Roger Waters' Message to Chevron Board & Shareholders
Watch a video version of the message Chevron prevented its shareholders from hearing. Roger Waters, legendary rock star and co-founder of Pink Floyd, submitted this message to Chevron's board and stockholders in advance of the company's May 27th annual meeting.
In the video, Waters shares a heartfelt story about his mother, and urges the Chevron Board to “do the right thing” for the 30,000 indigenous victims of the company’s toxic oil pollution in Ecuador’s Amazon region, and to “give them their lives back.” He also implores Chevron to “call the dogs off Steven Donziger”, the human rights lawyer who helped secure a $9.5 billion judgment on behalf of the Ecuadorian people. Donziger has been under house arrest in New York the past 10 months for refusing a judge's order to hand over his laptop and phone to Chevron’s attorneys.
Newground asked Chevron include Roger Waters' message in the Q&A portion of this year's virtual shareholder meeting but, sadly, the company refused.
Watch the message below. Full transcript follows. For other materials related to this (including videos by Alec Baldwin & Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams) visit: www.newground.net/chevron
Transcript of Roger Waters' message to Chevron shareholders:
Good morning. My name is Roger Waters, I'm a musician. And sometimes I try to be a voice for the voiceless. In this case the voiceless are 30,000 indigenous people in Ecuador. You all know the story, and it is becoming more and more of something of a cause célèbre.
I'd like to tell you a little anecdote about my Mum. My mother, who was a primary school teacher, but one of the great gifts that she gave to me many years ago when I was a thirteen-year-old. She sat me down when I was having problems pondering something out, and she said:
"You know, you will come across difficult questions all the way through your life, Roger, and the thing to do is this: you must listen carefully to all sides of all the arguments and make sure that you are cognizant of all the facts of the matter, and when you've done all of that you will be in a position to decide what to do. Now comes the easy bit, deciding what to do.
"Always do the right thing!"
Wow, what a fantastic piece of advice that was! Anyway, I noticed that Chevron Corporation now in its logo has the word “Human” inserted, which is really good and a move in the right direction I think, so if we could try and look for the human in us all, and try and do the right thing.
I took the liberty of having a look at all the people who are on your Board of Directors and there are a number of extremely thoughtful and humane people, given their resumes and what they've done with their lives. So I live in hope that Chevron Corporation may do the right thing by the 30,000 people of Ecuador and give them their lives back.
While you're doing the right thing, please call the dogs off Steven Donziger. Steven Donziger is a human rights lawyer who is being hounded by an unfair, unkind, unlawful judiciary. And it's wrong. So could we please stop hounding Steven and let him continue with his work looking after people who need his extreme gifts to help them in their predicament.
I have to say this is my first AGM – I hope it won't be my last... I've kind of enjoyed coming and talking to you, it's always really good to reach out across the abyss and speak.
Love!
Learn More
To learn more about Newground's shareholder advocacy with Chevron, visit https://newground.net/chevron.
