VFP104 Endorses "Energy For All" Coalition

In the first months of 2022, activist groups in Southwest Indiana united as the Energy for All Coalition in response to the widespread distress and hardship caused by exorbitant CenterPoint bills and the utility’s intent to raise rates even more.

Evansville area residents have long been burdened by the highest electric bills in the state, but this winter’s energy bills have reached a crisis point for area families. To add more pain, CenterPoint has requested a rate increase to cover more than $800 million for a gas pipeline and two gas-fueled “peaker plants” for which more cost effective and less environmentally harmful alternatives exist. By Centerpoint’s own analysis, this plan would add an additional $23 per month to a typical bill.

This investment will subject CenterPoint customers to a precarious energy future and the possibility of ever-increasing rates due to the impact of extreme weather and global events on energy supplies. Furthermore, when the world is experiencing the ravaging effects of a warming planet, any further long-term investment in fossil fuels is not only folly, it is immoral.

The Energy For All Coalition challenges CenterPoint to: 

  • Immediately take steps to alleviate the burden their exorbitant rates have caused this community.

  • Provide full transparency on the details of the utility billing process and full transparency in the cost basis for those bills.

  • Abandon their ill-conceived and expensive gas fueled plants as the means to meet the future energy needs of our community. We deserve and demand a more affordable and clean energy future.

Signatories: Tri-State Creation Care
; Daughters of Charity, Evansville
; Evansville Audubon Society
; Indivisible Evansville;
 League of Women Voters of Southwestern Indiana;
 NAACP;
 Valley Watch
; Veterans for Peace
 Chapter 104; Ohio River Valley Beyond Coal; Sierra Club, Southwest Indiana Local Network;
Citizens Action Coalition;
 Confront the Climate Crisis
; Hoosier Action; Direct Action Against CenterPoint Energy (DAACE); Congregations Acting for Justice & Empowerment (CAJE).

On March 11, 2022, VFP 104 President Gary May issued the following statement on behalf of VFP membership:

The day before his trial for violating Alabama’s Boycott Law, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a sermon at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. Famously quoted, he said: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
We at Veterans For Peace pursue a mission to end war and heal the wounds of war. We who have given of ourselves in service to our country echo Dr. King’s belief. True peace is not simply the absence of war, it is the presence of justice. And as we look at the horrible events unfolding in Ukraine, we cannot escape the cold facts that the eruption of conflict there is but a reflection of injustices not only in that region, but elsewhere, because we know that, again in the wise words of Dr. King, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere… whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Please don’t misunderstand. We are not saying that exorbitant, unjust utility bills are the cause of wars between nations. But such EXPLOITIVE economic injustices do have a negative effect on our “inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
Veterans For Peace struggles to end war in all its manifestations, both at home and abroad, in an all-encompassing demand for peace. We call this Peace at Home, Peace Abroad. We see the struggle for peace at home—and our solidarity with communities here at home—as an effective way to organize and build power to advance our mission, the pursuit of peace. 
So we stand in solidarity with the Energy for All Coalition in voicing our demand for an end to the economic injustice being inflicted on people at the expense of corporate interests.

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John Michael O'LearyComment