San Ramon – The 12 Ecuadorian rainforest leaders who traveled thousands of miles from the Amazon jungle to San Ramon have made significant headway in their campaign for public support in the Tri-Valley area, although the main person they want to meet with –ChevronTexaco CEO David O’Reilly – has ignored them completely. As a result, the rainforest leaders have vowed to go to his home and knock on the doors of his neighbors if he does not agree to meet the group by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
After five days of meetings with community leaders and residents, the Ecuadorians will be officially welcomed today at City Hall and will attend three meetings at area high schools as part of a campaign to step up the pressure on ChevronTexaco before a scheduled Friday departure. The group might extend their stay for the meeting.
In the meantime, a prominent Tri-Valley pastor has written a letter to O’Reilly urging him to grant the request by the Ecuadorians for a 30-minute meeting. “These people have traveled a long way with hope that you might acknowledge the suffering they have experienced,” said the letter, written by the Rev. Steve Harms, pastor of the Peace Lutheran Church in Danville. “They are not militant or unreasonable. They need to share their story. They want to listen to you.”
Referencing the values of the “ChevronTexaco Way” in which the company promises to conduct business in an ethical manner while protecting the environment, Harms writes: “We have an opportunity to live out these values together and design fresh ways … to establish viable solutions that have caused pain to indigenous cultures and economies. Let’s put a human face on this dilemma and make real solutions work for all involved, without animosity.”
Harms has organized a meeting for Monday with other religious leaders from various faiths and denominations in the Tri-Valley to meet the Ecuadorians. On Sunday, the Indians attended the religious service at his church and later were guests at a private dinner hosted by San Ramon residents.
Members of the delegation, including five survivors of a nearly extinct tribe called the Cofan, traveled last week on foot, canoe, bus, and jet to San Ramon to press their cause. For most of them, it was their first time on an airplane, their first visit to the United States, and their first contact with running water from faucets. The Indians delivered a letter to O’Reilly on Tuesday of last week requesting 30 minutes of his time to express their concerns about the oil contamination on their ancestral lands, which they assert has led to skyrocketing rates of cancer and catastrophic environmental damage. Five indigenous groups are on the verge of extinction in the area where the company operated.
After six days, O’Reilly has not responded to the letter nor has anybody from Chevron
Texaco contacted the group, who are staying in a hotel one-quarter mile from the company’s headquarters on Bollinger Canyon Road. “We can get over there in five minutes if necessary,” said Toribio Aguinda, a leader of the Cofan.
Leaders of the group insist they will not split up to meet with O’Reilly, nor are they interested in meeting anybody in the company other than O’Reilly. “He is the only one with the power to deal with this problem,” said Aguinda.
On Monday afternoon, the rainforest leaders will deliver a second letter to O’Reilly telling him that if he does not agree to a meeting by the end of the day Tuesday, the group will begin to take action in the residential neighborhoods of O’Reilly and a handful of other top ChevronTexaco executives whom the Indians believe have decision making power to deal with them.
“We have traveled too far at too great a sacrifice to simply let this man ignore our humble desire to meet,” said Luis Yanza, a leader of the group.
The public support comes against the backdrop of an 11th hour decision by the Comcast Corp. to back out of its commitment to run advertisements by the Indians on local cabled in the Tri-Valley area supporting their cause. Although the ads had been approved and paid for after a lengthy negotiation, at 6 p.m. Friday the ad buyer for the group was notified the ads were being abruptly pulled with no explanation. The ads, which depict a Texaco tanker spraying oil on the yard of a home in a suburban neighborhood to illustrate what the people of the Amazon region have had to endure in Ecuador, were scheduled to run on MTV, ESPN, Fox, and CNN throughout the week in the Tri-Valley area.
“We fear Comcast has succumbed to the pressure of ChevronTexaco,” said Leila Salazar, the campaign coordinator for Amazon Watch, the group that brought the Ecuadorians to San Ramon and was attempting to purchase the advertisement. “It is unconscionable for Comcast to try to censor information from a small community about the activities of its largest business and employer that has such harmful effects. This ad has run on other cable systems, including some owned by Comcast. The facts in it are meticulously documented. While the company might disagree with our point of view, it is not for Comcast lawyers in Philadelphia to prevent people from hearing the ad in San Ramon.”
The letter was delivered after the following developments:
• Vice-Mayor Jerry Cambra will officially welcome the group on behalf of the City at a ceremony at 4 p.m. Monday in front of City Hall. Other elected officials and city employees have been invited to attend.
• On Friday evening, approximately 25 Tri-Valley residents packed a small room in the San Ramon Community Center to engage in a dialogue with the group. Among those attending was Cambra and several city employees.
• A petition drive in Tri-Valley area already has garnered more than 200 signatures in support of the efforts of the group to meet with O’Reilly. The group hopes to have 500 signatures by Thursday.
• On Thursday, the group will conduct a major press conference and march to company headquarters. The press conference will take place at 11 a.m. at the San Ramon Community Center.
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