Actors launch short film ‘SLAPP Suit’ on threat of corporate intimidation

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) are used to bury activists, journalists, whistleblowers, and non-profit organisations in legal fees, drain their time and resources, and ultimately make the cost of dissent too high. 

US-based fossil fuel pipeline company Energy Transfer has been bringing SLAPP lawsuits against Greenpeace in the US and Greenpeace International for nearly a decade in a “blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline”.

Mr Bardem said: “I made this film with Greenpeace because they’re fighting a monumental legal battle about free speech, but really it’s about something much bigger: widespread attempts to silence activism. The type of lawsuits used by pipeline company Energy Transfer are also being used to silence journalists, artists and ordinary people who care about their communities. The question is not why to speak out. But how could we not, if we want to have the same freedom in the future?”

The threat of corporate intimidation tactics like SLAPP lawsuits is far bigger than Greenpeace. Corporate polluters and greedy oligarchs know protest works – that’s why they’re trying to make the stakes so high no one will be willing to take the risk to defend people or the planet. 

Ms Finney said: “The right to protest in the UK is a huge battle. People demanding better is what built our country, but increasingly it’s becoming criminalised. Not enough people believe or see that our rights are really under threat, and that’s why we made this film: Greenpeace’s legal fight against Energy Transfer is one example of resistance, but there are many more. Bullies respond to strength and togetherness, and that’s what we need more of right now.”

Susannah Compton, Greenpeace International, head of programme – civic resistance and freedoms said: “The global threat of corporate intimidation tactics such as SLAPP lawsuits is an existential crisis for freedom of speech and protest for everyone who dares speak out against the powerful - whether Greenpeace would agree with them or not. If we do not defend our right to resist, we surrender the future to a few oligarchs who see power as a tool for empire rather than a shared responsibility.”