There are a lot of Johnny and Jane Come Lately’s out and about these days bad mouthing BP (British Petroleum) as though they just discovered corporate malfeasance on its part. I actually have a track record of opposing the rotten graft-infested oil industry’s record of political manipulation and environmental degradation.
In 1971-72 I was one of the People’s Lobby’s “fanatic fifty” that helped put the Clean Environment Act on the 1972 primary election ballot in California as Proposition 9. It was written by Roger Jon Diamond, an attorney who has become a lifelong friend and colleague. It went down to defeat because the oil companies, chemical companies, and utilities spent millions to oppose it with scare tactics. They lied then just as they continue to lie to the American people now.
In 1978 when I ran for Lieutenant Governor on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket I was the only candidate running against incumbent Democrat Merv Dymally and Republican winner Mike Curb to oppose the proposed SOHIO oil terminal and supertanker port facility that they wanted built in the Los Angeles Harbor. I opposed it on environmental grounds — just as PFP City Council Candidate Jim Stanbery had earlier been propelled to prominence in his race when the Italian Sansenina Oil Tanker blew up in the Los Angeles Harbor. On the Sam Yorty show on Channel 13 I told the television audience that I also opposed the project because giving half the Alaskan oil reserves and control of the largest supertanker port on the West Coast to a foreign owned company ran contrary to the American goal of energy independence.
Sam Yorty asked me, “doesn’t SOHIO stand for Standard of Ohio?”
Of course I pointed out, but it’s a subsidiary of BRITISH PETROLEUM which in turn at the time was owned 55% by the British government.
In spite of Dymally, Curb, and both the Democratic and Republican parties campaigning for the project, it never came about. I hope my campaign had something to do with that.
In the early 90′s I was the only non-Armenian founding vice president of ARAMAC, the Armenian American Action Council, having previously been a founder of one of its constituent groups, the L.A. based Anti-Blockade Committee. I formulated the plan to boycott L.A. based UNOCAL and AMOCO, two of the big oil company players in developing the Azerbaijani Caspian Sea oil fields, providing economic support to the military backed dictatorship of Azerbaijan which was blockading Armenia. AMOCO eventually merged with BP.
