requirement to the bill, which the Senate could vote on as soon as Thursday.
Noting those decisions on the FISA reauthorization legislation, Ruddock stressed that "today's vote is a victory but follows a recent loss and ongoing threat as that Section 702 bill moves to the Senate this week too."
"As FANFSA and the 702 reauthorization move to the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber need to take a stand for the rights of people in the United States," she argued. "That means passing FANFSA and reforming Section 702 authority—and prioritizing everyone's First and Fourth Amendment rights."
Jeramie Scott, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Project on Surveillance Oversight, also praised the House's FANFSA passage on Wednesday.
"The passage of the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale underscores the extent to which reining in abusive warrantless surveillance is a bipartisan issue," Scott said. "We urge the Senate to take up this measure and close the data broker loophole."
Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU, similarly said Wednesday that "the bipartisan passage of this bill is a flashing warning sign to the government that if it wants our data, it must get a warrant."
Hamadanchy added that "we hope this vote puts a fire under the Senate to protect their constituents and rein in the government's warrantless surveillance of Americans, once and for all."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a critic of the pending 702 bill and FANFSA's lead sponsor in the upper chamber, called the the House's Wednesday vote "a huge win for privacy" and said that "now it's time for the Senate to follow suit."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Leaked Cables Show Biden Pressuring Nations to Oppose Palestine's UN Membership
"This is the evidence that President Biden's talk about a two-state solution is nothing but idle talk," said one former Lebanese diplomat.
Apr 17, 2024
As the United Nations Security Council prepares to vote Thursday on Palestine's bid to become a full U.N. member, the Biden administration—which claims to support Palestinian statehood—is lobbying UNSC nations in an effort to wrangle enough "no" votes so that the United States can avoid resorting to a veto.
Leaked cables obtained by The Intercept show U.S. pressure on Security Council members including Malta—which currently presides over the body—and Ecuador.
While claiming that President Joe Biden backs "Palestinian aspirations for statehood," one of the cables asserts that "it remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors."
"We therefore urge you not to support any potential Security Council resolution recommending the admission of 'Palestine' as a U.N. member state, should such a resolution be presented to the Security Council for a decision in the coming days and weeks," the document advises.
The U.S. argument essentially is that the U.N. should not create an independent Palestinian state by fiat—even though that's precisely how the world body voted in 1947 to establish the modern state of Israel.
The renewed push for Palestine's U.N. membership comes as Israel wages a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, which hasn't controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, rejected the Biden administration's requests to hold off on seeking full membership.
"We wanted the U.S. to provide a substantive alternative to U.N. recognition. They didn't," one unnamed Palestinian official toldAxios on Wednesday. "We believe full membership in the U.N. for Palestine is way overdue. We have waited more than 12 years since our initial request."
As The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw noted:
Since 2011, the U.N. Security Council has rejected the Palestinian Authority's request for full member status. On April 2, the Palestinian Observer Mission to the U.N. requested that the council once again take up consideration of its membership application. According to the first State Department cable, U.N. meetings since the beginning of April suggest that Algeria, China, Guyana, Mozambique, Russia, Slovenia, Sierra Leone, and Malta support granting Palestine full membership to the U.N. It also says that France, Japan, and Korea are undecided, while the United Kingdom will likely abstain from a vote.
Along with the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom are permanent members of the UNSC, so they also have veto power.
Ahead of Thursday's planned vote, Spain has been doing its own lobbying in Europe to build greater support for Palestinian statehood. At a joint Tuesday press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said the question is "when, not if, but when is the best moment to recognize Palestine."
Belgium—which is seeking economic sanctions against Israel in response to its genocidal war on Gaza—is expected to join Spain's push for Palestinian statehood after the country's European Union presidency expires in June.
Currently, 139 of the U.N.'s 193 member states recognize Palestine as an independent state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has also claimed to support a so-called "two-state solution"—has alternately boasted about thwarting Palestinian statehood.
Critics pointed to the leaked cables as more proof of U.S. duplicity and double standards on the Israel-Palestine issue.
"This is the evidence that President Biden's talk about a two-state solution is nothing but idle talk," Massoud Maalouf, a former Lebanese ambassador to Canada, Chile, and Poland, said on social media.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Database Exposes 'Illicit Network Undermining Democracy Around the World'
Yanis Varoufakis hailed the effort as "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
Apr 17, 2024
"Coups. Assassinations. Riots. Detentions. Disinformation. We know the tactics that have been deployed to undermine our democracies. But who is behind them?"
Progressive International (PI) asks and answers this and other questions with an extensive new database published Wednesday that connects the dots in what the leftist group calls the "Reactionary International"—a loose global network of right-wing leaders and organizations working to subvert democratic institutions.
PI calls it an "illicit network undermining democracy around the world."
"Today is a mask-off moment for the Reactionary International and the parties, politicians, judges, journalists, foundations, think tanks, tech platforms, NGOs, activists, financiers, and entrepreneurs that comprise it," PI said.
"After a year of preparation, we finally open the doors to our new research consortium, exposing the global network of reactionary forces that corrode our democracies, destroy our planet, and drive us closer to world war," the group added.
"The twin insurrections at the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and Brasília's Three Powers Plaza in 2023 left no doubt about the international coordination of reactionary forces," PI argued. "Yet far too little is known about the entities of this network, their sources of financing, and their institutional allies operating inside our political systems."
Ultimately, PI aims to "support democratic systems to become more resilient to their insidious tactics."
From leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former U.S. President Donald Trump—the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee—to evangelical Christian groups influencing laws in African countries criminalizing LGBTQ+ people and tech companies empowering ubiquitous state surveillance, Reactionary International is a who's-who of the world's right-wing forces.
A cursory search of the database's contents shows users can:
- Learn about Israel's NSO, Rayzone, and Team Jorge, and how a team of Tel Aviv tech entrepreneurs fuel unrest in Latin America;
- Meet the Grey Wolves, Turkey's roving death squad with links to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ethno-nationalists in his governing coalition; and
- Explore the global network of the Falun Gong, its Trump-connected media outlet The Epoch Times, and its traveling dance troupe known as Shen Yun.
Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
PI invites the public to contribute to the database.
"Together, we will not only name, shame, and expose the forces of the far right—but also dismantle their network of complicity," the group said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular