On Monday, June 26, six Unitarian Universalist attendees from General Assembly and three local activists went to Gore campaign headquarters in Nashville to protest planned oil drilling in Colombia by Occidental Petroleum, to which Gore's family has historical ties. A spokesman from the Gore campaign came outside to state that as a public servant, Gore doesn't own stock directly in any company, including Occidental. Thirteen policemen showed up, along with reporters from two local television stations.

The land in Colombia where Occidental plans to drill for oil is the traditional homeland of the U'wa indigenous people. Occidental Petroleum has been trying to evict the U'wa from their land for the last eight years. In 1996, the U'wa vowed to commit collective suicide rather to allow their homeland to be desecrated by oil drilling. In 1999, the Colombian army evicted the last U'wa resisters from the drill site, during which many tribe members were injured.

Jocelyn Flanders, a UU who attended, explained that the police required the protesters to stand with their feet in the gutter, not on private property and not blocking traffic. "Most UUs tend to vote Democratic, and we are concerned with Gore's position on the rainforest." More information is available at the Rainforest Action Network.

Reported by Margy Levine Young; formatted for the web by Kasey Melski.