Richmond mayor returns from Ecuador, vows to turn up heat on Chevron
Richmond mayor returns from Ecuador, vows to turn up heat on Chevron
By Robert Rogers
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 09/26/2013 10:58:35 AM PDT | Updated: about 3 hours ago
RICHMOND -- After a nearly sleepless six-day excursion through Ecuador to tour sites of environmental devastation, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said she has returned to Richmond with a broadened perspective and steeled resolve to continue her struggle against big oil, including her city's biggest taxpayer.
"What I saw brought home to me the importance of the solidarity," McLaughlin said. "We're all interconnected, and this is an international struggle against corporate domination."
McLaughlin, 61, the nation's only Green Party mayor of a city of more than 100,000 residents, on Wednesday described the whirlwind of events that in a matter of days swept her from Richmond to Quito, Ecuador's capital, and into the dense Amazon jungles.
During her time crisscrossing Ecuador by plane, bus and helicopter, McLaughlin gave dozens of media interviews, toured tiny jungle villages, met with Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa and dipped her hands in chemical pools, or "piscinas," holding byproducts of petrochemical processing. She said she slept no more than four hours per night and braved stifling jungle conditions but was boosted by adrenaline and a fast-paced schedule.
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...with such evident understanding of the connections between countries and between oppressed groups.
The same corporation that, in collusion with the others, is mercilessly price-fixing and gouging us on gas prices--and, that, indeed, in collusion with the others, hijacked our military for an oil war on Iraq--has left a swath of toxic pollution the size of Rhode Island in the Ecuadoran rainforest, which is still poisoning its indigenous residents and destroying its fisheries, and has used every dirty tactic imaginable to evade the Ecuador court ruling against them.
They are rotters! But it is amazing and heartening to have the mayor of Richmond go to such trouble to find out the truth for herself and to speak the truth!
We don't often hear the truth from our political leaders.
Kudos and laurel wreaths to Mayor Gayle McLaughlin!
