Chavez's Citizen Diplomacy

"A Kennedy!" The older ladies of Spofford Hills, a housing cooperative in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx, are brandishing cameras, thrilled to see the son of Robert F. Kennedy outside their building on this radiantly sunny day just before Thanksgiving. It doesn't hurt that Joe Kennedy is also president of Citizens Energy, a nonprofit providing heating assistance to low-income Americans, and that he's here to make a fuel delivery to Spofford Hills. But the real star of the day--though absent--is someone even more famous: Hugo Chávez.

Through Joe Kennedy's organization, the government of Venezuela--and Citgo, a petroleum company in which that country owns a controlling share--provides heating oil to poor and working-class Americans at a 40 percent discount. The gathering in the Bronx celebrated the program's second year, as well as its expansion: This winter, Citizens Energy and Citgo expect to deliver more than 100 million gallons of oil to more than 400,000 households in sixteen states, more than doubling the scope of last year's petro-philanthropy. Beneficiaries also include 163 American Indian tribes, most of them in Alaska.

The program has come under fire from the American right for its association with Chávez, whom the Bush Administration has painted as a dictator and even a terrorist threat. Recent TV ads promoting it--in which Citizens Energy praises "our friends in Venezuela"--have particularly infuriated the likes of Fox's Sean Hannity and inflamed conservative talk-show hosts, who are calling for a boycott of Citgo. (According to Citgo president Felix Rodriguez, the boycott and conservative attacks have had no effect on the company's revenues so far.) But Citizens Energy spokesman Brian O'Connor says his organization has asked every major oil company and every OPEC nation to provide such assistance to poor Americans; Citgo and Venezuela have been the only ones to agree. "We are very much in solidarity with the people of Venezuela," says Blanca Ramirez, treasurer of Spofford Hills, which was taken over by residents after a landlord abandoned it in the late 1970s. "But in a way," she muses, "they are even more in solidarity with us."

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