Tell Chevron Christians are Boycotting
Send Chevron's CEO and CGO a letter telling them that you, as a Christian, are joining the global boycott of Chevron gasoline/petrol — endorsed by tens of thousands of people around the world — until Chevron stops profiteering off of Israel's genocide in Gaza, US war crimes in Venezuela, and global climate destruction.
We have watched in horror as Israel bombed hospitals, homes, and schools in Gaza, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and burying countless more under the rubble. The survivors are left to die slowly, as Israel has cut off access to food, clean water, and fuel to 2.3 million Palestinians.
Big Oil is profiting off this genocide and war crimes, while fueling the climate crisis and causing pollution in communities of color.
(1) In Palestine, the Chevron corporation supplies Israel’s war machine with energy and massive tax money via the operation and co-ownership of the major Israeli-claimed fossil gas fields in the Mediterranean. Both Chevron and Israel enrich themselves from these projects, continuing a pattern of ongoing colonial violence, apartheid, and climate degradation. We demand that Chevron divest from its projects in Israel and immediately end its support for Israel’s regime of genocide and apartheid against Palestinians.
(2) Chevron is the only US oil company currently operating in Venezuela, Chevron stands first in line among oil companies to profit after the US illegally bombed Venezuela, killed at least 100 people, and abducted the country’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. President Trump admitted to consulting billionaire oil company executives--including Chevron--ahead of taking these actions, but completely bypassed Congress and the American people. (On the campaign trail, Trump asked oil companies for $1 billion in exchange for their policy wish-list, and post-invasion-of-Venezuela he’s offering to subsidize them with public, taxpayer money.) The president’s pursuit of war with Venezuela is about plundering the country’s wealth, deporting and abusing immigrants, and opening more of its massive oil reserves to American corporations like Chevron. Their warmongering and war-profiteering puts us all at risk. We need to show Chevron that there’s a cost to their business model of supporting war crimes and genocide.
(3) Across the globe, Chevron is accelerating the climate crisis and endangering communities of color. Between 1964 and 1990, Texaco (which was bought out by Chevron in 2001) dumped 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater in the Amazon rain forest, poisoning entire communities of local indigenous and campesino people. In 2012, Chevron’s willful negligence led to a refinery fire in Richmond, CA, that sickened 15,000 people in surrounding communities.We, as Christians, must boycott Chevron.
The U.S. oil industry, including Chevron, has deep ties to Christian Nationalism. Chevron is more responsive to Christians than to any other group, so it is important that Christians lend their voice to this campaign. This has worked before, when people boycotted Shell gas for their ties to Apartheid, the corporation feared Christian involvement in the boycotts saying,
“Mobilized members of religious communities provide a ‘critical mass’ of public opinion and economic leverage that should not be taken lightly… if they join the boycott and pressure for disinvestment, it will become a radically different and farm more costly problem than it now is.”
We echo the call from the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to build pressure on Chevron through boycott and divestment campaigns until it no longer conducts business that gravely violates Palestinian human rights and benefits Israel’s genocidal regime of settler-colonial apartheid.
