Vigil in Honor of the Victims of the Dow/Union Carbide Chemical Disaster in Bhopal

The night of December 2-3, 2007 is the 23rd anniversary of the gas
leak at a Union Carbide chemicals plant in Bhopal, India that has
killed and disabled tens of thousands of people, including to this
day.

Please join a vigil and observance to honor those who have died and
are injured, and the Bhopali survivors who continue to fight for
justice.

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There has never been any clean-up of the factory site, nor has there
been adequate health care or compensation provided for the victims.
The U.S. chemical giant Dow bought Union Carbide in 2001 and has
refused to take any action other than to claim it is not their
problem.

During the vigil, we will call for Dow to take responsibility for its
obligations as the owner of Union Carbide and its legacy. A criminal
case against Dow in India has been pending for years. Dow has a
shocking history of polluting communities where it operates and its
products are used, from Bhopal to Vietnam to Central America to the
state of Michigan.

Dow has recently given the University of California at Berkeley a $2
million grant (and the promise of millions more) to launch a
"Sustainable Products and Solutions" program at the UC Haas Business
School in partnership with College of Chemistry. As part of the
deal, Dow executive Tony Kingsbury has relocated to the Haas School
from Dow's corporate Michigan headquarters to oversee the project.
Tellingly, the UC School of Public Health has been excluded from the
initiative.

This is a stunning intrusion into the public university of California
by a company with a extremely poor record. Dow is attempting to
influence how the university will frame the development of the
rapidly emerging field of green chemistry, which will have tremendous
consequences for Dow. It is fundamentally inappropriate for a
company like Dow to buy its way into the conversation in this manner.

Similarly, in India, Dow is trying to subvert the process of justice
by telling the Indian Government that Dow will refuse to invest in
India unless the criminal case against Dow is dropped.

During the vigil, we will deliver a letter to Dow executive Tony
Kingsbury to state our views about Dow's presence on the UC campus,
and a demand that Dow can better demonstrate its commitment to green
chemistry by providing the millions of dollars promised to UC
Berkeley to the affected Bhopal communities instead.