Chevron Gets Fixed

On Sunday, Chevron became the first oil company to come under a Yes Men Audience Attack.

(See Video, Photos, and Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum's Blog of event)

Chevron was chosen because Chevron is different from other oil companies.

It is bigger than all but three (only ExxonMobil, BP and Shell are larger). It is facing the largest potential corporate liability in history ($27 billion) for causing the world's largest oil spill in the Ecuadorian rainforest. It is the only major U.S. Corporation still operating in Burma and, with its partner Total Oil Corp., is the single largest financial contributor to the Burmese government. It is the dominant private oil producer in both Angola and Kazakhstan, with operations in both countries mired in human rights and environmental abuses. It is the only major oil company to be tried in a U.S. court on charges of mass human rights abuse, including summary execution and torture (for its operations in Nigeria).

It is the only oil company to hire one of the Bush Administration's "torture memo" lawyers (William J. Haynes). It is the largest and most powerful corporation in California, where it is currently being sued for conspiring to fix gasoline prices. It has led the fight to keep California as the only major oil producing state that does not tax oil when it is pumped from the ground, thereby denying the state an extra $1.5 billion annually. It is the largest industrial polluter in the Bay Area and is among the largest single corporate contributors to climate change on the planet.

Chevron is also the focus of one of the world's most unique and well-organized corporate resistance campaigns.

That campaign got a jolt of energy when Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum came to San Francisco on Halloween weekend for a special screening of The Yes Men Fix the World.

Global Exchange and I teamed up with Andy (the movie's co-writer, director, and producer) and a host of the Bay Areas most creative activists, to lead an entire movie audience out of the theater, into the streets, and in protest of Chevron.

We spread the word early, far, and wide: The Yes Men are coming! The Yes Men are coming! They will not only fix the world, they will fix Chevron too!

Larry Bogad, a Yes Man co-hort and professor of Guerilla Theater, helped concoct a masterful street theater scenario. A crack team of protest and street theater organizers was compiled, including David Solnit of the Mobilization for Climate Justice and Rae Abileah of Code Pink. Rock The Bike signed on and the word kept spreading.

On Sunday, the Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District was filled beyond capacity with an audience that came ready to protest. They laughed, clapped, booed, and cheered along with the film. When the movie ended, Andy answered questions, I talked about Chevron, and Larry laid out the protest scenario.

Three Chevron executives, protected from the early ravages of climate change in SurvivaBalls, were dragged up the street by dozens of Chevron minions with nothing but haz-mat suits to protect them. Those unable to afford any protection (i.e. The Dead) followed close behind. Next came resistance: the Chevron street sweepers, actively cleaning up Chevron's messes who were followed by the protesters, ready to change the story.

We didn't have a permit, but we took a lane of traffic on 16th street anyway. The police first tried to intervene, then they "joined in," blocking traffic on our way to Market and Castro.

As we marched and the music blared, people literally came out of their houses and off of the streets to join in. Passersby eagerly took postcards detailing Chevron's corporate crimes.

Once we arrived at the gas station, I welcomed everyone and explained that we were at an independent Chevron (as opposed to corporate) station, whose owner (whom I'd been speaking with regularly) had his own list of grievances with his corporate boss. The particular station was not our target of protest, but rather, the Chevron Corporation itself.

Larry and Andy than led the entire crowd in a series of Tableaux Morts. The Chevron executives in their SurvivaBalls drained the lifeblood from the masses. The people began to rebel, forcing the SurvivaBalls into the "turtle" position to fend off the attacks. Ultimately, the separate groups saw their common purpose in resisting Chevron's abuses. The dead rose, the Chevron minions rebelled, and the sweepers and protesters joined together. They all chased the Chevron executives off into the distance, and then danced in the streets, rejoicing in their shared victory!

The Chevron Program I direct at Global Exchange seeks to unite Chevron affected communities across the United States and around the world. By uniting these communities, we build strength from each other, and become a movement. By expanding, strengthening, and highlighting this movement, we bring in more allies and create a powerful advocacy base for real policy change. Those changes will reign in Chevron, and by extension, the entire oil industry. And, by raising the voices of those hardest hit by the true cost of oil and exposing how we all ultimately pay the price, we help move the world more rapidly away from oil as an energy resource altogether.

 

Comments

[sheila]

For those who kick and scream at the monopolistic, wilderness-killing, toxic practices of Chevron, and in the same breath advocate for Big Solar, I got news for you: CHEVRON is the one building a large number of the remote, wasteful, extremely destructive industrial solar power plants in the southwest, and will behave exactly how they have behaved in their mercenary quest to rape the land for huge profits.

Big Energy, whether it is oil, coal, solar, nuclear, wind, or otherwise is one of the biggest offenders to democracy, the economy and the environment, so why on EARTH would people support having THEM rather than US own and control our renewable energy futures? We need clean, non-lethal rooftop solar, conservation, microwind, and improved storage solutions with our "stimulus" and other energy dollars, not more ecosystem and species deaths, eminent domain, ratepayer hijackings and wasteful, planet warming, monopolistic infrastructure!

Please, do not pretend to oppose Chevron or Goldman Sachs unles you are willing to oppose handing them millions of acres of our wilderness and billions of dollars of our money to prevent us from participating in the renewable energy economy, and to create a stranglehold over us we can never escape. Point of use generation is our last chance to break these chains - will you support it?

[Javani]

I smell astroturf.

"Chevron is also the focus of one of the world's most unique and well-organized corporate resistance campaigns."

Anything to do with that they are the most vocal oil opponent to cap and trade, while others have decided to jump on board and game it? Not doubting your sincerity, but you might observe where the funding is coming for this project, Wall Street directly, or laudered via grants by fronts like Pew Climate Center or EDF (old Enron buddies). Astroturfing managed through pr firm NGO divisions. Yes, those really exist.

[Overtone]

The love affair with the automobile may be a surprising path to dramatically reducing the need for oil.

Revolutionary new technology makes possible electric cars that need no recharge - as well as hybrid engines that may need only one gallon of water as fuel each thousand miles of driving.

See the article: 4 Steps to Revive the Auto Industry and the Economy on the website: www.aesopinstitute.org

It outlines breakthroughs leading to cars and trucks that need no fossil fuel or recharge. Later, more advanced versions will become power plants when parked, wirelessly selling electricity to the local utility.

The science is not in the textbooks and will understandably be greeted with skepticism and disbelief. However, independent laboratory validation of one remarkable breakthrough has taken place at Rowan University. It produced far more heat than can be explained by existing theory. The experiments must now be repeated at other laboratories.

This began the process of proving that new technology can allow a barrel of water to replace 200 barrels of oil!

Radically new technologies will seductively let the love affair with vehicles change much of what is currently believed about energy.

To learn more, see: www.chavaenergy.com Look under the heading HOW? Read about magnetic generators and a Self Powered Internal Combustion Engine - SPICE.

There will be huge market demand for hybrid vehicles that need only sip water and electric cars that need no recharge.

[gaiuslove]

I think this is great. It's the people rising-up over the selfish corporate interests. Thanks so much!

Gaius