By Corbin Hiar, E&E News:
It was an audacious messaging campaign: White environmentalists are hurting black communities by pushing radical climate policies that would strip them of fossil fuel jobs.
The email to journalists, sent by a public affairs firm at the height of national protests over systemic racism earlier this month, accidentally contained the name of a high-profile client.
It was Chevron Corp.
The Virginia-based communications firm, named CRC Advisors, urged journalists to look at how green groups were "claiming solidarity" with black protesters while "backing policies which would hurt minority communities."
"Despite this claimed solidarity, environmental organizations, composed of predominantly white members, are backing radical policies like the Green New Deal which would bring particular harm to minority communities," wrote John Gage of CRC in an email sent to media outlets including E&E News.
The story pitch included an offer to connect journalists with black conservatives who oppose the Green New Deal, a sweeping government jobs program advanced by progressive lawmakers who champion environmental justice issues for communities of color.
The email ended with a revealing tagline.
"If you would rather not receive future communications from Chevron, let us know by clicking here."...
The email received by an E&E News journalist on June 3 included quotes from two black conservatives who oppose the Green New Deal.
They were Ken Blackwell, a Republican who served as Ohio's secretary of state in the late 1990s and has gone on to stump for a wide variety of conservative causes, and Derrick Hollie, a former advertising executive.
...
Blackwell's quote was partially featured in the headline of a June 4 story on the website of the conservative Daily Wire.
Hollie is the president of Reaching America, a nonprofit group whose tax-exempt status was revoked by the Internal Revenue Service in 2017 because it repeatedly failed to file required annual reports
This is so widespread that, if you’re a glib winger, it’s an easy way to make a living. You pull down a good salary with a make-believe organizational byline and the PR firm does the heavy lifting to get you in the media, thereby pleasing the corporate client. /2— Jerry Taylor (@jerry_jtaylor) June 18, 2020
