Activism inspired by our dependance on Nature for Life
Just Forests wrote to the chairperson of Dochas on Monday 2 August, 2021, calling on all Dochas members to recognise that the Texaco Support for Sports Initiative and the Texaco Children’s Art Competition as real threats to the work of the Dochas membership organisations.
To date I have not received a reply.
To mark World Food Day 2021, Just Forests visited the Dochas H.Q., in Dublin and handed in another letter.
For almost seventy years fossil fuel giant Texaco have sponsored an annual children’s art competition in Ireland. They did this at a time when they were actively engaged in the destruction of rainforests and perpetrating appalling human rights violations in the lives of communities in Ecuador.
Human rights attorney Steven Donziger in the early 1990s sued Texaco on behalf of a group of Ecuadorean farmers and indigenous people, alleging major environmental harms by the energy company. An Ecuadorean court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 2011 and ordered Chevron, which had since acquired the company, to pay $9.5 billion. To date they have not paid over a penny.
On Friday 1st October, Steven Donziger was sentenced to six months in jail by a Chevron-Texaco sponsored judge in New York after being under house arrest for over 780 days.
"The fight against corporate power and greed is one of the key environmental and economic justice challenges facing our planet," Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said at the time. "Indigenous Amazon communities won one of the most important class action lawsuits ever, holding Chevron accountable for environmental devastation with nearly $10 billion in damages, and ever since Chevron has sought to use its money and power to illegitimately nullify this result." REF
Just Forests welcomes the calls for EU ban on fossil fuel ads and sponsorships by Greenpeace and a number of other NGO’s. We would urge everyone who wants to see real change taking place to support this initiative by signing the petition. It comes hot on the heels of our vigil outside the Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda, Co Louth, where the 67th Texaco Childrens Art Exhibition was on display.
“I grew up reading signs about how cigarettes kill you, but never saw similar warnings in petrol stations or fuel tanks. It’s frightening that my favourite sports and museums are sponsored by airlines and car companies,” said Chaja Merk, an activist on board the Greenpeace ship.REF
So if you would like to read more about the Greenpeace call and even sign the petition (which I hope you do). You can do so here sign the petition here…
ENDS
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On Friday 1st October 2021, we held a vigil outside Highlanes Gallery to protest against Texaco’s continued use of Irish Children’s Art sponsorship to greenwash the fossil fuel giants appalling human rights abuses against children in Ecuador.
In a letter handed to the Director of the Highlanes Gallery, Just Forests explained why the vigil was taking place-please see letter below.
The vigil also coincided with the court sentencing of human rights activist Steven Donziger. Donziger, who was instrumental in winning a major pollution case against Texaco in Ecuador was sentenced to a prison term of six months by a Chevron-Texaco sponsored ‘judge’. (See https://twitter.com/justforests for more on this)
The Director responded very favourably. Ms. Aoife Ruane stated that Highlanes Gallery “…would not host any further exhibitions sponsored by Texaco.” Ms. Ruane further confirmed that she would step down as one of the ‘judges’ for the Texaco Children’s Art Competition.
Just Forests are very grateful to Highlanes Gallery for this very positive and supportive response and we wish them well with all their future activities.
In 2004, Peadar King (in the photo above) made a documentary film as part of the RTE television series What in the World? on the struggle of both the Achuar and Cofan people against the Texaco oil company. A link to the video will follow.
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