It was an inspiring day. Easily a thousand of us marched through the town of Richmond to Chevron’s Richmond refinery. This facility refines over 1 million gallons of Iraqi oil a month, plus oil from their “global marketplace” of conflict and oppression zones like Ecuador, Burma, Nigeria and the Canadian tarsands. Plus it creates it’s own oppression zone by polluting and poisoning low income communities of color in Richmond.
At the tail end of the march, 50 of us began to unload modified barrels and lockboxes from a vehicle for others to lockdown with. A few motorcycle cops saw us and tried to stop us by blocking our pathway with their bikes. We swarmed past them with our equipment and ran into the larger march, chanting, singing, raising hell about this awful war and Big Oil profiting from it. Over 50 locked down on Castro St. the entrance into the refinery’s fueling station (i.e. no gas trucks got their fuel today). Many more joined with a soft blockade on the lines. Two climbers dropped a banner off of light posts. A huge raucous street party followed.
Then, we decided to escalate further and moved up to the police lines protecting the entry into the refinery’s fueling station and dismantled the police barricades and pushed further into the refinery catching the police tactical units off guard. Our goal was to “Arrest Chevron” and we definitely changed the energy of the action to one of confrontation with the war profiteer and climate criminals.
Let me be clear the police protected the interests of Chevron, not the interests of the people of Richmond, California or anywhere else. They are Chevron’s security force.
Eventually after a 2 hour standoff, the police arrested 24 people who refused to leave.
Check out indybay.org and actagainstwar.net for further updates.
In four days on March 19, thousands will be in the streets of San Francisco for a decentralized day of action against the Bush administration’s war and the corporations profiting from it. We hope to see you out there.
No War! No Warming! Resistance is Forming!
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Fuck yeah. This looks like it was a really inspiring and amazing action. First the EF! FPL protest in Fl, then this. Resistance is strong across the US! I’m glad to see that the ante is being upped- I reallly can’t wait to see what Fossil Fools Day brings.