Published on Monday, May 16, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
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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