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“When you fill your tank with Shell Oil gasoline, you are filling your tank with the blood of the Nigerian people,” stated Oronto Douglas this past September in a speech to Lewis & Clark students. Mr. Douglas is a lawyer from Nigeria who represented Ken Saro-Wiwa, an environmental and human rights activist and writer, who was executed by the Nigerian military government for protesting Shell Oil’s human rights abuses and environmental terrorism.
November 10 is the third anniversary of Saro-Wiwa’s and eight others’ brutal murder in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Though we may not recognize a connection between ourselves and these murders, perhaps we would if we understood the connection between the Nigerian government (a military dictatorship), Shell Oil (the Nigerian military’s financial supporter and sometimes arms dealer), and American citizens (Shell’s number one customers).
This is a situation where, if we are not part of the solution, we are most likely part of the problem. If we continue to buy oil and gasoline from companies which commit environmental and human rights atrocities overseas, we are condemning ourselves and our children to an uncertain future where convenience for the rich means death and destruction for the poor.
Here on the law school campus, transportation issues are in the forefront of debate, and with good reason. Automobiles are definitely part of the problem, and reducing our dependency on single-occupancy vehicles is the perfect way to begin reducing our dependency on multinational oil corporations like Shell. As the rainy season sets in, it’s a good time to try out those transportation alternatives which so many students have been creating and advocating. Take a ride on the Pioneer Express; call your friends and register for carpooling; ride your bike to school once a week; and, at the very least, don’t buy gas from Shell! While you’re at it, remember to VOTE!
Flogging a Dead Corps
In Trung D. Tu’s article entitled Law Students Unite to Fight Bigotry and Blackmail in the September 1998, Volume 5.1 issue of Letter of the Law, we inadvertently and consistently misspelled the word “corps,” as in the Judge Advocate General Corps. We regret the error.
Photographer Wanted
Take a study break and take some pictures! And get published while you’re at it! Letter of the Law needs photographers; we’ll pay for film and developing.
Email: lotl@lclark.edu