Here’s a summary of the action at San Francisco’s OfficeMax location from yesterday, written by San Francisco Rainforest Action Group organizer, Christy.

It’s been a few weeks now since activist groups put Grand and Toy on notice with an action in Toronto, Canada.

Now we are calling on OfficeMax CEO Sam Duncan to also issue a public statement in support of Grassy Narrows’ moratorium. Like Grand and Toy, OfficeMax is owned by sells paper made by Boise Cascade, and sells millions of dollars worth of office paper and supplies every year that comes directly from Grassy Narrows.

Yesterday, five members of the San Francisco Rainforest Action Group paid a visit to the OfficeMax here in San Francisco to educate OfficeMax customers on the source of the company’s paper and to encourage them to place a call to Sam Duncan.

We also delivered a letter to the manager, which outlined OfficeMax’s involvement in the Grassy Narrows conflict and the ways in which they could support the community instead. The letter was signed by members of SFRAG and requested that the manager pass our concerns on to the executives of OfficeMax.

The manager explained right away that he knew why we were there and understood the issues. He politely said that he’d researched the campaign and had even seen pictures of the “activities at stores in Canada” online (how flattering!). He seemed supportive of the issue upon further dialogue and took both our letter and flyer. He also said that he would register our concerns with higher-ups at OfficeMax.

Afterwards, we handed out flyers outside the store, informing customers of the issues and urging them to contact OfficeMax. Most people we spoke with were interested and quite a few said that they would either speak with the manager or call OfficeMax headquarters.

However, one of the members of our team, Elle, spoke with a particularly concerned bicyclist. She stopped him while he was riding and talked to him about our concerns with Office Max and their relationship to Grassy Narrows. He was really supportive of the issue and wanted to help out, so he gave Office Max CEO Sam Duncan a call right there on the spot! Using the number on our flyer, it took him a while to get through. He had to ask to be connected to the office of the CEO several times, but he was eventually able to leave a message for Mr. Duncan requesting that Office Max publicly support the moratorium in Grassy Narrows.

Overall, we got a great response from this action, and we’re excited to spread the word to other OfficeMax locations in the Bay Area. In fact, this was so easy and so much fun that we went ahead and created a toolkit for OfficeMax actions just like this one. It has everything you’ll need for your very own OfficeMax demo. You’ll be able to download it soon from www.FreeGrassy.org