Donziger to Biden: Democracy Is At Stake With Chevron's Private Prosecution
I went directly to the White House to demand a pardon of my outrageous prosecution. It's up to all of us to make sure the President heard me and acts urgently.
I just went to the White House to raise some hell over the erosion of democracy and rule of law in the United States.
I traveled to my "court" of last resort to demand President Biden pardon me after I was detained for almost three years by Chevron in the nation's first corporate prosecution. The prosecution and detention was “pure corporate vengeance” to retaliate for more work over three decades with Amazon communities in Ecuador who sued Chevron and ultimately won a landmark $10 billion pollution judgment against the company. No country that respects the rule of law ever would permit a corporate to directly prosecute a critic in the name of the government, as Chevron did to me.
We were joined in front of the White House by three members of Congress who have been supporting the courageous Amazon Ecuadorian communities and their lawyers for years. I am so grateful for the leadership on this issue being shown by Rep. Jim McGovern, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, and Rep. Cori Bush on behalf of the impacted peoples and on behalf o human rights and the rule of law more broadly. Thanks also to Amnesty International, Amazon Watch, and Climate Defiance for coming and speaking. Approximately 50 prominent NGOs led by Amnesty and Greenpeace recently sent a letter to the President supporting my pardon request.
The stakes are high and obviously go way beyond me. We cannot allow a situation in the United States (or anywhere) where human rights lawyers get jailed for political reasons. We must never again allow corporations to prosecute people in the name of the government. Five respected international jurists from the UN have condemned my private prosecution as politicized and illegal; three US federal judges have deemed it unconstitutional. Yet the Supreme Court would not hear my appeal, leaving Biden as the final legal arbiter as far as this country is concerned.
I am urging Mr. Biden to please act now on my request. The entire environmental justice and human rights community is watching. To help us spread the word, please visit our campaign website and sign the petition. You can also donate to our crowdfunding campaign on Chuffed.org.
I am deeply grateful for the support. Let’s keep pushing; I think we can actually get this pardon
—Steven.
My best wishes for your work, Steven. The big problem we face is we do not live in a democracy. We live in a corporate state where -- as the Princeton Study proved -- any pretense of democracy died out long ago. The evidence is all around us in the homeless encampments, economic ruin of families due to medical debt and the general cruel callousness to everyone. While more and more American families fall into poverty and our young have virtually no chance at the "American dream" we somehow managed to send billions to the War Industry. I prefer to refer to the corporate governmental system of abuse we suffer under as "American DeMOCKracy".
It was great that three members of Congress stood with you, but it was only three out of 535 members. That tells you all one needs to know: Congress is perfectly comfortable with the corporate takeover of the American "JUST-Us" system. They are a cog in the machine, not a solution. They are on the payroll.
The one good bit of news is more and more people are growing estranged by the traitorous government we suffer under; they see or at least sense the con. More people see cases like yours and see their communities collapsing and are beginning (slowly) to awaken to the fact they have been screwed over and something far, far more effective needs to be done than walking to the polling centers every two years and piddling in the polling booth. Something FAR more effective is needed. It is building, but the question is will it happen before the totalitarian Crackdown happens and we are all in corporate courtrooms.
For those unfamiliar with the Princeton Study: "Princeton study: U.S. no longer an actual democracy" https://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/princeton-study-us-no-longer-actual-democracy/#:~:text=A%20new%20study%20from%20Princeton%20spells%20bad%20news,an%20oligarchy%2C%20where%20wealthy%20elites%20wield%20most%20power.
Feel free to use any of my political artwork, if you wish: https://mark192.substack.com/
I am wondering whether part of the problem is that we do not have a quantifiable theory of power. For example, we think about tax as a means to fund the government. But we do not think about tax as means to redistribute power. A big-is-bad tax redistributed to citizens as a dividend (universal basic income) could go a long way to strengthen democracy.