Several hundred people gathered Saturday at Chevron’s Richmond refinery to peacefully protest the company’s presence in Venezuela. The protest was organized by a coalition of various Richmond activist networks and speakers included Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez and former city council member Melvin Willis.
“We know what we’re fighting for: Stop pollution, stop the war, we won’t buy Chevron anymore,” sang Bonnie Lockhart and her posse of choralists, a group of singer-activists called Occupella. “Get out! Chevron, get out!”
Police had blocked off the roads in front of Gate 14, making access difficult, yet protestors arrived in droves on foot, walking from neighborhoods about 10 minutes away. The crowd stood with banners outside of Chevron’s headquarters, which were barricaded and had boarded over its sign so the logo wasn’t visible, as guest speakers took turns at the mic.
The crowd then marched down Richmond Parkway to the refinery side before later dispersing. No arrests were made and nothing appeared to be damaged.
The protest was announced late last week in response to developing global events, said Ilonka Zlatar.
“We get back to work (last) Monday morning and ask around, ‘Who’s doing something about this?’ ” said Zlatar, organizer for the Oil and Gas Action Network. “Well, I guess it’s us.”
Trump’s Jan. 3 capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is linked to a desire to extract oil from the country, Zlatar said. Chevron is the only refinery actively extracting and shipping oil from there, even through U.S. sanctions.
Chevron has been in Venezuela (and Richmond) for more than 100 years and is “the oil company that’s most poised to profit and benefit from the actions that the United States has taken against Venezuela recently,” Zlatar said.
“We are opposed to the idea that our government should be used as a weapon for the profit of corporations.”
Martinez gave a short speech that he said he thought of “in his bathtub” that morning, calling Chevron, the city’s largest taxpayer, “a monster.”
“Whenever we need what is justly ours, we need to battle them, because we refuse to beg them,” Martinez said. “We will not beg Chevron to get what is rightfully ours.
“The health, the environment, the water, the air, it’s ours,” Martinez said. “If we allow Chevron to pollute them without repayment for the harm they cause us, we’re not doing our job.”
Chevron Richmond said in a written statement to Richmondside: “Chevron respects the rights of individuals to express their viewpoints peacefully and lawfully. Our workforce of nearly 3,000 people remains focused on safely and reliably providing the essential energy that keeps the Bay Area moving.”
Martinez was part of a Richmond City Council contingent that in 2024 won a settlement from Chevron in exchange for dropping a proposed oil refinery tax measure from the ballot.
Most of the protestors appeared to be from the Bay Area but one woman said she had come from Sacramento. Most heard about the protest on social media, through word-of-mouth, and from Mobilize.us, an online platform that promotes activist events.
Luna Angulo of Richmond, co-founder of the “kayaktivist” group Rich City Rays, attended to protest Chevron’s refinery pollution as well as to “reconnect the waterways with BIPOC youth,” she said.
Richmondside previously witnessed the group forming a kayak barricade at Oakland’s Coast Guard Island in October to prevent federal immigration agents from accessing the base by boat, after Trump threatened a Bay Area immigration crackdown.
Other local grassroot organizations involved in the protest were the Richmond Progress Alliance (RPA), the Asian Pacific Environment Network, Richmond for Palestine, Bay Resistance and the Democratic Socialists of America.
Melvin Willis, former Richmond City Council member and lead organizer for the RPA, said the protest served to send a message to Chevron to “keep the oil in the ground; don’t enable these illegal actions from the administration.”
“Nobody woke up this new year expecting there would be a full-on missile strike and full invasion,” Willis said. “We’re responding with our morals and values. The community is saying this is not OK. This is illegal and it needs to stop.”
While he called Chevron the biggest economic engine in Richmond, Willis, a lifelong Richmond resident, is also concerned about the refinery’s pollution.
“Richmond has some of the highest asthma rates, lowest life expectancy,” Willis said. “We need to be moving away from that and give our communities cleaner air, cleaner water, not the continued poison that we suffer through every single day.
“As a local, when you see injustice you’ve got to stand up and speak out,” he said. “At the end of the day, people like me in the community and people in Venezuela, we’re not going to be benefiting from these types of attacks.”
Richmondside freelance reporter Zoe Harwood contributed to this report.
Is Chevron aware why we are protesting and can they do something to clean the air if they are going to continue doing what they are doing. Is it legal to take the oil out of Venezuela without congress voting on it.
Richmondside and Citywide might be more respected if they actually reported more accurately. Take for example what contributes to high asthma rates in Richmond. Plot the maps of smoke shops and tobacco retailers alongside asthma rates and you’d see how they remarkably align. But you don’t want to publish that because it doesn’t fit your narrative.
The RPA and its sister organizations always focus on Chevron — the “monster” — yet most of these folks drive gas-powered vehicles, use plastics in their every day life, use airplanes (and jet fuel) to fly, buy every day products that require gas or diesel to transport them, and are largely packaged in plastic.
The hypocrisy is plentiful….but hey, doesn’t fit their/your narrative.