Richmond marchers haul giant Trojan horse to Chevron's gates on Anti-Chevron Day

A Trojan horse rumbled through the streets of Point Richmond on Sunday, hauled on a flatbed truck past businesses and refinery fences while hundreds of marchers drummed and chanted behind it.

The procession, part street theater, part protest, part block party, was the 13th annual Anti-Chevron Day, and it paused at the gates of the Chevron refinery.

Princess Robinson, executive director of Richmond Land and the march's MC, set the tone before the crowd left Judge Carroll Park.

"We come out here every year to honor our indigenous land, our water protectors, and all the environmental justice organizations and leaders that are out here trying to move us towards a fossil-free future," Robinson said, grabbing a microphone in front of the towering sculpture. "We want a fossil-free future, and when do we want it? We want it now."

Robinson called the horse itself "The Gift of Pride and Purpose," a follow-up to the Fencelines project, an installation of more than 1,000 hand-painted slats along the Richmond Parkway.

"It was stolen," Robinson said of the original project. "So all those individual custom messages and voices are gone now. So we're back with part two. We ain't gonna lay down, we ain't gonna stop."

This year's event was bigger in scope than previous marches. Ilonka Zlatar of the Oil and Gas Action Network said organizers had spent the previous two days hosting a gathering at the Richmond Arts Center that drew environmental justice advocates from Texas, Washington State, New Mexico, Canada, and Ecuador, all of them, Zlatar said, connected by Chevron's reach.

"We are living in a system of corporate welfare, we are living in a system of corporate socialism, taking the money from the people and flowing it up to the few billionaires that own the rest of us," Zlatar told the crowd.

Zlatar urged the crowd to think past the refinery's century-long presence in the city. "The Chevron refinery has been here for over 100 years, the Chevron refinery has been here before Richmond was Richmond," she said. "It's not a matter of if there will be an after-Chevron. It's a matter of when."

Donald Moncayo, a community organizer from Lago Agrio in Ecuador’s Amazon region, addresses demonstrators during Anti-Chevron Day in Richmond.

The furthest-traveled voice belonged to Donald Moncayo, a community organizer from Lago Agrio in the Ecuadorian Amazon who said he was born 200 meters from the second oil well Texaco ever drilled in the jungle, the same company, later absorbed by Chevron, that he has spent his life fighting.

Speaking through Zlatar as translator, Moncayo described what Texaco left behind when it pulled out of Ecuador in 1990 after nearly three decades of operations: 880 open oil pits across the Amazon, more than 600 billion liters of contaminated water dumped into rivers and streams, and 1,700 kilometers of roads sprayed regularly with petroleum-laced runoff the company called dust suppression.

"They didn't do this because there wasn't better technology," Zlatar translated. "They did it because it was cheaper. And they didn't do this somewhere where there was nothing, we had indigenous tribes, we had farmers, we had living land, we had living rivers."

The Cofán nation, Moncayo said, were the first people driven from their land. Another tribe, last seen in 1967 shortly after drilling began in their territory, is believed to be entirely gone.

Marchers carry banners and drums through Point Richmond during Anti-Chevron Day, an annual environmental justice demonstration targeting the Chevron refinery in Richmond.

Moncayo's closing words drew the loudest response of the morning. "You may hide behind the rocks," Zlatar translated, "but we're gonna find you. We're gonna make you pay."

Richmond has its own grievances with Chevron, and former City Councilmember Melvin Willis was there to remind the crowd of the 2012 fire when thousands of residents flooded area hospitals in the days that followed, reporting respiratory symptoms, headaches, and chest pain.

"That was our moment to get organized," Willis said. "It doesn't matter how big Chevron is; it doesn't matter if they are worldwide. You cause harm to our community, and you will be held accountable."

Willis and Robinson pointed to a $550 million settlement secured through the Make Polluters Pay campaign as evidence that the accountability was real, urging the crowd to pressure city officials to steer that money toward a transition away from fossil fuels.

"I say Richmond doesn't need Chevron," Willis said. "Richmond needs to have more faith in this resilient community and invest in the potential that is already right here."

At Robinson's direction, women and children led the march out of the park, with men behind them. Richmond police provided an escort. Marchers carried banners reading "Water Is Life," "People vs. Fossil Fuels," and "Overthrow Fossil Fueled Fascism" through streets closed to traffic, drums marking their pace in the midday sun.

More than a dozen organizations co-sponsored the event, including Amazon Watch, which helped bring Moncayo from Ecuador, and the Oil and Gas Action Network.

"If we really want to see change in our communities, we need to be organizing together," Zlatar said as the crowd prepared to march. "We need your skill set, whatever it is you love to do, whatever your jam is. Bring your jam. Mix it with our jam."

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