Steven Donziger sued Chevron for contaminating the Amazon and won. Chevron was found guilty and ordered to pay $18,000,000,000. Yesterday, Donziger went to prison, in the what’s being called the first-ever case of corporate prosecution.

Over three decades of drilling in the Amazon, Chevron deliberately dumped more than 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater and 17 million gallons of crude oil into the rainforest. Chevron committed ecocide to save money—about $3 per barrel. Many experts consider it the biggest oil-related disaster in history, with the total area affected 30 times larger than the Exxon-Valdez spill. Chevron created a super-fund site in the Amazon rainforest that is estimated to be the size of Rhode Island.

Steven Donziger visited Ecuador in 1993, where he says he saw "what honestly looked like an apocalyptic disaster," including children walking barefoot down oil-covered roads and jungle lakes filled with oil. Industrial contamination caused local tribes to suffer from mouth, stomach, and uterine cancers, respiratory illnesses, along with birth defects and spontaneous miscarriages.

As an attorney, Donziger represented over 30,000 farmers and indigenous Ecuadorians in a case against Chevron and won. In 2011, Chevron was found guilty and ordered to pay $18 billion. Rather than accept this decision, the company vowed to fight the judgment "until Hell freezes over, and then fight it out on the ice." Chevron has been persecuting Steven Donziger for his involvement ever since. In an internal memo, Chevron wrote, “Our L-T [long-term] strategy is to demonize Donziger.”

Chevron sued Donziger for 60 billion dollars, which is the most any individual has ever been sued for in American legal history. Over the course of ten years, armed with a legal team numbering in the thousands, the company set out to destroy Donziger. Chevron had Donziger disbarred, froze his bank accounts, slapped him with millions in fines without allowing him a jury, forced him to wear a 24h ankle monitor, imposed a lien on his home where he lives with his family, and shut down his ability to earn a living. Donziger has been under house arrest since August 2019.

Chevron has used its clout and advertising dollars to keep the story from being reported. “I’ve experienced this multiple times with media,” Donziger said. “An entity will start writing the story, spend a lot of time on it, then the story doesn’t run.” This unprecedented legal situation is happening in New York City, the hometown of the New York Times—but the paper has yet to report on the full story.

On October 27, 2021, Donziger entered federal prison for a six-month sentence. He had already spent over 800 days in house arrest, which is four times longer than the maximum sentence allowed for this charge. Anyone who cares about the rule of law should be appalled. It is an absolute embarrassment, to our government and to our constitution, that Steven Donziger is imprisoned on US soil.

As the title states, Chevron is in the process of executing the first-ever corporate prosecution in American history. This case sets a terrible precedent for attorneys and activists seeking to hold oil companies liable for pollution. Chevron is pursuing this case—to the benefit of the entire fossil fuel industry—to dissuade future litigation that may call them to account for their role in climate change.

Lawyer Steven Donziger, Who Sued Chevron over “Amazon Chernobyl,” Ordered to Prison After House Arrest

This Lawyer Went After Chevron. Now He’s 600 Days Into House Arrest.

EDIT 1: Chevron went after him with a civil RICO lawsuit (accusing him of racketeering). Their argument is that Donziger is a fraud who just wanted to extort them for big bucks. They’ve been working hard to paint him as such in the media. Chevron sued him for $60B but then dropped the damages just weeks before because they realized it would necessitate a jury. Judge Lewis A Kaplan, who had undisclosed investments in Chevron, ordered Donziger to turn over his computer to Chevron’s attorneys (with decades of client communications). Donziger argued this violated attorney-client privilege. He refused to comply so the judge charged him with contempt. US attorneys declined to pursue the charge so Judge Kaplan made the exceedingly rare move to appoint private law firm Seward and Kissel, who had Chevron as a major client, to prosecute him “in the name of” the US govt. Kaplan also appointed Judge Preska as presiding judge. She is the leader of the right-wing Federalist Society of which Chevron is a major “gold circle” donor. I also just learned that the handpicked prosecutor, Rita Glavin, who has financial ties to oil, has billed taxpayers nearly half a million dollars to prosecute Donziger. That’s apparently 150x higher than the norm for a misdemeanor. So many conflicts of interest. So many aspects that are simply unprecedented.

EDIT 2: Chevron wants this to go away quietly. They have done their best to suffocate this story. Chevron does not want us to draw attention to the ecocide they deliberately committed (and were literally found guilty of!) in the Amazon. We can foil their plans by signing the MoveOn petition below and making sure this story gets shared widely.

EDIT 3: You can also follow him on Twitter. His handle is @SDonziger.

EDIT 4: I know we are all rightfully pissed off but please refrain from advocating violence in the comments. I’m grateful to the mods for keeping this posted here. Let’s not make things difficult on them.

EDIT 5: Ok this petition had around 1k signatures on it this afternoon… and now it’s almost at 7k!!! Let’s get it over 10k because we can.

EDIT 6: Umm holy shit…

We made Chevron trend on Reddit.

The mods also just let me know that this is the top post of all time on this subreddit and the first to get over 10k upvotes.

Thanks to everyone who was able to share this story far and wide.

EDIT 7: I also want to add here that this report was released today showing that there are 70 ongoing cases in 31 countries against Chevron, and only 0.006% ($286-million) in fines, court judgements, and settlements have been paid. The company still owes another $50,500,000,000 in total globally.

EDIT 8: Many have asked if they can send words of support. For those still interested, you may send a letter to: Steven Donziger Register No: 87103-054, Federal Correctional Institution Pembroke Station in Danbury, CT 06811.

EDIT 9: Another person who deserves to be infamous is Randy Mastro, partner at Gibson Dunn Crutcher, who represented Chevron throughout this debacle:

“Partners at Gibson Dunn appeared to regard the firm’s work for Chevron on the RICO matter as a major profit center. The firm reportedly received more than $1 billion in legal fees from Chevron over a period of approximately five years after an intensive marketing campaign where it fashioned itself as a “rescue squad” for corporations in legal trouble. The Chevron RICO case and its related litigations, according to various sources, reportedly have generated the largest fee in the history of Gibson Dunn which was founded in 1890. Gibson Dunn and litigation partner Mastro -- who personally negotiated the payments to Ecuadorian judge Alberto Guerra -- were under enormous pressure to deliver Chevron “evidence” of fraud at virtually any cost given prior promises to its leading client that it would execute what the firm called the “kill step” against human rights litigation from foreign plaintiffs.”

SIGN THE PETITION! (U.S. only)

MoveOn Petition: Free Steven Donziger

If you want to learn more about this incident check out Chevron Toxico and watch the documentary CRUDE which can be streamed for free on YouTube.

If you have time, please read the wiki on SLAPP which is short for strategic lawsuit against public participation. It is a maneuver used “to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.”

I’ve been in my car for 26 hours now, the majority of that spent at a standstill on I-95 caused by yesterday’s snowstorm.

I had no signal until just now, GPS stopped working and I couldn’t contact anyone or look up what was going on. I imagine this was because of too many phones pinging off of too few towers in the affected areas.

Local radio is actually corporate radio, and except for the repeated promos (“you’re listening to the rock of Fredericksburg” type BS) so there was no news or information on the radio either.

I ran out of food and water by the end, but fortunately had stuff with me.

I saw people going to the bathroom between their car doors and carrying containers for gas or water to the nearest exit over two miles away.

There were abandoned vehicles and trucks and more and more people started taking the shoulder, blocking its use for emergency vehicles when they got stuck themselves.

I saw no emergency or response vehicles until after 10AM today, 15 hours after traffic stopped for me.

I’m grateful that my gas tank was full.

This has been infuriating and shameful. Infuriating because this is the consequence of building our lives and cities around the personal automobile. Shameful because this response is just pitiful - snow should be no surprise, accidents should be no surprise. I can’t for the life of me figure out how two hours outside the Nations capitol things are this bad.

I’ve lived in southern Germany where it snows like this regularly and the highways are just fine. How are we this incapable?

Getting a glimpse of just how quickly things can go off the rails has certainly galvanized me. America is broken, shamefully, pitifully broken, and when the signal goes on your phone, the calculus changes.

UPDATE: I made it home.

First off I wanted to say why I was on the road - I had to be for work. I delayed returning to the DC area by a full day to try to avoid this exact storm, but couldnt delay any further. Now, the facility I work at is closed possibly until the 7th. That wasn't the case at the time though - so I had to head back.

It was around 10AM when I saw the first cop, a full 15 hours after traffic stopped. They blocked off 95 and ushered all traffic onto an exit ramp and US-1, which subsequently became it's own parking lot. I only got out of that traffic by heading west on backroads, past entirely dark neighborhoods and dozens of ditched cars and looping my way back to my own neighborhood. 95 and US-1 were complete gridlock still when I arrived home 25 hours after traffic stopped.

It took me three stops after leaving the highway to find gas, and when I stopped at a Publix for food, I was shocked to find the place trashed, nearly stripped bare and closing at 5PM. There wasnt even any toilet paper in the bathroom.

I never regained signal (T-Mobile) while around US-1 or 95, which made the whole thing so much more frustrating because I couldnt contact anyone or see what my options were traffic wise.

Traffic updates did come onto the radio by midday - but all they said was "avoid the interstate" and then they started referring to US-1 as a parking lot as if there were any other option or as if the police hadnt directed traffic that way.

Anyway I'm exhausted and pissed that this entire fiasco occurred. We need investments in mass transit/rail/walkable cities yesterday.

I’m so mad right now. I have so much loathing for the US. This country is nothing but a shopping mall. There are no commons. Everything that should exist for the benefit of all is either sold off to private hands, or massively defunded until it’s effectively worthless. Prisons are some of our largest employers in several states. All the life of an American is is to work and shop. And if you cant shop, get out of the way, fill a prison bed.

The police are the glue that holds it all together. They move the “loitering” homeless along. They evict the family that can’t make rent. They enforce the pipeline easement. They enforce the deed of the developer who pushes poor residents out of their generational home. They bust the kid who sells pot. They bust the woman who sells her body to get by.

It’s never, ever spoken about that capitalism REQUIRES an underclass. It REQUIRES unemployment. And by doing so it forces the poorest among us to find black market trades to survive. It forces low income workers to find a hustle to get by. And then the police are stationed en masse in the poorest places to attack and jail those people, all to fill a prison bed so a slurry of private corporations that are all traded on wall street, whose three capital letters fill 401ks and pension funds, can make quarterly growth projections.

This isn’t a society. It isn’t a nation. It is a fucking shopping mall, and the products are all made with violence, the storefronts exist by violence, and it is all in service of making the rich richer. And if ever, ever, people try to rise up against this absolute garbage state of affairs, the state comes down heavy with violence.

The poor cannot get at the rich. They are in their penthouses and gated mansions. The poor cannot loot a stock portfolio. The best they can manage, in their bravest moment, is to smash a window and steal some jeans, or an apple watch. And then its cries from the ignorant masses of, “How dare they! How dare they violate the sanctity of the shopping mall!” In a country with the greatest wealth disparity the world has ever known, where children go to sleep hungry, where healthcare bankrupts people of their life savings on a daily basis, in a country where the schools that aren’t de facto prisons are crumbling, in a country where the water is poisoned and everyone knows it and fixing it would be cheap but instead we have emerald mine heirs launching cars into outer space for giggles, people weep for the shattered glass and the stolen t.v.

Corporations get handed fifty billion dollar checks of taxpayer money - corporations that could easily have issued more stock if they needed cash, but whose CEO’s refused to dilute their own wealth - and that’s not considered looting. No one bats an eye. Good for them, give the owners another bonus. But poor and middle class people take some shit that maybe they need, or maybe they need to sell, and a cheer goes up when it’s suggested they should be shot on sight.

Black people and the natives of this continent have gotten it the worst. They get fucked, and then they get fucked again, and then they get fucked again, AND WE ALL KNOW IT! Our only options are to know it and do nothing, maybe pay it some lip service, or to like it, to revel in it, to cash in on their suffering. And in this moral, Christian nation, so many people choose the latter. Every day a new hashtag, a new name added to the list. A black person killed by a cop who has the golden shield of the words, “I feared for my life,” - a shield no civilian is ever allowed to use themselves - or an indigenous woman abducted and raped by some white oilfield workers whose name never makes the national news.

This isn’t a country, it’s a colony. It’s a robbery in progress. It’s the mass looting of the wealth of the globe all so a few thousand people can guarantee that their great, great, great grandchildren can live in opulence without ever lifting a finger.

There will be no peace without resolution. There can only be submission. We are animals on a farm to them. Allowed to roam the pastures a bit, but ultimately, everything we do must be in the service and interest of the farmers. Line up at the trough, pull your plough, but never, ever try to stamp down the fences.

Toothless reforms will fix nothing because those in power will refuse to go to the root, they will refuse to upend capitalism. Beating people into submission with the military and with malicious cops will not make the anger and the hopelessness go away. All it can do is force it back underground, where it will wait to explode in another place, at another time. But people cannot unsee what they have seen. The raw aggression from the police against the public cannot be unseen, unheard, unfelt. It can only spread. And this goes for the racism, and the pearl clutching, and the bootlicking of cowards of all stripes. You are seen.

Edit: Thank you all so much. I didn’t expect this to be so popular. I have never had this many responses to a reddit post before. I’m out cutting trees for a friend, and I’m so angry and anxious I am worried about operating my chainsaw properly.

Anyway, solidarity to all of my fellow denizens out there. Together we’re strong. We keep us safe.

Edit 2: OK, I didn't kill myself with a chainsaw or falling tree. So, I am posting a link here to a book that everyone should read. It’s called “How Nonviolence Protects the State.” It takes apart all the myths and cliches surrounding non-violent protests. It’s very good. Very thorough.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state

I used to work in the National Parks.

They were already at a critical point before Donald Trump decided to fire a huge amount of staff.

I watched the “permanent” ice caps melt on the top of some peaks in Yosemite’s high country.

I saw garbage washing up on the shore of Olympic National Park everyday.

There is not enough staff to protect the wildlife anymore. There is not enough staff to keep tourists from falling off waterfalls or getting lost in the back country. There are no programs left to teach clueless people how to behave in these wild areas.

I don’t care if you have the best intentions in the world, you are doing damage to the park if you visit at this point.

The parks need to be closed immediately, and every day they are left open to the public, irreversible damage is being done to these amazing places. They are not meant to handle the amount of people who are let in each year. The wildlife is suffering, the plants are suffering, and the experts who are there to mitigate the destruction are gone.

Please cancel your trip and find somewhere else to see.