As a young lawyer he travelled to Ecuador in 1993, the first of about 200 visits, to become part of a case that would change his life.
Steven Donziger, a human rights lawyer and key lawyer on the team that won the historic $9.5 Billion judgment against Chevron (fromerly Texaco)
in the Ecuadorian Amazon has joined me on the podcast to talk about the devastation that Chevron caused in the rainforest by dumping
over 18 billion gallons of oil and toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon, leaving black lakes of poison, destruction and illness behind.
Steven shares what experiencing the rainforest and the people who hosted him during his time in Ecuador taught him:
"It completely transforms everything you've been taught about our relationship to the natural world. You become part of the natural world.
You become humbled. You understand your role is to preserve life and all life's ecosystems instead of just using them for your own pleasure or your own commercial benefit."
Steven has been and is still being attacked by Chevron for holding them accountable.
Chevron orchestrated a corporate prosecution - the first of this kind in the history of the United States - and criminalized Steven in order to distract
the world from what they did and continue to do all over the world and to send a message to those who stand up to them for their crimes and disrespectful treatment of humans, non-human animals and land.
As a lawyer and through personally being unlawfully prosecuted, Steven has much experience with the ways in which the law is used and abused
for certain agendas and he shares some thoughts in this Talk,
for example on how "the mechanisms and the tools of government to regulate corporations and to control them have been weakened dramatically over the course of the last 20 30 years."
🌎Follow Steven on
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevendonziger/
Twitter https://twitter.com/SDonziger
If you want to learn more about the case brought by the Amazon communities against Chevron,
or to help Steven by contributing to his legal defense fund, please go his website at freedonziger.com.
Thank you for listening to this Talk🌎🌊☀
which came alive through the voices of
Steven Donziger
and your host Stella Sage 🌿
