Rally in New York: Report, Video & Photos
May 27th, 2009 | Published in blog | 4 Comments
From a press release going out momentarily:
Today, a noon rally took place in New York outside the courtroom on Foley Square in Manhattan. A hundred supporters came out to welcome the trial, unfurling a banner that read, ‘JUSTICE FOR THE OGONI’. Inspiring speakers stressed that Shell cannot escape justice for their role in human rights abuses in the 1990s, and put pressure on Shell to end the ongoing environmental and social devastation in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. A group of Ogoni activists closed the event by singing the Ogoni solidarity anthem.
The event was well-attended by media from a number of TV, radio, print and wire outlets. Supporters distributed handbills to passersby, explaining our rally and educating the public about the issues our campaign is highlighting. The rally was supported by local human rights and environmental justice activists and concerned citizens from around the New York area, and as far away as California, the UK, and of course, Nigeria.
Speakers included Brent Blackwelder, Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, Ben Amunwa from Remember Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian activist Isidore Udoh, Ben Ikara, a MOSOP activist from Ogoni, currently living in the U.S., and Steve Kretzmann from Oil Change International, Charles Wiwa, nephew of the late Ken Saro-Wiwa also made brief remarks before leading the Ogoni activists in the Ogoni solidarity anthem to conclude the rally. Read more and watch the video after the break–
Check out this brief video made by volunteer supporter Nick Gulotta:
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
Check out the photos below by Jeffrey Rae. Click on the images to see a larger view.
[Journalists, to download the below photos at high-resolution, click here].
May 28th, 2009 at 12:22 am (#)
[...] of the protests are available to download along with a note of information. Click here for Nigeria, New York, and [...]
May 28th, 2009 at 10:13 am (#)
Friends,
In Ireland a solidarity action took place outside Shell’s Corrib House Headquarters on Monday. A similar action was again led by SHELL TO SEA at the Shell offices in Belmullet, Mayo on Wednesday afternoon. From the east to the West and finally to the North of Ireland where a similar action took place in Derry.
Please access http://www.indymedia.ie and http://www.shelltosea.com for images of two of these events: in Dublin and Derry.
M.M.McCarron
May 28th, 2009 at 5:26 pm (#)
re: youtube video - shell guilty rally in NYC:
Always great to see up-to-the-minute video of rallies on important current issues, however,
the music soundtrack in this you tube piece is a distraction to the speakers,and to the brief sound bite of the Ogoni solidarity song.
The message of the rally would be much more effective without the music, which is too loud in the mix anyway.
What about playing something like Fela Kuti’s “Sorrow, Tears and Blood” He’s Nigerian and singing about his people and his country after all.
Kia Mistilis
independent journalist
May 29th, 2009 at 4:55 am (#)
From the President’s Desk May 14, 2009
Fellow Ogoni People:
REMEMBER MAY 26-27, 2009!
On these dates Shell will go on trial in a New York Federal Court for its complicity in the gruesome murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni environmentalists in 1995 and its human rights/environmental atrocities in Ogoni! (Read the two articles attached). Shell on trial? Exactly! Spread the words. We must go to New York to show our support against Shell!
The stage is set. The wind has blown and the hen’s anus has come into the open. For so long, Shell has been slipping off numerous legal hooks for its oodles of human/environmental rights’ violations in Ogoni. Now the hooks have finally caught on. “Shell is here on trial.” It is a landmark trial! We, Ogoni people in Diaspora, must be involved. Remember 2001 when the World Environment Center (WEC) ignored the Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s disgraceful environmental records and human rights abuses in Ogoni and gave the company the Gold Medal for International Corporate Environmental Achievement at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC? Remember what we did – the massive peaceful demonstration we held outside the presentation center? It captured international and the company’s attention. We must do it again. We must show Shell it is a killer!
Fellow Ogoni people, it is time for another assembly against Shell. Friends of Ogoni, environmentalists, human rights activists and legal luminaries have all prepared and will be converging on New York on May 26-27. Know what? Most of these people have volunteered their time and resources for this case not because they seek personal gains but to see justice done. So, as an Ogoni directly affected by more than four decades of Shell’s damnable atrocities, do you have any reason not to be in New York, come May 26-27, 2009? Ogoni people, wake up! Remember…
Remember four decades of suffering, deprivation, penury and death occasioned by Shell’s corporate greed. Remember four decades of Shell’s ecological terrorism against Ogoni. Above all, remember November 10, 1995 and the blood of the innocent! Remember why you are in America. Come out en masse for a showdown with Royal Dutch/Shell Group. See you in New York, on May 26-27!
(Mene) IkpoBari Senewo
President, MOSOP-USA