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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