Under the haze of smoke from forest fires in southern California on the day of No War No Warming, Freedom From Oil Campaign, Global Exchange, Plug In America, Interfaith Power & Light and RAN supporters rallied at Toyota Santa Monica to tell Toyota to drop out the Pavely lawsuit and to be a leader in fuel economy. After weeks of organizing for the rally, it was good to finally put faces to all the LA contacts I spoke with on the phone or emailed. This action felt like a family affair, like a homecoming working with experienced organizers.

Nick (Global Exchange) and I got to the dealership about an hour before the rally to set-up the balloon banner. We used the largest helium tank ever—291 cubic feet! It took the whole helium tank to fill up the balloon. Shortly after, our key organizers arrived—Linda Nichols Linda Nichols from Plug in America and Wendell Covalt Wendell Covalt , RAN LA coordinator. I heard a lot about these two and how supportive they have been of RAN, but it was really nice to finally take action with them.

After some time, we finally deployed the balloon banner “Toyota: Driving Global Warming One Lawsuit at a time”, right in front of the Toyota dealership. Once the banner was up, we looked around and their was about thirty people participating in the action. After trying to meet at RAN’s REVEL event, it was good to finally see Linda in action. She drove up to the dealership in the electric Toyota RAV4 and immediately became one of the key voices in the rally. While Linda was coordinating, Wendell picked up the bullhorn (his first time ever using it) and blasted Toyota for fooling America with building Priuses as they build more gas guzzling trucks and SUV’s. I looked at Nick and thought to myself, “I love it” when folks get organized and take action. This was surely an intergenerational event and everyone was skilled organizers. It wasn’t just a bunch of youngsters at this rally.

Momentarily, Mike Sandler who currently works with Interfaith Power & Light in LA and I chatted for awhile. I’ve known Mike ever since I’ve been at RAN (almost three years). He’s a good friend of Toben, RAN’s communication coordinator. We have emailed, chatted on the phone several times but never met face to face. Then out of the corner of my eye, appeared Hollywood actress and star in “Who Killed the Electric Car”, Alexandra Paul. She looked like she was in some kind of disguise with her California shades but she was so ready to take on Toyota.

Before the end of the rally, we had each corner of the intersection plastered with banners and signs while we passed out fliers. Cars of all sizes cruised by honking us on. By the end of the rally, we gave a huge round of applause for everyone’s participation and took a group photo. After the action was over, we went to deflate the large balloon and Wendell told me “this is one of the best actions I been too”. I guess we all did a great job.

While we were deflating the balloon, Linda and our new friend from LA Progressive Democratic Party member and actor Ricco Ross, went inside and had a candid conversation with the dealer owner. Ricco and Linda are two savvy negotiators and after a brief conversation they were in the dealership hammering it out with the manager. Sympathetic of our concerns of California emission standards, the dealer recommended that we take our concerns to Toyota’s corporate headquarters. This is such a familiar tactic used by dealerships management. Disappointed with the dealer response, Ricco recommended that we contact him for the next action. He said he could get as many as 300 people out to a rally. Talk about clout. Next steps in dealing with Toyota is to draft a letter with Plug In America and Global Exchange and send it to the dealership and corporate headquarters. Then we are going take action against our next mega dealer, Penske Automotive Group by targeting Longo Toyota, the world’s largest dealership in the world.

Big shout out to RAN LA, Global Exchange, Plug in America, Interfaith Power and Light, and everyone else for participating in the action. Stay tune for more RAN LA action next month!