Chevron at the Smithsonian? Take Action for Nigerian Human Rights Now!
This month, the oil company Chevron is sponsoring the Smithsonian's Nigerian Film Festival. Since Chevron began producing oil and gas in the Niger Delta in 1963, the company has been complicit in some of the most egregious environmental and human rights abuses in the region.
Global Exchange has teamed with our partners, Justice in Nigeria Now (JINN) and Rainforest Action Network's brand new Change Chevron campaign to make sure that all who attend this festival know the truth about Chevron's horrendous ongoing record of abuse in Nigeria.
Please help us by attending -- and spreading the word to others to attend -- to support Nigerian filmmakers while making sure the Smithsonian knows audiences disapprove of the event's sponsor. RAN will distribute and collect the postcards and will then deliver them to the Smithsonian.
The Film Festival runs every Thursday in February. Find out more information.
If you'd like to volunteer to help distribute materials, please contact Kate Rooth of RAN at (202) 450-2826 or gfcinfo@ran.org.
Tell the New CEO of Chevron What To Do!
Send the new CEO of Chevron a personal postcard. Download our "Dear Mr. Watson" postcards to send with your own personalized message to the incoming CEO. Want a bunch of them? We can send you a batch, just contact Antonia@globalexchange.org. You can also use the postcard as a guide to write your own letter.
Over the New Year, from their homes in the Amazon, the people of Ecuador recorded this heartfelt video message for the new CEO of Chevron, John Watson. The communities of the Ecuadorian Amazon have been suffering from Chevron's massive contamination of their rainforest homelands for over four decades. Their message to the new chief of Chevron is clear and resolute, and full of years of pain and hope: "We don't want to continue dying from cancer... Please clean up the areas affected by your company."
Support Legislation Forcing Oil Companies to Disclose Payments to Foreign Governments
Mining and drilling are multibillion-dollar industries in some of the world's poorest countries. But the people of these countries are only getting poorer.
So where is your gas money going? Backroom deals. Secret payments to foreign governments.
A bill now in Congress would help protect poor people by making oil, gas, and mining companies open their books -- but industry lobbyists are fighting it.
Tell Congress: No more secret payments! Poor communities have a right to follow the money -- and to call for a fair share for schools, health care, and jobs.
PROTEST CHEVRON with the YES MEN and GLOBAL EXCHANGE
We invite you to join community leaders of Richmond, CA and activists from around the country to spend 3 days learning, building, & preparing for action!
The 2009 West Coast Convergence for Climate Justice is a three-day training and movement-building convergence followed by a collective action on Monday, September 21st. Join us to learn about climate change and climate politics, support local communities in their ongoing fights for climate justice, & build a stronger Climate Justice movement on the West Coast leading up to the international days of action on October 24th and November 30th and international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
Trainings and workshops at the convergence will cover:
Political education around climate justice
Practical sustainability skills (traditional knowledge, local food systems, solar energy, etc)
Direct action
Media messaging
Organizing and campaigning
Movement building.
Antonia Juhasz, Chevron Program Director, will lead the following workshops:
FRIDAY, SEPT 18 11:00- 1:00: Chevron 101 - What's Chevron doing locally, nationally, internationally, so we know what to do to counter them.
FRIDAY, SEPT 18 2:30 - 4:00: Corporations vs. the climate - what corporations are up to between now and Copenhagen so we know what to do to counter them.
This Convergence is part of an annual series of climate camps all over the world. This year there will be camps in the UK, Australia, France, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, and the United States. The Convergence is also the second in a series of events organized by the Mobilization for Climate Justice West, a network of environmental and social justice organizations organizing to generate "street heat" around climate justice in the lead-up to the international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
Sponsored by: Amazon Watch, Crude Accountability, Global Exchange, Justice in Nigeria Now, and Rainforest Action Network.
With: CorpWatch, Filipino-American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, Trustees for Alaska, Communities for a Better Environment, Mpalabanda, Richmond Progressive Alliance and EarthRights International.
Features the writing of: Mitch Anderson, Nnimmo Bassey, Agostinho Chicaia, Victoria Clark, Stephen E. Cotton, Charlie Cray, David Cullen, Paul Donowitz, Sarah Dotlich, Daniel Herriges, Michelle Kinman, Laura Livoti, Marilyn Langlois, Brant Olson, Aileen Suzara, and Jessica Tovar, and the contributions of dozens of organizations.
Chevron's 2008 annual report is a glossy celebration of the company's most profitable year in its history.
What Chevron's annual report does not tell its shareholders is the true cost paid for those financial returns, or the global movement gaining voice and strength against Chevron's abuses.
Thus, we, the communities and their allies who bear the consequences of Chevron's operations, have prepared an alternative annual report of Chevron entitled "The True Cost of Chevron."
Never before has one report brought together the information, stories, and struggles of communities from Angola, Burma, Canada, Chad, Cameroon, Ecuador, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the Philippines and across the United States directly impacted by, and in struggle against, Chevron's operations.
WILL YOU JOIN US?
Download and share the report. The unprecedented report was just released to the public before Chevron's annual shareholder's meeting. Designed by Design Action.
Contribute Online -- this unprecedented report has stretched both our minds and our pocketbooks.
Or send your tax-deductible contribution to: Chevron Alternative Annual Report c/o Global Exchange. 2017 Mission Street, 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94110 Please indicate "Chevron Alternative Report" in the memo field of your check.
Questions about your contribution? Contact Kirsten Moller at Global Exchange. kirsten@globalexchange.org
I will try to survive while my country is exploited--Chevron is profiting from the war in Iraq
I will try to ignore the toxic waste pits in my village --Chevron dumped over 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon I will try not to get cancer --Chevron's refinery in Richmond, California poisons the community
Kirsten Moller at 
