From our crew of organizers up in Seattle….

It was another stereotypic Seattle day; rainy, windy and cold, as we pulled into a parking lot outside the “pleasantville” themed Quadrant Home’s “community” in Kent, Washington. As we stepped out and headed towards Quadrant’s sales office, I whipped out our video camera and got some footage of the creepily similar ‘cookie cutter’ houses. On the way we walked past a dozen or so Quadrant signs that Justin pointed out had ridiculously stupid phrases on them like “so big you need a GPS” and “there’s nothing like a huge, gigantic home.” As we went past the GPS sign, Justin said that at this rate, we won’t need GPS’ anymore, just a giant roadmap of the planet.

Well, after we taped some good shots, we decided to visit the sales office; so we went in, and out came the Quadrant manager, Barbara. After we introduced ourselves as organizers with the Seattle Rainforest Action Group and offered her some information about our campaign, the manager instantly exploded and demanded that we leave Quadrant Home’s “property” immediately. After our humorous confrontation with Barbara we set out to speak with homeowners and pass out info, and we chatted with many of the homeowners, some of which were astounded at hearing Quadrant homes duped them into thinking that they were purchasing a “built green house.” It’s really amazing how corporations these days can do almost anything and I guess that’s all because of money; money means power, and Weyerhaeuser is full of money alright. Along with money comes greed, and the desire for more money; so as greed commonly clouds the judgment and reason of corporations like Weyco.

Throughout our canvassing we had a couple of visitors; a local cop, a rent-a-cop and afterwards a state patroller all called by the frantic manager, and its things like that, that make it all worth it; just think about it, because of your activism, corporations are spending hundreds and thousands of dollars to try to suppress you, and keep you from making a difference, but with those thousands of dollars that they are wasting on you, they are unable to spend it on tearing apart Grassy Narrows!

After our canvassing and video taping, we headed back to our cars, and as we were chatting, I noticed a pair of headlights had been on the same space for awhile, so I joked it’s probably some cop watching us with binoculars, so I drove up the hill and believe it or not, but there was a State Patroller with a pair of binoculars spying on us! There you go, thanks to Quadrant’s corporate power, we had a government peeping tom watching us!

Long story short; we got the truth out, had a little fun and made sure Quadrant had a ‘good’time as well! And after we packed up, I made my usual follow up call to Quadrant Home’s President Peter Orser, and to all of my avail, I simply got his home answering machine and left a nice little message briefing him on how we had a great time today exposing Quadrant Home’s Foundation of Lies! Unfortunately though I don’t think he will be as pleased as I was…