Crude Reflections Book Launch at the Exposure Gallery

Thursday, May 29th, 2008 7pm:

Crude Reflections Book Launch at the Exposure Gallery
801 Howard St. (in the Wolf Street Senior Housing Center, near the corner of Fourth Street.)
Join the authors/photographers Lou Dematteis and Kayana Szymczak and a special delegation from Ecuador. View the Crude Reflections photo exhibit and hear the authors talk about their work. Book signing.



More about Crude Reflections, forthcoming from City Lights Publishers:

Crude Reflections/Cruda Realidad: Oil, Ruin and Resistance in the Amazon Rainforest documents Goldman Environmental Prize winners Luis Yanza and Pablo Fajardo’s campaign for justice in Ecuador.

Crude Reflections chronicles the human and environmental impact of oil drilling in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the pollution is so extensive that medical experts currently predict thousands of deaths from cancer and the disappearance of five indigenous rainforest communities. Community leaders and doctors already report elevated rates of cancer in the region, as well as birth defects.

In April, a court appointed consultant in Ecuador claimed that Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001, failed to clean up billions of gallons of toxic wastewater produced by Texaco. "Chevron inherited Texaco's legacy in Ecuador," said Mitch Anderson, of Amazon Watch, the environmental advocacy group. "This report validates most of the assertions the plaintiffs have been making for many years. Chevron, is responsible for an environmental disaster in Ecuador that had implications for public health, in order to make a profit."

Photographers Lou Dematteis and Kayana Szymczak have documented the physical and emotional reality of those affected by this toxic contamination, roughly 30 times greater than the more widely reported Exxon Valdez spill. Book includes a foreword by Trudie Styler and Sting, co-founders of the Rainforest Foundation.

The case will be decided by the end of this year.
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HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOS FROM THE BOOK ARE AVAILABLE
SEE PHOTOS AT: http://www.chevrontoxico.com/article.php?id=110
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