PLEASE NOTE: FREE Donziger vigils schedulled for 2026 will be announced soon.
Hope to be back on schedule early in 2026 and will see you same time same place. Tom
The GIANTS OF MEN Memorial represents all the is good in community – Reflection followed by ACTION
Q. Why did I choose Barrington’s Pier as the most appropriate place in Ireland to hold my Vigils?
A. Because members of the Irish Development Education Association (IDEA) and member organisations of the DOCHAS Network of Irish International Development Agencies have failed to challenge one of their members UNICEF Ireland on their blatant conflict of interest.
Also, President Donald Trump & his chums in BIG OIL wants to undo everything Aengus & Jack Finucane stood for and achieved.
Donncha do the right thing and Say No To TEXACO
FLASHBACK to 19 August 2023 at GIANTS OF MEN memorial video by Limerick Leader
Global Education As Activism with Colm Regan – Reimagining Development
Colm Regan is the former head of global / development education in the Irish development agency Trócaire and founder of the NGO, 80:20: Educating & Acting for a Better World. He has extensive experience of policy, advocacy, campaigning and education for social justice in the global North and South. Colm regards global education as explicitly political and rooted in social change. He discusses his “boots on the ground” approach to global education based on decades of activism.
Is the closure of US AID a “wake up” call to Irish Aid, the Dochas Network, Irish Development Education Association (IDEA) and the Irish Environmental Network (IEN)?
“The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.
It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.”
Just imagine how you would feel if you, or one of your friends in Dóchas, IDEA or IEN here in Ireland, was prosecuted by a corporate body like Circle K or Ryan Air. Imagine that during the trial you were denial a jury. Imagine you were sentenced by a judge with links to Circle K and Ryan Air, to almost 1,000 days of detention, between house arrest (wearing an ankle bracelet) and a prison cell. And all because you won a major court case against the corporate entity involved.
Well that’s exactly what happened to human rights defender Steven Donziger, in what has been described as the first corporate prosecution in history. The prosecuting corporation: Texaco-Chevron.
This campaign celebrates the courage, determination and resilience of forest communities in Ecuador and their human-rights defender, Steven Donziger. All of whom have, and continue to this day, to suffered grave injustice at the hands of oil giant Texaco and their US owner Chevron.
The campaign will include a number of actions: vigils, letter writing and visits to schools and much more.
As a result of fossil fuel extraction and illegal logging, forest communities are on the frontlines of the climate crisis and resulting ecocide across the world. Just Forests urges people on the island of Ireland to join the FREE Donziger Race Is On vigils and stand together to hold Texaco-Chevron to account.
Here in Ireland, international and national NGOs appears to lack any desire or ambition to deal with the glaring conflict-of-interest that exists at UNICEF Ireland.
With all this in mind, we encourage you to come along to any of the scheduled vigils and reflect on how we can make a difference.
Conflict of interest, corporate green and greed washing, human rights abuses, are just some of the issues dealt with in Just Forests RIO – Race Is On Series 2025 – 2030.
Fossil fuel logos are everywhere, for example the Bord Gais Energy Theatre. France had banned fossil fuel advertising this year and her opinion the rest of the world will follow suit. The industry is fighting back with mind boggling budgets.
New figures published just today show that air pollution is killing 100 European children every month.
Every day from our missionary base deep in the Amazonian forest, we trekked three kilometres to meet with a community of Achuar. Later, I wrote in my diary…
…we slowly made our way through soft muddied tracks under the most awe-inspiring canopies penetrated by shimmering light, through a narrow, cloister-like pathway surrounded on either side by tree-pillars. In this most sacred of cathedrals … trees towering above us for countless metres that had our heads titling upwards, our necks straining to the sky…
Even I didn’t make the connection, fuel companies’ campaigns were so brilliantly marketed that they were hiding in plain sight, inside our culture. Since the 1970s and 1980s Exxon and Shell knew they were changing the chemistry of the planet but they chose to retain the business model for profit over the future of life. They need to be kicked out of our schools.
In the face of their inexcusable and catastrophic impact on the planet, fossil fuel companies like Chevron-Texaco are desperate for a ‘social license’ to operate. In Ireland they hope to boost that license by coughing up €130,000 – peanuts to them. Irish sports, famous the world over, are better than that. Please don’t take their tainted money.
What’s involved here is a matter of principle, a matter of fundamental principle in terms of what schooling is about, what sport is about, what community is about, and what fossil fuel companies are about.
It’s particularly pernicious when they go after children as I think is happening in your country. I’ve seen this story all over the place. It’s not new. The response of the Irish campaigners could be a model and a symbol for what can be done by dedicated citizens. I salute everyone, all you folks and I’m so appreciative of what you’re doing.
Irish sports clubs need to understand that Texaco’s offer of support is intended to greenwash its reputation as a serial polluter and major contributor to global warming. Chevron-Texaco was found by courts in Ecuador to have deliberately dumped 16 billion gallons of cancer-causing toxic oil waste into the rainforest, causing a cancer epidemic that has killed thousands and has deci- mated five Indigenous nations who are teetering on the brink of extinction. After it was held accountable in court by the communities it devastated, Chevron refused to pay the $9.5 billion judgment and threatened the Indigenous peoples with a ‘lifetime of litigation’ unless they dropped the case.
When it comes to respect for the environment, it is being sued in dozens of countries around the world for its irresponsible and harmful environmental practices.
Pic 1. Steven Donziger and Rex Weyler
Pic 2. Steven Donziger and Tom Roche
“I appreciate the great humanitarian work Donnaca O’Callaghan does on behalf of UNICEF Ireland, but I urgently ask him to withdraw from any association with Texaco, a company with an appalling human rights record around the world. Chevron-Texaco is responsible for human rights and environmental abuses against indigenous communities in Nigeria, Ecuador, and other nations.
When Ecuador courts ruled that Chevron-Texaco was responsible for massive pollution that lead to a health crisis, the company fled the country, refused to pay the court judgement, and has attacked their victims with retaliatory lawsuits. Mr. O’Callaghan, don’t allow Texaco to use you and local Irish sports programs to clean up their image. Please distance yourself from this company until they answer for the harm they have already caused.”
Rex Weyler. Co-founder, GREENPEACE International.
