Today Amazon Watch released an edgy satire created by Pulitzer-winning animator Mark Fiore blasting Chevron's unprecedented tactics to avoid responsibility for its admitted acts of environmental destruction in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Despite losing a 20-year legal battle and receiving a $9.5 billion judgment, Chevron maintains that it will never pay for its damage. The company launched an extraordinary racketeering and extortion (RICO) lawsuit against the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, U.S. attorneys and various consultants alleging that the original case was “sham litigation." Fiore's piece comes on the heels of a campaign supported by a diverse coalition including Amazon Watch and the Sierra Club calling on members of the Senate to investigate and put a stop to Chevron's vilification of the environmental and human rights community.
And here's the animated video, a funny and biting satire of Chevron's gangster-like ways:
As Amazon Watch writes in their press release:
Chevron's actions set a dangerous precedent and represent a growing and serious threat to the ability of civil society to hold corporations accountable for their misdeeds around the world. Now a wide cross-section of U.S.-based environmental and corporate governance groups have condemned Chevron's most recent retaliatory attacks to intimidate the Ecuadorian indigenous peoples and farmers who have been harmed by the oil giant's massive contamination of their ancestral lands.
Amazon Watch has also posted an article on its Eye on the Amazon blog in the voice of Donny Rico, the animated star of its new video:
Donny Rico here to deliver a message to all you long-haired hippie activist types complaining about the environment and human rights. Be warned: things have changed in America and you need to keep your mouths shut. Corporations are the top of the food chain and you need to keep your place or you'll be what's for dinner. Got it?Visit the Amazon Watch website to read the rest of Donny RICO's diatribe, and to share the video with friends, colleagues, and any of those long-haired hippie activist types you may know
See, me and Chevron are paving the way for corporate freedom in America. Freedom from accountability, freedom from watchdog punks and freedom from caring about how our actions affect the rest of yous. When those pesky Ecuadorians spouted off about the fact that Chevron did a piece of work and chose to dump billions of gallons of toxic waste in their rainforest, we decided to turn the tables and it worked like a real charm. Chevron's tired of being the victim just because over a thousand people died of cancer in Ecuador and we wrecked the Amazon rainforest.