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For Immediate Release
March, 25 2015, 08:30am EDT
Contact:
Paul Paz y Miño: +1 (510) 773 4635, paz@amazonwatch.org
Adam Zuckerman: +1 (510) 281 9020 x309, adam@amazonwatch.org
Human Rights Groups Denounce Chevron CEO John Watson Over Citizenship Honor
San Francisco, CA
More than 35 environmental and human rights groups are denouncing the San Francisco Commonwealth Club's decision to bestow Chevron CEO John Watson with a citizenship award slated to be presented April 2nd at its annual gala.
Many of the nation's leading environmental and human rights advocates are jointly asking the Board of the Commonwealth Club to rescind the citizenship award planned to be given to Chevron CEO John Watson in light of the company's egregious environmental destruction in Ecuador's Amazon and its attempts to manipulate a local election in a town where the company operates a refinery whose toxins forced thousands to seek medical care last year.
In a letter to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco - which counts many prominent citizens as members - the environmental groups said any award to Watson would be an "affront not only to the ideals of the Commonwealth Club but also to the tens of thousands of people in communities in Ecuador and around the world affected by Chevron's deliberate and reckless acts of environmental destruction."
"The award of the Commonwealth Club is intended to recognize those who have made significant contributions to the global community," said the letter, signed by Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network, Food and Water Watch, Global Exchange and almost 40 other civil society groups. "Mr. Watson does not come close to living up that ideal."
The letter demands that the Commonwealth Club rescind the award or risk imposing "dishonor on its own tradition" of community service. Watson and three others, including Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of Lt. Gov Gavin Newsom, are scheduled to be honored by the club on April 2nd at a gala fundraising dinner in San Francisco.
Environmental group Amazon Watch, which organized the letter, issued a separate statement criticizing the Commonwealth Club for bestowing the award despite widespread reports that Chevron has failed to deal with its decades-long legacy of environmental problems.
"John Watson has consistently violated the ideals of good citizenship given that Chevron, under his leadership, has engaged in rapacious behavior in vulnerable communities in Ecuador and around the world," said Paul Paz y Mino, a spokesperson for the organization. "This appears to be a pay to play situation where the Commonwealth Club sacrifices its ideals thinking the many fat cats from Chevron will buy tickets to the dinner."
The letter cited Chevron's growing legal problems related to its environmental liabilities.
In 2013, after 11 years of proceedings in Chevron's chosen forum, the Supreme Court of Ecuador unanimously affirmed the company's $9.5 billion liability for systematically dumping billions of gallons of oil waste into rainforest waterways relied on by local indigenous and farmer communities for their drinking water, bathing, and fishing. During the eight-year trial, a Chevron executive admitted the company discharged the toxic waste to lower their production costs.
Chevron has refused to pay the award, with executives under Watson's leadership openly vowing to fight the case until "hell freezes over" if the villagers persist in pursuing their claims.
Earlier this year in Davos, Chevron received an embarrassing lifetime achievement award from the Public Eye Awards for its bad corporate behavior in Ecuador and around the world. Chevron remains the only corporation in the world to receive the award twice.
The letter also cited Chevron's awkwardly unsuccessful attempt last year to contribute millions of dollars to elect a slate of pro-Chevron candidates in the Bay Area town of Richmond, where the company operates a refinery that has caused extensive pollution. An explosion there in 2012 led to criminal charges and prompted 15,000 people to seek medical attention, said the letter.The plan backfired and none of the Chevron candidates in Richmond won office.
The letter also pointed out that in 2014, more than 40 civil society groups wrote a different open letter to Watson criticizing his company's attempts to use retaliatory lawsuits to harass and silence critics of the company's misconduct in Ecuador. Chevron confessed to using 60 law firms and 2,000 legal personnel to attack more than 100 lawyers and community activists who helped to hold the company accountable in the South American nation, where Chevron had accepted jurisdiction after the original claims were filed in the United States.
"It is shocking that the Commonwealth Club would even consider honoring an oil company executive who has "distinguished" himself by his near total lack of moral compass across so many issues of public importance," said the letter.
Amazon Watch said they were in the process of reaching out to the other honorees to urge them to not accept an award alongside Watson. All were copied on the letter, which was sent to each Board Member of the Commonwealth Club.
Amazon Watch is a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with indigenous and environmental organizations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability and the preservation of the Amazon's ecological systems.
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Michigan Organizer Speaks After Being Arrested Live on Camera for Protesting Trump Venezuela Attack
Jessica Plichta told a reporter that it is "the duty of us the people to stand against the Trump regime" just before she was arrested.
Jan 06, 2026
A 22-year-old woman who was detained for several hours by police in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday after speaking out against President Donald Trump's invasion of Venezuela had allegedly "obstructed a roadway" and failed to obey officers—but she described an arrest in which the authorities appeared to be suspicious of her for protesting at all.
Jessica Plichta, a preschool teacher and organizer, told Zeteo on Monday that police officers repeatedly asked her why she was at a protest in Grand Rapids' Rosa Parks Circle, where hundreds of demonstrators spoke out against the US military's abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—a violation of international law that has garnered worldwide condemnation.
Plichta had just finished speaking to a reporter with local ABC News affiliate WZZM about her opposition to the US invasion of Venezuela when two city police officers came up behind her and placed her under arrest.
It is "the duty of us the people to stand against the Trump regime, the Trump administration, that are committing crimes both here in the US and against people in Venezuela," said Plichta just before the officers appeared on camera behind her.
Grand Rapids police arrest an antiwar activist live on air while taking an interview denouncing US military aggression in Venezuela pic.twitter.com/Zm16aFRDxq
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) January 5, 2026
Plichta told Zeteo, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as soon as I finished an interview speaking on Venezuela, I was arrested—the only person arrested out of 200 people."
She told the officers she was "not resisting arrest" as they led her toward a police car. A bystander approached and asked the police what Plichta was being detained for.
The officers replied that she had been "obstructing a roadway" and was accused of "failure to obey a lawful command from a police officer."
BREAKING: IN GRAND RAPIDS MICHIGAN, at approximately 5:30pm today, GRPD arrested local organizer Jessica Plichta on camera during a post-march press interview.
Plichta was sought out and targeted specifically by
GRPD for helping lead a U.S. Out Of Venezuela rally at Rosa Parks… pic.twitter.com/Uj6fLVba80
— Private IcedC81 Politics (@PvtIcedC81Pol) January 3, 2026
Plichta told Zeteo that the police drove her away from WZZM's cameras and then took her out of the car, patted her down, and confiscated her belongings. The officers told her she had been "making a scene" and asked her about her involvement in the protest: whether she was Venezuelan, "what she had to do with Venezuela," and what she was doing at the protest.
She also told Zeteo that the police asked her for the names of other demonstrators.
She was asked again what her connection to Venezuela was after she was taken to Kent County Correctional Facility, where she was held for about three hours and released after outcry from her fellow organizers.
"We are so accustomed to, and used to, repression when we speak out on anti-war topics,” Plichta told the outlet. “When we speak out for Venezuela, when we speak out for Palestine, we expect the police to want to shut that down.”
A spokesperson for the Grand Rapids Police Department told Zeteo that protesters had "refused lawful orders to move this free speech event to the sidewalk and instead began blocking intersections until the march ended," and said Plichta "was positively identified by officers," allowing for her arrest.
Though Plichta remained calm when she was arrested and suggested that she had taken her detention relatively in stride, supporters expressed shock that she had been targeted for speaking out against Trump's attack on Venezuela—which is broadly unpopular across the United States.
"What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids?" asked Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official.
Friedman pointed out that among elected Democrats, there appeared to be little if any outcry over Plichta's arrest for participating in a peaceful protest.
If this happened to a conservative organizer, Republicans would make her a hero, a household name and a congressional candidate.Elected Democrats just pretend it isn't happening.
— Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 11:29 AM
“Protesting in this country is sacred," Plichta told Zeteo, "and so it is important that our rights are protected and that we are not criminalized for peacefully protesting in a world full of escalating violence."
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After Claiming Maduro Was Its Kingpin, DOJ Now Admits in Court That 'Cartel De Los Soles' Isn't a Real Group
"They've been pretending that this made-up thing was real for a year. But now that they'd have actually to demonstrate its existence in court, they're going to cram it down the memory hole."
Jan 06, 2026
One of the central claims the Trump administration has used to justify the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and describe his government as “illegitimate” is the allegation that he is the leader of a multinational narco-terrorist organization known as “Cartel de los Soles.”
But now that the Department of Justice (DOJ) must prove the allegation in court following the US military's kidnapping of Maduro last week, prosecutors are backing off the claim and, in effect, admitting what critics had long protested: that Cartel de los Soles is not, in fact, an organization at all.
In the months leading up to the illegal US invasion that plucked Maduro from power, the Treasury Department and State Department both designated Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization.
That allegation originated from a 2020 grand jury indictment of Maduro, drafted by the DOJ during Trump’s first term. The document described the Cartel de los Soles as a “Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials.”
As the New York Times explained back in November:
There’s a big catch with the impression created by the Trump administration’s narrative: Cartel de los Soles is not a literal organization, according to a range of specialists in Latin American criminal and narcotics issues, from think-tank analysts to former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials.
It is instead a figure of speech in Venezuela, dating back to the 1990s, for Venezuelan military officials corrupted by drug money, they say. The term, which means “Cartel of the Suns,” is a mocking invocation of the suns Venezuelan generals wear to denote their rank, like American ones wear stars.
It is for that reason that the DEA's annual National Drug Threat Assessment, which describes major trafficking organizations in detail, has never mentioned Cartel de los Soles. Nor has the annual “World Drug Report” by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Nevertheless, the claim that Maduro was at the helm of an international terrorist cartel was a core justification the Trump administration has used over the past year to legitimize pushing him out of power.
"Maduro is NOT the President of Venezuela and his regime is NOT the legitimate government," said Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a post on social media in July. "Maduro is the head of the Cartel de Los Soles, a narco-terror organization that has taken possession of a country. And he is under indictment for pushing drugs into the United States."
Such a portrayal was useful when attempting to drum up support for US aggression against Venezuela. But now, Maduro stands on trial in the Southern District of New York, where a jury will decide his guilt or innocence based on the evidence presented after he pleaded not guilty on Monday.
Elizabeth Dickinson, the deputy director for Latin America at the International Crisis Group, told the New York Times that the designation of Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terror organization was “far from reality,” but that “designations don’t have to be proved in court, and that’s the difference. Clearly, they knew they could not prove it in court.”
Following Maduro's abduction by US forces on Saturday, the DOJ released a new indictment. While it still accused Maduro of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy, it totally abandoned the claim that any organization called "Cartel de los Soles" actually existed.
To the extent that any such group does exist, the indictment says it's not as a criminal organization, but as "a culture of corruption in which powerful Venezuelan elites enrich themselves through drug trafficking," and a "patronage system run by those at the top."
But even a day after the new indictment fatally undercut his claims, Rubio continued to insist on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Cartel de los Soles was a “transnational criminal organization” and that “the leader of that cartel,” Maduro, “is now in US custody and facing US justice in the Southern District of New York.”
"They've been pretending that this made-up thing was real for a year. But now that they'd have to actually demonstrate its existence in court, they're going to cram it down the memory hole," marvelled Derek Davison, a Washington-based researcher and writer on international affairs and American politics.
Ben Norton, editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report, wrote on social media that the administration's abrupt abandonment of one of its central justifications for war demonstrates that "the entire US war is based on lies."
While the initial phase of Trump’s ramp-up of military aggression against Venezuela was premised, with scant evidence, on the need to prevent alleged drug boats from reaching the US, President Donald Trump has now said explicitly that the administration’s goal is to take control of Venezuela’s massive oil reserves and hand them to US-based companies.
"It never had anything to do with drugs. Venezuela's role in the global cocaine trade is small and insignificant, and it has absolutely nothing to do with fentanyl (which is actually responsible for many drug-related deaths in the US, unlike cocaine)," Norton said. "The Trump administration's repeated invocation of the fake 'Cartel de los Soles' was its version of the weapons of mass destruction lie used by George W. Bush to try to justify his illegal invasion of Iraq."
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A mysterious gambler raked in over $400,000 in profit from a series of bets placed shortly before the Trump administration bombed Venezuela and abducted its president.
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A suspiciously timed and lucrative bet on the US abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro over the weekend has prompted speculation that the wager was placed with inside knowledge, possibly by someone within the Trump administration or its orbit.
The yet-unknown gambler placed a series of bets totaling nearly $34,000 between late December and January 3—the day of the US assault on Venezuela. All of the bets, placed on the cryptocurrency-based prediction platform Polymarket, were related to the probability of Maduro being removed from power and the US attacking Venezuela before the end of January.
The bettor, who went by username Burdensome-Mix on Polymarket, reportedly netted over $400,000 from the wagers in just 24 hours.
"Seems pretty suspicious!" wrote researcher Tyson Brody. "[US Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth making some beer money on the side?"
NBC News reported Tuesday that the bettor "has already cashed out their Polymarket winnings in Solana, a type of cryptocurrency, through a major American exchange, with no indication they have tried to hide or launder the funds." The outlet added that "if any regulators or law enforcement went looking for the bettor, they’d likely have little difficulty locating them."
It was public knowledge that US President Donald Trump—who had said Maduro's days as the leader of Venezuela's government were "numbered"—was considering a direct attack on the South American country, and his administration had amassed a large military force in the region in recent months in preparation for such an assault.
But there was no publicly available information on the timing of any possible attack. The New York Times, which reportedly learned of the US assault and abduction operation shortly before it began, later revealed that Trump "had authorized the US military to go ahead as early as December 25, but left the precise timing to Pentagon officials and Special Operations planners to ensure that the attacking force was ready, and that conditions on the ground were optimal."
Trump gave the final go-ahead order late Friday night, according to the Times, and the attack began in the early hours of Saturday morning, Venezuela time.
Analysts have warned that the spread of prediction platforms like Polymarket—where gamblers can bet on a dizzying range of scenarios, including the timing of the second coming of Jesus Christ—could raise the likelihood of insiders trying to profit from confidential information.
It also increases the risk that people in positions of power and influence will try to push policy in a certain direction in order to cash in on their bets, said Demand Progress executive director Sean Vitka.
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