Chevron has only been the title sponsor of French Quarter Fest since 2013; meanwhile, French Quarter Fest has been going on every year since 1984. New Orleans doesn’t need Chevron, and we don’t want Chevron here.
Time and time again, Chevron has attempted to skirt accountability for the damage it has done to Louisiana’s wetlands. In April of 2025, a Plaquemines Parish jury found Chevron guilty of damaging the coast to the tune of 2000 square miles lost to coastal erosion, or roughly half of the size of the parish. Chevron has refused to pay the damages awarded, instead removing the case to federal court. Furthermore, Chevron has no net-zero emissions policy and refuses to align its activities with the temperature goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.
But that’s just what Chevron does.
As the international community speaks more and more in unison over condemning the State of Israel and its supporters for the perpetration of genocide against the Palestinians, Chevron has continued to reap massive profits of enabling the said genocide. From running military vehicles to operating prisons and police stations, the Israeli genocidal war machine requires a lot of fuel to operate. Over two thirds of Israel’s natural gas is supplied by Chevron, who in addition is the partial owner and sole operator of the largest natural gas fields claimed by Israel- the Tamar and Leviathan fields, earning the corporation billions of dollars annually. Furthermore, the operations of Chevron’s offshore facilities are enabled by the tightening of the Israeli maritime blockade on Gaza, further enabling the starvation of Palestinians and the denial of any semblance of their economic self-determination.
Every cent that Chevron gives to our cultural events is permanently stained with the blood of tens of thousands of perished lives. Every cent that is given by Chevron in its attempts to whitewash its own reputation only stains our own culture and way of life.
Chevron operates with a profit motive like all companies, but, unlike most others, Chevron is willing to sacrifice their employees to achieve these goals. Domestically, Chevron has proven hostile to the United Steelworkers union, even hiring non-union workers to cross the picket line during a strike in 2022. All of this after refusing vital workplace condition improvements and pay raises after the union workers bravely worked through the pandemic as critical workers.
Internationally, Chevron has a long history of violent and intentional oppression of its workers. In 2015, they fired seventeen employees in Bangladesh as an intimidation attempt to quell requests for permanent employment. Even more recently, in 2025, around 800 Nigerian engineers and technicians unionized citing poor working conditions. Their contracts were promptly terminated by Chevron as retaliation. This organization does not intend to bring business or economic benefit to the people that work day and night for it.
Chevron exists to extract and refine the blood of its workers as oil, their bodies as replaceable as the rigs they stand on.
Chevron has the nerve to attempt to put a human face on its destruction of our state, our culture, and our livelihoods. We, who live in Southern Louisiana, know too well the precarity of every hurricane season. We cherish the music, the celebration, the love, and everything else about our heritage. And yet, Chevron is an existential threat to who we are. French Quarter Fest should be a celebration of our culture. As long as it shares a title with a blood-stained corporation like Chevron, French Quarter Fest will never be a celebration of anything but genocide, ecocide, and terrorism.
We will kick Chevron Out of French Quarter Fest, but we need your help.