Steven Donziger, the human rights lawyer who spent nearly three decades fighting Chevron on behalf of 30,000 people in the Ecuadorian rainforest, has been sentenced to six months in federal prison for “criminal contempt.” On October 1, in a lower Manhattan federal courtroom, Judge Loretta Preska justified imposing the maximum penalty by asserting that Donziger, now 60, had not shown contrition. She said, “It seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law.”
In May, Preska had found Donziger guilty after a trial without a jury. And now Donziger, along with his family and scores of supporters, had to listen to the federal judge compare him to a mule who needed to be beaten with a piece of wood before complying.
Prior to sentencing, Donziger reminded the court in a polite and at times emotional statement that he had already spent 787 days under house arrest in his New York City apartment, a confinement that had put great pressure on his wife and teenage son. He explained that the court-imposed restrictions meant that his son had a father who was “unable to travel, leave his home except under narrow exceptions with court permission 48 hours in advance, unable to even go out for dinner, unable to have a father capable of doing all the things a father can do and should do with a child, including act with spontaneity.”
But even though Donziger was facing prison, he told the court he would not back down: “I have been attacked and demonized for years by Chevron in retaliation for helping Indigenous peoples in Ecuador try to do something to save their cultures, their lives, and our planet in the face of massive oil pollution. That’s the context for why we are here today.”
In response, Preska read out a prepared 50-minute statement for her harsh sentence. “Mr. Donziger spent the last seven plus years thumbing his nose at the US judicial system,” she said. “It’s now time to pay the piper.”
[...]
Once again, the mainstream media is largely ignoring Chevron’s campaign of retaliation against Donziger. The New York Times, Donziger’s hometown newspaper, reported nothing in the two days after the verdict, and has barely mentioned the case for the past seven years.
it is legitimately frustrating to be following this story, and nobody outside of leftist circles is even aware of it :jokah-messy:
When you're just there to fuck a dude up real quick but they paid you for the whole hour.
Are you saying we should deface every Chevron with "FREE STEVEN DONZIGER"? cuz that sounds like a good idea to me
Real talk. How do I go about doing such a thing without getting caught. In Minecraft of course
pure hypothetical here in the voxel based creativity programme;
Generic, disposable masks are unquestioned these days. Plain clothes with no identifiers that you do not wear in any other circumstances. If you're using a spraypaint of some sort, distance the place you acquired it both physically and temporally from yourself. I've seen suggestions to change your posture and gate to further differentiate from your everyday identity.
even more speculative, but I've wondered about the application of hydrophobic spray with a stencil, as a sort of "time-delay" mechanism.
Don’t bring your phone with you. It will be triangulated. You can’t trust airplane mode or powering off.
Leaving your phone at home cannot be stressed enough.
Forgetting to say this was a Linux user sin, and I must executed for my negligence
:deeper-sadness: :stalin-gun-1::tux:
People in my life ask me why I am a Communist and genuinely hate America. I ask them how they can live in this monstrosity and not.
Literally even a cursory glance underneath the gloss of propaganda of the US reveals one of the most brutal and vicious social formations to ever exist. It's actually hard to find something that the US, as a government and the greater ruling class it represents, has done that ISN'T horrific in some way. The fact that the Anglo-American ruling class gleefuly hides behind the genuinely good things that working class people do as they try and best survive in this nightmare is also fucking disgusting.
In May, Preska had found Donziger guilty after a trial without a jury
Not that I would expect capital to abide by our dogshit constitution, but isn't there an amendment that talks about how we have a right to a trial by a jury of our peers?
"The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process."
-Eric Holder
Not necessarily. Jury trials aren't always called for petty offense cases, which may be what the court classified Donzinger's contempt charge as.
Yup, it was classified as a misdemeanor for probably that exact reason.
We love our malicious legal shenanigans, don't we folks?
Sounds like Ms. Preska needs to be proverbialy crucified and burned alive
In Minecraft of course
Sounds like Ms. Preska needs to be sent to the proverbial executions in Central Park.
This is an actual abortion of anything that might be called justice. :gui-better: for everyone involved in doing this to Donziger.
America actually kidnapped and smothered justice and has been caring for the rotting corpse for 300 years as though it's a living child, and now the only thing to do is root for the maggots as the last vestige of life
Hearing this story is so enraging and seeing how little it's talked about anywhere even vaguely mainstream. I remember a while ago I was searching for more info and when I googled steven Donziger the most.mainstram thing I found called him a "disgraced lawyer who bribed witnesses" uh-huh yeah that's the fucking story. Good christ.
Atleast I can come here and people know about it and are as pissed as me. Comforting.
Really does make me wanna play some Roblox tho.
Yeah there is no such thing as backfiring. Worst case scenario you get mass protests that die out after a couple months like what happened with BLM in 2020.
peperridge law of headlines or something like that
Btw
“It seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law.”
I get the meaning of the phrase due to the context, but what does it mean "proverbial two-by-four between the eyes" ?
a judge can threaten to bludgeon you if they qualify it as a metaphor, i guess
peperridge law of headlines or something like that
:jesse-wtf:
edit: oh, you mean Betteridge's law of headlines, my bad
A two-by-four is a standard size of a piece of lumber, about twice as wide as a baseball bat. A swinging size. She's metaphorically threatening to bash him in the head
She’s metaphorically
threatening tobashing him in the head
Sounds like she's trying to use metaphor but she's just really bad at it
Today it’s Donziger getting the “proverbial two-by-four between the eyes.” Tomorrow, it will be all of humanity for our carelessness and apathy.
