Reform in the Policing and Criminalization of Communities Engaged in Addressing Fossil Fuel Energy Critical Infrastructure

WHEREAS, fossil fuel and publicly traded utility companies including Chevron, Shell, Marathon Petroleum, Exelon, Entergy and Duke Energy are major funders of law enforcement through police foundations in many cities across the nation; and

WHEREAS, this funding is a special interest alignment between these police foundations and their corporate sponsors by purposefully providing technology, equipment and training that have contributed to a militarized law enforcement system that unfairly targets and threatens African-Americans while providing preferential treatment and working under the mandates of unaccountable corporate donors; and

WHEREAS, this corporate influence has been instrumental in having bills introduced, and in some cases passed, that make protests and demonstrations near and/or on sites managed, owned or operated by fossil fuel critical infrastructures, a misdemeanor and sometimes felonious crime; and

WHEREAS, Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) who are disproportionately harmed by fossil fuels and have increasingly exercised their constitutional rights to mobilize in peaceful protests across the country, including Standing Rock and the historic Black Community of Union Hill in New Orleans, from a moral perspective to stop fossil fuel production and its adverse impacts such as fracking, natural gas leaks, methane exposure and pollution that have contributed to climate change catastrophes, respiratory illnesses and premature deaths. Their acts of civil disobedience should not be criminalized; and

WHEREAS, ultimately, law enforcement acts as personal security for the fossil fuel industry and other corporate donors to their related law enforcement labor organizations, their associated foundations, local police associations and department budgets use that relationship to intimidate, dissuade and criminalize protesters. 

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the NAACP advocates for public disclosure of all donations to law enforcement labor organizations and their associated foundations, local associations and department budgets in order to provide transparency.