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To: Student Pride

No to oil sponsorship of Student Pride

We call on organisers of LGBT Pride events to reject the cynical attempts of fossil fuel companies to "pinkwash" themselves by association with Pride and the LGBT community.

Specifically we call on the organisers of National Student Pride to:

- immediately drop BP as a sponsor of National Student Pride 2015 events
- commit to not enter into future sponsorship or partnership agreements with fossil fuel companies
- develop a set of ethical sponsorship guidelines that take into account the environmental and human rights record of companies.

Why is this important?

There is no pride in taking sponsorship money from companies with such appalling environmental and human rights record.

Turning a never ending global environmental catastrophe into a trusted brand takes talent – and now BP is trying to "pinkwash" its dirty brand by sponsoring LGBT student events.

BP sponsorship has become an increasingly controversial issue in recent years.
Institutions like Tate and British Museum have been the scene of a series of environmental protests over the fact that they take BP sponsorship money. Tate recently lost a three year legal battle over its refusal to disclose how much money it was receiving from BP.

BP’s sponsorship programme enables it to gain a level of social legitimacy that it does not deserve given that it has been responsible for a series of environmental catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and that it has been identified as the corporation that has been historically responsible for the third largest amount of the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently called for an ‘anti-apartheid style boycott’ of the institutions that are taking sponsorship money from BP.

More info: http://www.lgbp.info/

Category

Updates

2015-03-02 19:31:33 +0000

100 signatures reached

2015-03-01 11:32:54 +0000

50 signatures reached

2015-02-28 11:32:25 +0000

25 signatures reached

2015-02-27 20:21:26 +0000

10 signatures reached