Join Us for a March on the Richmond Chevron Refinery!
Our Alliance of Bay Area groups invite you and your organization to
join us for a series of actions and events - starting with a Mass
Mobilization at the Chevron Oil Refinery in Richmond on August 15 and
leading up to the UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen this December.
There
is a tremendous potential to create a well-organized, creative, and
powerful movement - led by communities confronting the biggest
corporate polluters, and keep these corporations from interfering with
much needed climate solutions both at home and abroad.
Stop Chevron - Join the Mobilization for Climate Justice!
August 15th, 2009
Richmond BART (16th St & MacDonald Avenue)
11:30am Festival/Rally, followed by 1pm March on Chevron oil refinery
Organized by the Mobilization for Climate Justice - West
Phone/email: 415 373 3825, mcjbay@gmail.com
Website: http://actforclimatejustice.org/west
Join us to protest
o Chevron's polluting oil refinery in Richmond
o Chevron and oil industry expansions - killing people and planet for profit
o Chevron and Big Oil standing in the way of solutions to climate change
Join us to support
o A cap on the expansion of crude oil
o Local communities in their struggle against Chevron
o Environmental justice, public health, and worker safety
o Climate solutions that embrace community alternatives and green jobs
We
will gather near the Richmond BART station for a festival/rally at
11:30am on August 15th, with live music, performance, and food. At
1pm, we will begin marching towards the Chevron oil refinery, where
there will be the opportunity to participate in non-violent civil
disobedience against the refinery.
This action marks the launch
of the Mobilization for Climate Justice whose goal is to empower
community-based activists and networks to lead a global movement in
confronting the root causes of climate change at home, while defining
self-determination pathways for a new energy economy. In the greater
Bay Area, the Mobilization for Climate Justice West is organizing a
series of demonstrations and educational events to generate "street
heat" around climate justice in the lead-up to the international
climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
Why Chevron?
Chevron
is the largest corporation in California and the fifth largest
corporation in the world. Its Richmond refinery, one of the oldest in
the country, is the largest industrial polluter in the San Francisco
Bay Area, releasing nearly 100,000 pounds of toxic waste a year,
including known human carcinogens and asthma-causing pollutants. The
refinery is now, and has been, listed as in "high priority violation"
of air compliance standards, among other violations, by the EPA every
year since at least 2006. In Richmond, 17,000 people live within three
miles of the refinery, and Richmond's childhood asthma rates are higher
state and national averages.
Chevron is trying to expand this
refinery to process heavier crude oil. Refining heavier and dirtier
crude will result in more air pollution and disease in the local
community. Heavy crude production also contributes 2 to 3 times more
climate pollution than conventional oil.
Chevron's oil
extraction activities are decimating communities and ecosystems around
the world, including Indigenous Peoples communities in Canada, Nigeria,
Ecuador, Burma, Chad, Angola and Alaska.
What is climate justice?
Climate
justice is the understanding that the urgent action needed to prevent
climate change must be based on community-led solutions and the
well-being of local communities, indigenous peoples, and the global
poor - as opposed to corporate-led schemes such as clean coal, nuclear,
industrial biofuels and carbon trading. The goals of the climate
justice movement are to:
o Build awareness of the complete
spectrum of human and ecological impacts associated with the polluting
energy industries responsible for the climate crisis.
o Build
public opposition to false, corporate and market-based solutions as
well as to the corporate domination of climate policy arenas.
o
Prompt urgent grassroots, community-based action to stop the largest
corporate climate polluters and start a just transition towards clean,
safe and equitable energy futures.
o Strengthen and bring
together the voices of Indigenous and frontline communities and
workers, so that all solutions to the climate crisis are rooted in the
public interest.
What You Can Do
o Join the Mobilization for Climate Justice West!
o Help us organize events leading up to August 15 and on to Copenhagen!
o Come out on August 15! Bring you friends, colleagues, and family!
o Learn more by visiting our Website: http://actforclimatejustice.org/west
Mobilization for Climate Justice West is a collaboration of:
Art in Action *Asian-Pacific Environmental Network *Bay Localize
Communities for a Better Environment * Direct Action to Stop the War
*Earth First! *Environmental Justice & Climate Change Initiative
* Forest Ethics *Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives¨ *Global Exchange
*Global Justice and Ecology Project *Greenpeace *Headrush
*International
Forum on Globalization *Justice in Nigeria Now! *Movement Generation *Pacific Environment
*Rainforest Action Network *Richmond Progressive Alliance* Ruckus
Society *Rising Tide North America *West County Toxics Coalition *350.org
