experiencing life through an always-nuanced worldview.

Coincidentally, tomorrow (June 5) is World Environmental Day 2009…

Amazon Watch is an organization that came to speak at one of my club BEACN‘s events and showed us a documentary a few months ago about the Chevron-Texaco mess in Ecuador and the Amazon, and I’ve been meaning to write about it for some time now.It’s an issue that I think is overlooked, if not even unknown, primarily in the U.S. (I’m not sure about other countries, but at least here, it’s definitely an issue that I had not been aware was going on.)

First, I’d like to give a brief introduction about Amazon Watch and what they do. Amazon Watch‘s mission statement is:

Amazon Watch works to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with indigenous and environmental organizations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability and the preservation of the Amazon’s ecological systems.

More specifically, Amazon Watch came to my club’s event to speak about the much-too-long ongoing court case between Amazon communities in Ecuador and Chevron-Texaco. So what exactly is the court case about?

The lawsuit, being held in Ecuador at Chevron’s request, will determine if Chevron will be forced to pay for a clean-up of the more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste dumped by Texaco (now Chevron) when it operated an oil concession in the Amazon from 1964 to 1990. A team of court-appointed experts has assessed damages at up to $27.3 billion and a decision is expected later this year. — from a press release 5/29

The fact of the matter is, Texaco drilled for oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon from 1964-1990, and because Texaco chose profits over people (and in this case, the Ecuadorian communities), Texaco used the cheapest (and OBSOLETE) environmental methods to do so. Furthermore, Texaco “dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater, spilled roughly 17 million gallons of crude oil, and left hazardous waste in hundreds of open pits dug out of the forest floor” (from ChevronToxico).

What really shocked and infuriated (maybe I shouldn’t even be shocked, who knows nowadays..) me was when watching the documentary, I remember that one of the Texaco officials, when questioned about the health implications to the 30,000 campesinos of the Ecuadorian communities that Texaco’s waste has caused (not only including loss of biodiversity but also diseases including cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and diseases that kill humans over time due to the toxic waste present in the Ecuadorian’s waters and streams), the official claimed something to the effect that it was the Ecuadorian communities’ lack of hygeine and their own ‘unsanitary’ practices, such as not washing their hands, that led to their current health problems.

Furthermore, as you’ll hear when you watch the documentary, there has been over 80,000 specimen tested and proven as evidence of the environmental and health damage the oil has caused to the natural surrounding.

And because Chevron (obviously) does not want this to be covered much in the media and does not want to lose this case, they have tried to drag out the case as long as possible and even requested the court case to be held in Ecuador (in hopes of being able to bribe judges/law officials more easily). They thought this was something that could be quelled down, quashed…But they were wrong.

What this truly is, as one of the activists from the documentary says, is a timed-release genocide. The 30,000 people living off the Amazon river are being killed, slowly. Some have no access to proper medical care, others are already suffering from cancer, miscarriages, and other health problem due to Texaco’s doing.

From the documentary, you will also see a woman who found out she has cancer, managed to get enough money for the treatment, only to find out that her daughter also has cancer and thus is forfeiting treatment for her own cancer to her daughter, thereby condemning herself to death because she has no other choice.

The Ecuadorian communities, the citizens, the people have spoken. And they are taking action. But them taking action is not always enough. We need more people to know about this issue, to hear the injusticies and not be okay with it. I’m personally going to keep an eye on any new progress Amazon Watch and ChevronToxico make.

This is not just an environmental issue; it is a social justice and human rights issue. The Ecuadorian people should not have to pay for and suffer from the irresponsibility and atrocities that Chevron/Texaco made.

What can you do? I highly recommend watching this short documentary on the Texaco disaster in Ecuador. It’s online and available for everyone to see. It definitely explains the issue much better than I can in this entry. And it’s compelling. So please, tell your friends about it. Watch it; be informed. That, I believe, is always the first step.

So, to sum it up:

• Watch the short online documentary Justicia Ya on the Texaco environmental disaster in Ecuadorian Amazon
• Visit Amazon Watch to read more about all their projects (they also run many other campaigns in countries such as Peru, Brazil, and other Amazonian countries)
• Go to the ChevronToxico website, which is a campaign with the collaboration of the Amazon Defense Coalition and Amazon Watch and more information about what’s going on in Ecuador in regards to this court case and ways to get involved.

Although it is really difficult for someone like me -  and probably someone like you – to know how we can help, there are a few ways (as outlined by ChevronToxico) -

1. Send a message to Chevron
2. Tell a friend, share the website links on your Facebook, tweet it.
3. Contact your city council (if you are in the U.S.) and encourage them to pass a resolution to ban purchasing of Chevron products (which, proudly, Berkeley was the first city to do so!)

Of course there are many other things we could do, but these are some actions that we can do, right now, as you’re sitting in front of your computer or holding your phone. So don’t make an excuse. Don’t turn your head the other way. From here is where we can start to make change.

So I started school again, and school’s only been in session for 3 full days, and I feel like I’ve done the work or something of a whole month!! I’ve been really busy with the club I’m in. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it on here yet, but since last semester I’ve been very actively involved in a group on campus called CalPIRG. It stands for “California Students Public Interest Research Group.” The website is here if any of you are interested in finding out more generally what CalPIRG is. But the point is, I worked on a campaign called Campus Climate Challenge last semester. The point of this campaign is to raise awareness about global warming and to get the student body (as well as the faculty, etc.) to take action to help stop global warming. The Campus Climate Challenge campaign group (including me) all went to Washington D.C. this past November for the largest global warming conference in history, called Powershift 2007. Aside from that, we also held events on campus and have a lot of grass-roots organizing to put pressure on our politicians.

I did that all last semester. But now this semester, my friend and I have decided to run the hunger and homelessness campaign. Except we want to do it our way. The “CalPIRG way” has us do a “Hunger Cleanup” in which we can raise $10,000 dollars quite easily, but it just takes a lot of planning. We’re going to do it the “CalPIRG Way,” but we are also going to incorporate things we are passionate about as well. So I recently found out that in West Oakland (a city right next to Berkeley), there are no grocery stores nearby. So, the people who live there (lower-class) sometimes not only don’t have a car (therefore no means to go to a grocery store), but are forced to go to the nearest liquor store and buy liquor and chips..as food. That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. How could there not be a grocery store that is accessible to them? I don’t know how the mayor of Oakland or anyone else with an official position for that matter allows this to happen..so I’m going to see what I can do about it.

We’re also planning on doing service work for soup kitchens and shelters, but I want to do more than that. Maybe do a book drive to help promote adult literacy. Or work with the city of Berkeley (or put pressure on them?) to make sure the shelters/soup kitchens have enough funding.

All these ideas are still floating in the air, but I am so excited for this semester and what I can do. It’ll probably take up my life, but in the end, I know it’ll be totally worth it.