Does “rotten to the core” apply ...?
From an Article by Corbin Hiar, E & E News, June 18, 2020
‘White environmental extremists’ is an off-base epitaph
Derrick Hollie is the president of Reaching America, a nonprofit group whose tax-exempt status was revoked by the Internal Revenue Service in 2017 because it repeatedly failed to file required annual reports.
Since then, Hollie has testified twice in the House Natural Resources Committee against efforts to transition the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels. At a February 2019 hearing, he denied receiving any funding from fossil fuel companies or corporations.
“With black communities ablaze, the same nearly uniformly white environmental extremists assure us of their solidarity while at the same time trying to kill high-paying oil and gas jobs that have been the cornerstones of progress in lifting up working-class minority communities,” Hollie was quoted as saying in the CRC email to journalists. “Any program such as their Green New Deal that makes energy more expensive or jeopardizes jobs is counter-productive, reckless, and wrong.”
Reaching America is based in Bennsville, Md., but its sparse website is registered to Domains By Proxy LLC, an Arizona firm that shields the identities of web address owners.
CRC also has a limited online presence.
The group is led by Leonard Leo, President Trump’s informal adviser on judicial nominees, and Greg Mueller, a conservative communications executive. The firm recently hired two Trump White House communications staffers and a Fox News veteran. CRC’s website lists no staff, clients or contact information.
Although Hollie and his group have a long history with CRC, he denied having a formal role with the firm. “Hell no! I wish I did,” he said with a laugh. “This guy named Jay Hopkins is who I deal with. “I knew CRC had an energy client,” he added. “I didn’t know it was Chevron.”
Hopkins, a senior account manager at CRC, has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Prior to working at CRC, Hopkins did communications for Citizens for a Sound Economy, a think tank established in 1984 by the oil barons Charles and David Koch. The group eventually split and formed the tea party groups FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity.
In 2002, Hopkins joined CRC, which was previously known as Creative Response Concepts and CRC Public Relations.
During his time at CRC, he “identified and recruited third-party organizations to serve as surrogates for clients,” “wrote and placed client op-eds in top-line publications,” and “cultivated strong relationships with journalists nationwide, particularly focusing on reporters in energy,” according to his LinkedIn profile.
Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state, has written numerous op-eds over the years in support of the U.S. oil and gas industry as well as Chevron and other CRC clients.
In a 2012 Reuters blog post, Blackwell described Brazilian authorities’ attempt to penalize Chevron for a 3,600-barrel oil leak off the coast of Rio de Janeiro as “one of the most shameless shakedowns of an American company by another country in recent memory.”
Hollie, meanwhile, said that Reaching America works with organizations across the political spectrum. “I don’t appreciate being used as a racial pawn during this time and would appreciate if you leave me out of your vendetta against Chevron and CRC,” he said in a follow-up email.
‘Not being candid’ characterizes Chevron responses
Experts on corporate influence campaigns suggest that CRC is engaged in a shadowy campaign to shape federal policy on climate change. The firm may be “attempting to influence public policy surreptitiously using industry money,” said Marcus Owens, a partner at the law firm Loeb & Loeb LLP. “I’ve been doing this for nearly 50 years now, so I think I have a fairly well-developed sense of who’s not being candid.”
The involvement of the former Ohio secretary of state, in particular, was an indicator for Owens, the former head of the nonprofit division at the IRS. “You don’t hire Ken Blackwell if what you want to do is run a soup kitchen or truly educate people about anything,” he said. “You hire him if you want to run a political organization and you want to court industry or people who donate to right-of-center causes.”
The oil major’s ongoing involvement with CRC is troubling to some of the company’s shareholders. “If Chevron is hiring public relations companies that are putting out a message that is contrary to what the company is publicly espousing, that is a concern,” said Danielle Fugere, the president of As You Sow. “Just hiring these individuals or these groups for public communications purposes raises red flags.”
Her shareholder advocacy group backed a climate lobbying proposal put forth by the French investment group BNP Paribas Asset Management at Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting last month.
It called for the oil company’s board of directors to issue a report describing “if, and how, Chevron’s lobbying activities (direct and through trade associations) align” with the goal of the Paris Agreement, which calls for limiting average global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Chevron’s board urged shareholders to vote against the resolution because the company “shares the concerns of governments and the public about climate change risks” and “adheres to the highest ethical standards when engaging in lobbying and political activities.”
A majority of its investors, however, backed the proposal.
Comey, the Chevron spokesman, indicated that the company doesn’t plan to detail its work with CRC in the climate lobbying report shareholders requested. “They help us with communications,” he wrote, referring to CRC. “They are not involved in lobbying.”
David Pellow, the African-American director of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s global environmental justice project, argued that Chevron’s involvement with CRC shows the oil company is more focused on countering support for the Green New Deal than helping communities of color.
With the U.S. in recession and tens of millions of Americans out of work, “the Green New Deal is now looking much more reasonable as a proposal,” he said. “And that’s got to have big polluters worried.”
Chevron has been criticized for its slow response to the widespread protests over police violence against people of color. The company released a statement on racial injustice on June 5 — two days after CRC pitched a story attacking a resolution that seeks to address that issue and combat climate change.
Comey said that “it’s important that we face and address the systemic racism and discrimination that denies African Americans equal access to opportunities for advancement.” Chevron, he added, is leading by example: “For more than 25 years, diversity and inclusion have been a part of our corporate culture.”
But Pellow, who is also the chairman of UC-Santa Barbara’s environmental studies department, said the company’s actions speak louder than its words. “If you’re perpetrating climate disruption, as Chevron is, then you’re also perpetrating racial injustice,” he said. People of color “the world over are being harmed disproportionately by climate change.”
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See also: Chevron’s Slick Statement on Racial Injustice Makes No Sense, Drew Costley, OneZero, June 11, 2020
The company’s recent ‘Black Lives Matter’ message doesn’t jive with its actions
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