Middleboro Review and so on

  I haven’t written to you in three months because I decided to take a little break and focus on finishing my book, which has evolved into a memoir of our landmark $10 billion pollution judgment against Chevron. We even have a tentative title that I hope to reveal soon. I’m going to share with you the beginning of the book here: The driveway up the steep hill to enter the Danbury federal prison in Connecticut had been traversed by thousands of inmates since it opened in 1940. I never in my wildest imagination thought I would be confined here in the same place as some of the most infamous criminals in U.S. history. I had graduated in the same Harvard Law School class as President Barack Obama and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. A guy like me – a respected lawyer who had fought on behalf of human rights victims for years and who had won a landmark pollution case in the Amazon – was not supposed to end up in a place like this. Worse, I thought that once inside there was a chance I...

I am so happy to connect again and so deeply grateful for your support. I write to update you on an astounding development in the media world. A new commercial made by Oscar-nominated director Adam McKay that mocks Chevron is racing around the world with over 5 million views online. McKay, who directed  The Big Short  and  Don’t Look Up , probably just made the first truthful commercial about Chevron in history. The tagline at the end has a voiceover from a Chevron spokesperson saying to the American public:  “It’s hard to comprehend how little we give a f*ck about you.” I probably get what that means as much as anybody in the world. This spoof commercial was released on the eve of the one-year anniversary of my sentencing by Judge Preska to six months in jail after Chevron spent decades retaliating against me for helping Indigenous peoples and farmer communities win a $9.5 billion pollution judgment against the company. To this day, Chevron would rather spe...

  I am thrilled to write you with some exciting news. First, let me again express my gratitude to each of you for the support as I enter the sixth month of my post-detention life. Last week, a prominent group of US attorneys led by Professor Stephen Vladeck of the University of Texas School of Law filed an extraordinary petition before the US Supreme Court seeking to overturn my unjust contempt “conviction” where I was prosecuted by a Chevron law firm after helping Amazon communities win a historic $9.5 billion pollution case against the company. The contempt case was filed by a Chevron-connected judge after the charges were rejected by the regular federal prosecutor. The contempt case against me was the first corporate prosecution in US history. I am determined to make it the last. My filing to the Supreme Court –  which can be read here  – is a critical step toward both achieving that objective and holding Chevron fully accountable for what is an outrageous assault...