Richmond, CA Activists meet Bhopal Survivors

On May 26, in the shadow of Chevron’s Richmond Refinery, survivors of the Union Carbide toxic disaster in Bhopal, India met with Richmond residents from the Laotian and African American communities. The People’s Health Movement (PHM-US) and Hesperian brought these geographically distant groups together to share experiences around their closely related struggles for health and justice against corporate pollution. 

The Bhopal activists--two second generation survivors and several campaigners--were here as part of the 25th Anniversary Bhopal Survivors Tour, of which PHM-US was a Bay Area co-sponsor. On December 3, 2009, it will be 25 years since the night that Union Carbide (now owned by Dow Chemical) unleashed a cloud of poisonous gas that killed more than 20,000 people and continues to damage the health of hundreds of thousands more because of contamination of the ground water. In Richmond, people are suffering from a slow-motion toxic disaster that comes from living near the Chevron refinery (the largest on the West Coast) and other chemical sites.

Dr. Henry Clark from the West County Toxics Coalition hosted the Richmond event and issued a clear call for justice against the environmental racism and policies that prevent poor people from having clean water and a safe place to live, work and play. Members of the Laotian Organizing Project and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice also participated in the meeting.

For more information about activities planned throughout the US on the 25th anniversary of Bhopal, visit the website of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal: http://survivors.boston4bhopal.org/.

For the original story on the event, please visit Hesperian's blog.