Protest at Berkeley I-House Tonight!

Inside the International House’s Chevron Auditorium, ChevronTexaco executives are enjoying a meal paid for with profits gained at the expense of the environment and people of our planet. How can the International House accept money from corporate abusers while claiming to “promote a more tolerant and peaceful world”?

ChevronTexaco and the International Community

· During its nearly 40-year history of operation in Nigeria, ChevronTexaco has propped up military regimes, flared billions of cubic feed of natural gas, and dumped millions of pounds of toxic waste into waterways. When people protest to demand clean-up and compensation, ChevronTexaco responds by providing helicopters and boats to the Nigerian police and military to attack communities. The company has actually been implicated in the murder of Nigerians protesting its operations.

· Between 1971 and 1991, ChevronTexaco destroyed rainforests and caused massive oil spills in order to extract more than 1.5 billion barrels of oil from the Ecuadorian Amazon, devastating one of the most biologically fragile places on earth. In order to save millions of dollars, Texaco dumped 20 billion gallons of highly toxic wastes from its operations into Ecuadorian rivers and wetlands, ignoring industry standards. Now, ChevronTexaco denies the people of Ecuador their right to compensation, and instead is trying to return to Ecuador for a new round of devastation.

·Under the auspices of the UN “Oil for Food” program, ChevronTexaco extracted millions of gallons of oil from Iraq for processing at the Richmond refinery in 2002. Far from addressing the humanitarian crisis in Iraq, the program has resulted in profitable oil sales and contracts for multi-national corporations, including ChevronTexaco. Former CEO Ken Derr said it best: “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas - reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to.”

· The ChevronTexaco refinery in Richmond spews a deadly array of toxins into the environment – including carcinogenic dioxins – affecting mainly communities of color. Since 1999, there has been a 20% increase – mostly attributed to the Chevron Refinery – in toxic emissions in Richmond, inflicting severe illnesses like cancer and childhood asthma. Despite decades of requests, demands, lawsuits and protests, Chevron has continued to place executive salaries and corporate profits over the health and safety of its workers and of our communities.