Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!
by Jeff Cohen
Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an
easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo
stations.
And tell your friends.
Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with
a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to
benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call
him "the Anti-Bush."
Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary
of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily
to Venezuela -- not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo
gas stations in the US. (Click here http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/
StoreLocator.jsp to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you
are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic
government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and
subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.
Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does,
Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the
poor in Venezuela. A country with so much oil wealth shouldn't have 60 percent
of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass
movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That's why
large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why
the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that
sought to overthrow Chavez.
So this is the opposite of a boycott. Call it a BUYcott. Spread the word.
Of course, if you can take mass transit or bike or walk to your job, you
should do so. And we should all work for political changes that move our
country toward a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. The BUYcott is
for those of us who don't have a practical alternative to filling up our cars.
So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela.
Jeff Cohen is an author and media critic (www.jeffcohen.org)
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