After poisoning his community and taking his family from him, Chevron is heaping disrespect on Servio Curipoma by trying to pretend he doesn’t exist, and that his mother, father, and sister never existed. We can’t let Chevron get away with it.
Servio is a farmer who lives in the Ecuadorean Amazon. He lost both of his parents and his sister to cancer after Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001, deliberately dumped a massive amount of oil pollution near their home.
Chevron doesn’t want you to know Servio’s story — or the stories of any of the thousands of other Ecuadoreans who are suffering from the oil contamination in their Ecuadorean Amazon home that Chevron refuses to clean up.
Can you help make sure Chevron can’t silence Servio? Here’s the YouTube link to a video of an impassioned speech he gave outside of Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting, in which he vows to honor the memories of his family members by refusing to give up the fight to bring Chevron to justice. You can copy and paste the link into Facebook, Twitter, or any other website where you can share the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBFInCkFi70
Suggested text: Chevron doesn’t want us to know about the people whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by its oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Servio Curipoma’s mother, father, and sister died from Chevron’s oil pollution in the Amazon. Don’t let Chevron erase Servio and his family from history!
[youtube KBFInCkFi70 550]
By attempting to erase the Ecuadoreans impacted by its oil contamination from the public record, Chevron is hoping to bolster its twisted version of events, which perversely holds that the lawsuit against the company is nothing but a shakedown by American trial lawyers. But this lawsuit was instigated by very real people who are suffering from Chevron’s very real pollution, and their stories need to be told.
Chevron has found a willing accomplice in US Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, who issued a “worldwide injunction” to stop enforcement of the historic $18 billion judgment against Chevron handed down by an Ecuadorean court in February. The Ecuadoreans are appealing the injunction, and the trial starts tomorrow.
Judge Kaplan has continually referred to Servio and the other Ecuadoreans suing Chevron as the “so-called Ecuadorean plaintiffs” – implying that the very real and very horrifying conditions that Servio and his community are facing are somehow in question or up for debate. That’s why it’s so important that we all post this video and let everyone — including Judge Kaplan — know that the Ecuadoreans suffering from Chevron’s oil pollution are real, and they’re crying out for justice.
Please share Servio’s story today.