The Koch brothers tried to play Black churches but they weren’t having it
The billionaire Koch brothers apparently thought they could pimp poor African American communities by throwing a few gospel celebrations to garner support for fossil fuel production.
But one Virginia town is fighting back.
According to a report in MotherJones, the Atlantic Coast pipeline is being planned to run right through a suburban Richmond community. And Rev. Paul Wilson is leading the charge against it, arguing that building a compressor station in his neighborhood poses an environmental hazard for his congregation and the surrounding community.
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Wilson said people with asthma and those who suffer from a range of respiratory problems are at greatest risk when they live near natural gas facilities. He believes the pipeline project—which would carry natural gas 600 miles from West Virginia to North Carolina—is deliberately preying on vulnerable minority communities.
And the Koch brothers are reportedly doing it by throwing gospel parties in African-American communities.
Charles and David Koch set up a gospel program in December that was well attended by Black residents in Richmond’s East Highland Park neighborhood. The performance was billed as “an opportunity for enlightenment, both spiritual and environmental.”
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The event was sponsored by Koch Industries, their petrochemicals, paper, and wood product conglomerate. All the while lobbyists were there on deck taking center stage during a panel discussion to push forth an agenda that promoted fossil fuel as a cheap and reliable energy source. They discussed rising utility bills and said fossil fuel was the solution to their high energy costs. They even held raffles and four attendees got their power bills paid in full.
But many people saw through their pandering ways.
“The tactic was tasteless and racist, plain and simple,” says Kendyl Crawford, the Sierra Club of Richmond’s conservation program coordinator. “It’s exploiting the ignorance many communities have about climate change.”
Rev. Wilson’s churches is located closest to pipeline’s 54,000-horsepower, gas-fired compressor station they want to build. The surrounding community is 85 percent African American. The state’s overall black population is 19 percent.
“God didn’t put me on this earth to pimp death for profit,” Wilson says. “That’s what the Kochs and these energy folks are doing to my people now. It’s up to us in the church to stop it.”
