Last Friday saw the anniversary of a shameful chapter in the U.S. legal system and further proof of the dangerous control the fossil fuel industry has over government, as human rights lawyer Steven Donziger marked two years under house arrest.

Donziger is facing an unprecedented attack because he helped win a groundbreaking case against Chevron, which was found liable for its deliberate pollution of the Ecuadorian Amazon and ordered to pay $9.5 billion in damages to the affected Indigenous and campesino residents. That judgement has been affirmed by six appellate courts, including the Supreme Courts of Ecuador and Canada.

Since then, Chevron has refused to pay and threatened the affected communities with a "lifetime of litigation." The U.S. legal system has also failed the people of Ecuador, and the oil company has targeted Donziger and the people it poisoned in Ecuador with one of the largest corporate SLAPP suits in history.

But Chevron did not realize that its persecution of Donziger would mobilize tens of thousands to demand accountability against its pollution in Ecuador and elsewhere. On Friday, rallies calling for Donziger's immediate release took place in over a dozen cities around the world.