Check out the new Green Launchpad program at City College of SF.

For more info visit the CCSF Green Launch Pad on Facebook

via grindforthegreen.com

In case you missed this season’s issue of Race, Poverty & the Environment, the amazing folks at Grind for the Green were featured in a piece about youth of color who are using hip hop to spread environmental awareness in Bay Area hoods. Check it out below.

And in the same issue, ChecktheWeather.net’s co-founder Ellen Choy co-authors an article on Richmond, CA’s Chevron refinery and climate justice organizing! Get the whole issue online here.

Youth in Action: Greening Hip Hop

The Greening of Hip-Hop: Urban Youth Address Climate Change and Sustainability

By Eric Arnold

Twenty-year-old aspiring rapper Tre Pound was born in San Francisco’s Hunters Point, a predominantly low-income community of color with the dubious distinction of housing the two most toxic Superfund sites in the United States, as well as power and sewage treatment plants. Asthma, cancer, and diabetes rates in that area are all disproportionately higher than in other parts of the Bay Area. “I kinda knew where I was living wasn’t environmentally safe,” says Pound, but the public school he attended provided little information about industrial pollution or climate change.

Pound says he frequently incorporates socially-aware themes into his music, but he had never made an environmentally-aware rap song until he signed up to compete in Grind for the Green’s (G4G) Eco-Rap battle. He ended up winning the competition, earning a $1000 prize and studio time, by outpacing several other contestants with his eco-friendly flow during G4G’s second annual free concert at the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.

Pound is just one voice in the growing number of youth voices engaged in community organizing for social change. Millions of young people around the world participate in social activism. According to Wiretap Magazine, there are more than 600 youth-led community organizations currently creating green jobs, removing toxic waste, combating corporate pollution, and fighting against violence in their communities.

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Time for some ACTION!!! This weekend groups from all over the Bay area will be convening at the Richmond BART Station to protest against Chevron and make sure they don’t forget how they are polluting not only Richmond, California but places where Black, Brown and Yellow people live all over the world.

Organizer and U.S. Campaign Coordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives Ananda Lee Tan states, “People, not corporations, should drive the critical climate talks in Copenhagen,”

The protest at the Chevron Refinery on Saturday will begin at 11:30 AM with a festival and rally at the Richmond BART Station at 16th Street and MacDonald Avenue. It will include a march to the Chevron oil refinery and a non-violent civil disobedience action that could result in arrests.

But hey Checktheweather.net is not co-signing on anyone going out and getting arrested if you ain’t got the bail money.

Not in the Bay? You can still make a difference RIGHT NOW Click on this link to send a letter to Chevron and see a picture of an old, ugly yet very rich white guy whose playing a role in giving your cousin asthma and contaminating the planet.

Now what does Chevron have to say?

On buses, on television and billboards across the nation people have been bombarded with advertisement saying things like “I will reuse more” or “I will drive my car less”. The advertisements are from Chevron, one of the largest producers of oil around the world. A group of local and global environmental groups including Amazon Watch, Global Exchange, Justice in Nigeria Now, Rainforest Action Network, Richmond Progressive Alliance and West County Toxics Coalition having gathered together to launch a response campaign called The True Cost of Chevron to combat the polluting company and address what they see is hypocrisy in Chevron advertisements.

The group recently released a report The True Cost of Chevron:  An alternative annual report. The report was published soon  after Chevron reported its 2008 earnings of $24 billion, making  it the second most profitable corporation in America. The true  cost of Chevron argues that Chevron didn’t get there by just  selling a lot of Gas. They got their profits on the backs of poor  people in the US and around the world, contaminating vital water  and placing life endangering toxins into the air. The $24 billion profits Chevron made last year is more than the Gross Domestic Products of over 150 countries.

Chevron has dedicated a whole section of their website to what they call “Human Energy Stories.” Here they discuss how it’s going to take all of us to fight climate change and what the corporation is doing to not only use less dirty energy but also how they are working to put a portion of their work into community service. In the Community and Society section they write: “The places where we operate and the people that we work with are the communities we call home so we make an effort to make them better places.”

So how does Chevron see making communities better places to live? Is it by cleaning up from nasty oil spills? Doing bio-remediation projects to decontaminate the land around the oil refineries or helping to pay for the medical expenses of the people who are getting cancer, miscarriages and respiratory illnesses? NO! Of the 24 BILLION dollars Chevron made last year they donated 160 million to community programs around the world. None of the programs address the climate and environmental justice concerns brought up by the True Cost of Chevron campaign. However, They are giving back by donating to schools and HIV/AIDS research, one of the only mainstream diseases that has not been explicitly linked to environmental toxins. Not that that is a bad thing, but we wonder, what would happen if Chevron spent some of the estimated 50-100 million dollar advertising campaign to just really Clean Up The Mess They Have Already Made Across the World.

I mean really Chevron “will you join us?”