Los Angeles, CA – In a precursor to the upcoming Democratic National Convention protests, environmental and social justice activists from Action Resource Center, Colombia Action Project, and Amazon Watch demonstrated yesterday outside Al Gore’s new Los Angeles campaign headquarters at ARCO Plaza, exposing the Vice President’s deep rooted connections to Occidental Petroleum (Oxy)- the oil giant whose Colombian oil project threatens the very existence of the indigenous U’wa people.
Swaying to the chants of, “Gore! Gore! Divest from Oxy!” and “Use your Oxy ties to save U’wa lives!” a giant Al Gore puppet made its way through a crowd of protesters and hovered above two black oil barrels, depicting his relationship to Big Oil and failure to act in support of the U’wa. Demonstrators were told a Gore campaign spokesperson would come down from the Vice President’s 41st floor office to address the crowd, but no representative ever appeared.
A recent Washington Times article estimates Gore controls between $500,000 to $1 million in Oxy stock, which the Vice President has refused to divest despite a recent increase in violence on the ground against the peaceful tribe.
On the early dawn hours of June 24, three hundred members of the Colombian armed forces violently attacked 200 U’wa who had been peacefully blockading a road to keep Oxy from drilling on their sacred homeland. Scores of U’wa were injured and detained in what was the third violent strike against the U’wa people in recent months. The attack came just days after the US congress approved a $1.3 billion military aid package aimed at strengthening Colombian police and armed forces. Occidental Petroleum had lobbied aggressively in favor of the aid package.
“It is becoming painfully obvious that Oxy is willing to use any means necessary to proceed with oil drilling on U’wa land,” said Atossa Soltani of Amazon Watch. “Given Gore’s deep ties to Occidental Petroleum and his silence on this issue we question whether he is any better than Bush. What he does or doesn’t do on this issue will tell us where his loyalties lie.”
The U’wa are adamantly opposed to Oxy’s project and have repeatedly stated that they are willing to die to stop the drilling. For the U’wa, oil is the blood of mother earth, and to extract it would be to threaten the spiritual balance of the world, the environment, and their physical safety from Colombia’s civil war.
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