It’s Time to Change Chevron–Moblilize for Climate Justice in Richmond Ca on Aug 15

By scott parkin

The Mobilization for Climate Justice-West (a coalition of over a dozen groups) are calling for a rally and mass civil disobedience in at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California on August 15.

mcj west

Kicking off a season of direct action in the lead up to the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, MCJ-West wants people from all over the west to come to the Bay Area and support impacted communities in Richmond and beyond.

Call to Action:

Protest 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:

• Chevron’s polluting oil refinery in Richmond • Chevron and oil industry expansions – killing people and the planet for profit • Chevron and Big Oil standing in the way of solutions to climate change

We invite you to join our alliance for this mobilization that will continue until Copenhagen, including international days of action on October 24 (called by 350.org) and November 30 (called by Mobilization for Climate Justice). We aim to localize the global fight for climate justice and support communities and local organizations that are fighting for climate justice where we live.

We believe that we, in the Bay Area and California, have the potential to create well organized, creative, and powerful mobilizations and actions that can help catalyze a mass climate justice movement to confront the root causes of climate change, and build the local leadership necessary for shaping local, state, national and global solutions. To realize this potential, we need your group’s participation.

FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION:
For the Saturday, August 15 mobilization at Chevron:

1) Action Agreement:
All participants are asked to agree to the following guidelines:
• Our actions will be nonviolent – respecting the safety and long-term resilience of local activists, their families and communities.
• Our action strategies and tactics will respect, and be shaped in dialogue with, local activists and organizations campaigning against Chevron.
• Our action strategy will embody tactics that make space for a diversity of participation, enhance opportunities to organize against the Chevron refinery in the years to come, and empower local community activists to embrace their leadership of the climate justice movement.

2) Climate Justice:
Our basis of unity for this action shall be a universal commitment to Climate Justice, including:
• Rejecting carbon-trading mechanisms, particularly those that allow corporations and wealthy countries to continue polluting by funding “clean development” projects in poor countries.
• Achieving low-carbon, community-based economies, without resorting to global markets-based schemes and false, corporate technologies such as nuclear power, biofuels and “clean coal”.
• Protecting the rights of those affected by the transition to a just energy economy, especially frontline communities and workers.
• Amplifying the voices of frontline community organizations fighting for environmental health and Climate Justice, against polluters such as Chevron.
Bali Principles of Climate Justice: http://cbecal.org/pdf/bali-principles.pdf

GOALS:
Our goals for this action include:
• Localize Climate Justice struggles, and situate the local struggle for Climate Justice within community-based organizing and priorities.
• Build awareness among local activists (especially youth) about the Climate Justice movement, as well as about both real and corporate solutions to the climate crisis.
• Build the capacity of local activists to participate in the Climate Justice movement, and in other struggles for social and environmental justice.
• Contribute to a broader definition of the Climate Justice movement, and contribute to the inclusion of the goals and aspirations of community-based organizations and workers in that movement.
• Re-energize and redefine mass-based, nonviolent direct action, and demonstrate its potency as a force for social change.
• Build towards later popular mobilizations for Climate Justice – including international days of action on October 24 (called by
350.org) and November 30 (called by Mobilization for Climate Justice) – and build a movement that will continue to fight for Climate Justice after those mobilizations have ended.

DEMANDS
OIL REDUCTION, NOT REFINERY EXPANSION! CAP THE CRUDE!
Instead of reducing oil production and shifting to sustainable industries, Chevron and other Big Oil corporations are expanding their refineries, pipelines and extraction projects to process dirtier, heavier crude oil from places like the Alberta Tar Sands. This massive expansion is destroying communities and ecosystems across North America, and if allowed to continue would derail any efforts to adequately reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Communities for a Better Environment recently released a study that found that, “a switch to heavy oil…. could double or triple greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. oil refineries”.

Richmond and Bay Area environmental and climate justice groups are leading a precedent-setting fight against this expansion. A fierce, local grassroots campaign has been fighting Chevron’s pushing, lying and bribing strategies to expand their Richmond refinery. After Chevron pushed their expansion plans through the (formerly
pro-Chevron) Richmond City council, environmental justice groups sued the city to stop the expansion and are demanding a “Crude Cap” that would monitor and prevent the refining of heavier, dirtier crude. Like the No Coal campaign, it’s time for the climate justice movement to step up and take on big oil and their deadly expansion plans .

It’s also time for the Chevron, and our society more generally, to move beyond fossil fuels – and to move beyond corporate-driven solutions to corporate-caused problems (such as nuclear power, biofuels, waste incineration and “clean coal”). We demand a rapid transition towards an economy based on environmental sustainability and social and environmental justice.
http://cbecal.org/campaigns/Chevron.html

CORPORATIONS OUT OF COPENHAGEN – OUR CLIMATE IS NOT YOUR BUSINESS!
We demand that Chevron and other corporate polluters stay out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – that corporate lobbyists be barred from participation, and thus prevented from further interfering in the development of climate stabilization strategies. To date, the UNFCCC meetings have had corporate lobbyists vastly outnumber representatives of governments and civil society groups – sometime as high as 4:1. Meanwhile, Indigenous Nations, frontline communities and the most impacted people from around the world are not allowed meaningful representation at the table. We demand that such corrupt international processes be stopped, and that sovereign Indigenous Nations and frontline communities be allowed leadership roles in developing a global climate strategy in the interest of people and planet. ant

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 and 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
Rainforest Action Network
Richmond Progressive Alliance
Ruckus Society
Rising Tide North America
West County Toxics Coalition
350.org