LOCAL/GLOBAL JUSTICE teach-in, Richmond 11/3

ACTION FOR LOCAL/GLOBAL JUSTICE

*** PRESS ADVISORY***
Thursday November 1, 2001

TEACH –IN BEGINS BAY AREA MOBILZATION AGAINST WTO
LEADING NIGERIAN ENVIRONMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER TO
SPEAK

Teach-In on the WTO & Toxic Pollution
Saturday November 3, 1:30pm
Madeline Whittlesey Community Center,Civic Center
Plaza, 26th & MacDonald, Richmond
3:30: Toxic Tour of Richmond: a guided tour of toxic
industries in our community.

Richmond, CA- In preparation for the Global Justice
Days of Action Against the WTO, there will be a public
teach-in on Saturday November 3, at 1:30 pm about how
the WTO and economic globalization policies impact
issues from environmental and economic justice
struggles from Bay Area to Nigeria to Ecuador;
ChevronTexaco’s link to the WTO; how oil extraction
drives economic globalization; the connection between
oil extraction and the war in Afghanistan.

Featured Speaker will be Oronto Douglas, Nigeria’s
leading environmental human rights lawyer. Douglas
represented Ken Saro-Wiwa before he was executed by
the Nigerian military Junta in 1995. He is Deputy
director Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the
Earth Nigeria, and has been a visiting lecturer and
speaker at universities, international conferences and
community organized events all over the world. Special
guest speaker Chumpi Ramiro, an indigenous Achuar of
Ecuador, will speak about his community’s efforts
against toxic pollution and violation of indigenous
lands by the oil industry in Ecuador. Speakers will
include Henry Clark, Executive Director of
Richmond-based West County Toxics Coalition, Gopal
Dayeneni, Oil Campaign Coordinator with Project
Underground, Patti Cooper, of A Chance to Begin, and
LaDonna Williams, of People for Children’s Health and
Environmental Justice. The event will also include
spoken word performers and a theater presentation by
Art and Revolution Street Theater Collective. The
Teach-In will be followed by a “Toxic Tour” of
Richmond at 3:30pm leaving from the Teach-In location.

“ChevronTexaco is typical of the companies that
benefit from economic globalization. The power
ChevronTexaco has over communities from Richmond,
California to the Niger Delta in Nigeria is dependent
on access to financial, military and governmental
power. That very access is guaranteed by the agenda
the WTO proposes,” said Gopal Dayeneni, Oil Campaign
Coordinator for Project Underground, an oil industry
watchdog group.

On November 9-10, Bay Area communities will
demonstrate against ChevronTexaco and PG&E,
beneficiaries of the free trade policies of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) and other economic
globalization mechanisms. These days of action
coincide with the meeting of the WTO in Qatar. Two
years after its defeat in Seattle, the WTO will meet
in Qatar, an isolated Persian/Arabian Gulf State. On
Friday, November 9, declared an “International Day of
Action against the WTO by Global Justice activists,
demonstrators will gather at noon at Justin Herman
Plaza (Embarcadero) in San Francisco. On November 10,
at noon, demonstrators will march from Richmond BART
to Chevron’s refinery. Bay Area Global Justice
organizers are mobilizing with local communities in
solidarity with communities around the world who are
reasserting global resistance to the WTO. The
coalition, Action for Local/Global Justice is made up
of 30 Bay Area organizations that cover a range of
issues from Chevron’s toxic refinery to a proposed
Super Jail for youth in Alameda County.

"The agenda for the WTO Ministerial in Qatar includes
some of the most dangerous and controversial
agreements in its history," said Antonia Juhasz,
Project Director of the International Forum on
Globalization in San Francisco. "These agreements
would expand the WTO's authority even further into all
aspects of our lives -- from the education our
children receive, to the toxins dumped in our
backyard, to our access to life saving medicines. Now
more than ever, it is necessary to send a message that
this organization must not move forward, but rather be
moved back."

“Residents in Richmond are joining forces with people
in Nigeria, in Ecuador and throughout the Bay Area to
demand that ChevronTexaco stop polluting our
communities, achieve zero dioxin emissions, and
compensate for damages,” said Henry Clark of West
County Toxics Coalition. “These actions will add
momentum to our efforts for justice, both locally and
globally.”