Buy Your Gas At Citgo: Join The BUY-Cott!

No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.11.12 - Release Date: 5/17/2005

CommonDreams.org Jeff Cohen:

Buy Your Gas At Citgo: Join The BUY-Cott!

CommonDreams.org Jeff Cohen writes: 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 US refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes to Venezuela -- not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US.

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 a writer, lecturer and media critic who founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986. He has appeared regularly on national TV and radio. He was an on-air commentator (and "Donahue" senior producer) at MSNBC in 2003; a weekly "News Watch" panelist on Fox News Channel from 1997 to 2002: a co-host of CNN's "Crossfire" in 1996. His columns have been published in dozens of dailies, including USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Newsday and Atlanta Constitution. He was a regular columnist at Brill's Content. In the mid-1990s, he co-wrote the nationally syndicated "Media Beat" column (with Norman Solomon). In 2003, he was the communications director of the Kucinich for President campaign.

Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!

---