Keala Uchôa

In Richmond, California, along 30 miles of beautiful shoreline, there sits a 3,000-acre Chevron Refinery that emits millions of tons a day of CO2, sulfates, particulate matter and metals into the surrounding poor and working class Black and Brown communities. The second largest oil company in the US by revenue, Chevron, (Chevron Highlights of Operations, 2024), follows the same playbook as other corporations in the profit-driven energy system: its CEO and shareholders make decisions that put profit over people, influencing local decision-making and regulators to block residents from having a say in what happens in their own neighborhoods.

But at Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), we know that when community-members act together, we can move mountains!

The Chevron Richmond Refinery causes chronic health issues in local residents, including rare cancers, premature death, respiratory illness and rates of asthma that are 2x the state average (UCSF, Richmond Environment and Asthma Community and Health Study). Chevron has embedded itself in every aspect of life in our city, from jobs, to schools, community organizations and politics. In 2014, two years after a massive Refinery fire that sent 15,000 of our neighbors to the hospital, Chevron paid $3 million in campaign ads to push out its critics in the city council (Democracy Now, 2014).

CBE members have been challenging Chevron and its Richmond Refinery for 20 years, and are now bridging our work with communities resisting these corporate players that cause harm all over the world, at every stage of the fossil fuel supply cycle: from Ecuador where the oil is drilled, to Richmond where it is refined, to the Central Valley of California, where executives generate hundreds of megawatts of oil and gas fired power. This fossil fuel destruction then reaches high-traffic neighborhoods that breathe in harmful industrial and traffic pollution powered by toxic fuels.

In Gaza, we see how Chevron’s executives even profit off of war. As of the publishing of this story, Chevron is a major economic partner of the Israeli government, responsible for the murder of more than 35,000 innocent people in Gaza. Providing 98% of electricity for the Israeli Electric Company, Chevron nearly singlehandedly powers all Israeli military bases and operations in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. (American Friends Services Committee, 2024)

All over the world, Chevron prioritizes their bottom line while harming our communities; its corporate executives and shareholders rob us of the chance to grow up without health issues and to live our lives with clean air, water and safe places to recreate. To top it off, Chevron buddies up with profit-driven utilities and other energy companies, spending millions lobbying politicians to prevent us from holding them accountable.

We know breaking free from Chevron and its corporate allies is about more than just a switch to renewable energy: it’s about establishing a decentralized, community-centered energy system that offers us the chance to meet our needs ourselves. Without the corporate, extractive monopoly in control, Richmond residents can design our own futures, and reprioritize resources towards the clean-up of the toxic waste left behind by 100 years of environmental neglect. It’s time to reimagine our energy system and, in solidarity with communities all over the world, take it back from Chevron!