“Stop Fueling Genocide” Campaign Takes Root in Our Golden Petrostate

East Bay and SF DSA Comrades show up at Chevron Boycott Day of Action, September 26, San Ramon, CA. Photo credit: Leon Kunstenaar

Amid all the post-election “What now?” haranguing and handwringing, no one offers a wiser voice for ecosocialists to heed than Omar Barghouti. Co-founder of the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society, the Boycott, Divest & Sanction National Committee, Barghouti urges commitment to the Boycott Chevron campaign:

“We are building a global and intersectional movement, in partnership with Climate Justice and Indigenous People around the world who are exposing and resisting the colonial violence of Chevron’s extractionism, environmental destruction, and grave human rights violations.”

The reasons for a focused priority campaign to Boycott Chevron are abundantly clear. Chevron is profiting from the U.S. and Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. 70% of Israel’s electricity is supplied by methane gas, nearly all of it sourced by Chevron, the largest natural gas supplier to Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean. That supply is crucial to Israel’s military bases, prisons, police stations, illegal settlements, and to Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza.  Israeli apartheid depends on Chevron.

In addition to being a strategic target for ending the genocide in Palestine, Chevron is the object of protest from the Philippines, to Nigeria, to Ecuador, with indigenous, environmental justice, and ecosocialist movements fighting the oil company’s ecocide, genocide and corruption, despite the brutal repression of those movements. DSA belongs in that global collaboration.

Our national DSA International Committee heard the call from Palestine and stepped up to endorse Boycott Chevron, earning Barghouti’s gratitude: “We are proud to have DSA as a partner in this important campaign!”  

Inspired by our national DSA campaign to Stop Fueling Genocide, DSA members across California are helping to organize Boycott Chevron actions. We’ve participated in gas station boycotts and other Boycott Chevron events in LA, the East Bay, Santa Cruz and San Diego. For the most part, our members have contributed as individuals in ad hoc coalitions. Let’s take a note from our petrostate comrades in Houston, and coordinate our DSA organizing! Let’s share the extensive and skillful work of our International Committee, get our chapters behind this boycott, work with and learn from the coalitions forming around this issue, and organize boycott events wherever we are.

DO THIS NOW!

• Sign the Boycott Chevron Pledge https://dsaic.org/boycottchevron and share this link with your chapter members.
  This helps the coalition reach the goal of over 100K individual signatures to demonstrate the serious organizing behind the Chevron Boycott. Your signature will help DSA learn where the boycott campaign has support, and will help us gain credibility as a leading coalition member.

• Join the CA DSA STOP FUELING GENOCIDE Signal Group .
  Meet CA comrades involved in chapter campaigns and find other CA DSA members looking to organize in their chapters and create gas station boycott events.

• Learn more and share with your chapter

• This resource link list is full of articles about the Chevron=Genocide connection, organizing and actions around the country, and campaign tool kits.

• Plan a watch party for your chapter to view and discuss DSA’s Stop Fueling Genocide launch video.

• Contact Bonnie@laborrise.org to request a 15-minute slide show about the campaign in Northern California, and to connect to the CA DSA Ecosocialist Working Group.