Where are the criminal prosecutions of the major corporations responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Still nowhere to be found. Where are the prosecutors? Where is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)? Not prosecuting major polluters.
Instead, what are they doing? Cracking down on whistleblowers. And those who support whistleblowers. While the corporate crooks are running free.
Next time you think of this disparity of justice, remember these two words: Jon Grand.
For more than twenty years, Grand was a senior administrator at the EPA in Chicago. Never had a run in with the law. Then, he made the mistake of supporting an EPA whistleblower.
In 2000, Grand was talking on the phone with colleagues in Washington. And the EPA people in Washington were making disparaging remarks about Marsha Coleman-Adebayo – a young African-American EPA staffer who was suing the EPA and its administrator – Carol Browner – for race and sex discrimination.
“They said they all had to be in Washington because ‘the Rosa Parks of the EPA’ was suing the administrator,” Grand told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “They meant that Marsha was setting herself up as someone who she wasn’t – Rosa Parks,” Grand said. “She was trying to pretend she was a civil rights crusader – suing people and so on. It was very derogatory.”
Grand had never heard of Coleman-Adebayo – or of her lawsuit.
Read more here.
