Stand In Solidarity With Ecuadoreans Demanding Justice From Chevron

Editor's Note: Below is a guest blog post written by Mike Gaworecki, a campaigner with Rainforest Action Network's "We Can Change Chevron" campaign and a former Change.org writer.

I’m standing up to Chevron.

Chevron was found guilty of deliberately dumping over 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste in the Ecuadorean Amazon and ordered to pay $9 billion to clean it up. But the company has vowed never to pay.

When BP, a U.K.-based company, came to the U.S. and devastated the Gulf Coast, the company was forced to pay $20 billion to clean up and compensate the victims of its pollution. I think that when Chevron or any other American company goes to a foreign country and does the same thing, it’s incumbent upon us as Americans to hold that company to the same standard.

Next week is Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting, and a delegation of Ecuadoreans will be coming up for the meeting so that they can take their calls for justice directly to Chevron’s shareholders, management, and board members. They’ve just issued a passionate appeal to Americans to stand up with them, so the Rainforest Action Network has teamed up with Amazon Watch to get 30,000 Americans to sign this petition, one for each of the Ecuadoreans affected by Chevron’s reckless business operations.

The catch is, we only have a week to do it. Chevron’s shareholder meeting is May 25th. That’s why we need 5,000 Change.org members to sign the petition right now.

Check out the “Open letter to America” video below, and sign the petition. The Ecuadorean delegation will be delivering this petition with all its signatures to Chevron’s management at the shareholder meeting.

Transcript of the open letter is as follows:

To the citizens of the United States,
We are the mothers of families.
We are fathers who work very hard every day.

We are grandparents who hold on to many memories.
We imagine that you are the same as us,
With hearts that beat,
With eyes that appreciate the beauty of the world around us,
With feet that walk on the same planet as ours.

We would like to share with you a story
that you all should know.

It occurred in a place called the Ecuadorean Amazon almost 50 years ago.

We had clean water, a healthy source of food, medicinal plants to cure our ailments.

In other words, we lived with dignity and in harmony with nature.

But in that moment an oil company arrived whose name we remember well: Texaco.
We were not familiar with oil.

They told us that oil was good, that it would bring progress for the future.

We remember the oil spills, almost daily.
The crude oil would come down the rivers like black sheets.
We remember the toxic waters they dumped in our rivers.
We remember the pain our children felt after bathing
in the rivers contaminated with oil.
We remember the illnesses, the deformations, the cancer.

We remember those who died.

We do not know you.
We only know the company Texaco, now called Chevron.

We are a people of great courage and humility who have been in a struggle for many years to demand justice, asking that the company take responsibility for all the harm they have caused.

Last February, Chevron was found guilty by an Ecuadorean court for the harm they caused to our people, and to our lands.

But the company has said it will never respect the court’s decision, that it will never take responsibility for the damages, and that it will keep fighting until Hell freezes over.

We want to reach your hearts, so that you know the truth.

Chevron has poisoned us. It has also poisoned the image of the United States and of its citizens.

On behalf of the thousands of victims in Ecuador, we write this letter to you, so that you can do something, now, and demand that Chevron clean up the poison that they left in our Amazon, and clean up the image of you and your country.

Thank you.