As a culmination of our week long journey with Indigenous and community leaders from Brazil, Paraguay and Papua New Guinea, we visited the heartland of our country to attend and protest at ADM’s Annual Shareholder’s Meeting in Decatur, Illinois.

Decatur, Illinois is soy town. It’s also the headquarters city of ADM, Archer Daniels Midland, one of the ABCs of rainforest destruction. For months, we’ve been planning on attending this meeting to express our concerns about the company’s role in rainforest destruction, displacing Indigenous and traditional communities from their land, displacing small farmers and intensifying climate change for soy and palm oil plantations.

A couple months ago, I purchased a share of ADM stock so that I would have the power to attend the meeting as a shareholder and as the Campaign Director for our new Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign. During this time, I also met with shareholders and institutional investors about our interest in attending the meeting with delegates. The City of New York, which holds over 1 million shares of ADM stock, and Trillium Asset Management, a socially responsible investment firm based in Boston, helped secure proxys for our delegates to attend the meeting. In my experience in attending shareholder meetings of companies like Chevron, Conoco Phillips and Exxon Mobil, if you have a valid proxy to attend the meeting, you enter and are allowed to speak on behalf of the shareholder who secured the proxy. Not at ADM.

Apparently ADM was concerned about what RAN and the delegates were going to say or do in the meeting, so they changed their rules of their meeting to exclude our presence. They suggested the delegates sit in an “overflow room” instead of the main auditorium. We argued that this was unjust and that they should all be allowed to sit in the main auditorium. They agreed to let one representative, Hiparidi Toptiro and his translator, into the meeting with me. The other delegates decided that they would rather protest outside than face humiliation and watch the meeting on a TV in the “overflow room”.

So, before entering the meeting, we gathered outside the James Randall Research Center, where the meeting was held. We met up with students and local residents holding banners saying:

1. ADM: Investing in Human Rights Abuses
2. ADM: Destructive by Nature
3. ADM: Investing your $ in Climate Chaos
4. ADM: No Rainforest Destruction for Biofuels

We were few people, but our message and our presence was extremely powerful. This is why as the press interview me and filmed our protest, the police and security surrounded us. They tried to rush us into entering the meeting right away, but I told them that we still had something to do.

Before entering the meeting, Hiparidi led us in a couple chants saying:

If the Cerrado lives, the people live. If the people live, the Cerrado lives. He sang a song in his native language while we all listened to get grounded before entering the meeting. Once he finished his song, we left the protest where the rest of our delegates stayed. They stayed holding the banners and enlarged photos of communities impacted by agribusiness in Paraguay.

Hiparidi, Andrea (one of our Rainforest Agribusiness campaigners and his translator) and I were escorted by at least 5 security guards down a grassy path to the entrance of the meeting. We were met by more security and representatives of ADM’s Corporate Communications Department. We were given our passes to enter and were escorted to the main auditorium to take our seats. The room was silent as we walked to our seats. We were definitely noticed, especially Hiparidi with his face painted in red and black as a Xavante warrior.

We listened and watched the meeting take place for about an hour before we were able to speak during the public comment. We listened to the CEO talk about the ADM’s plans to address the global trends of: increased food and protein demand, more energy from diverse sources and environmental improvement (ie…plastics from plant based sources). ADM’s plan is to be a leading bioenergy company, expanding feedstocks such as biomass, soy, palm and sugar for biofuels.

When the public comment period began and the end of the meeting, I stood up until I was recognized by the CEO. I expressed RAN’s concerns about ADM’s role in tropical rainforest destruction, the displacement of communities and global climate change. I also expressed my disappointment that the company denied access to the other delegates into the main auditorium of the meeting. Read Leila’s Comment at ADM 2007 AGM.

Immediately following, Hiparidi stood and approached the mic to speak. Hiparidi spoke very powerfully about his concerns about the impacts of agrotoxins on the fish, rivers, women and children. He informed the audience of the recent adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and asked ADM to uphold its principles, such as the right to free, prior and informed consent of communities before converting forests into industrial farmland and everyone listened. In a sea of business suits, Hiparidi stood out with his face painted as a Xavante warrior in black and red colors. I was so proud of him, I was moved to tears. You have to understand that this experience is so foreign to him. He is from the wooded savannah in central Brazil, where addressing shareholders and company executives is not the norm. Even though his message was short, only 3 minutes with translation, it was extremely powerful. The 80 Indigenous nations he represents in the Cerrado would’ve been proud.

We were not the only ones at the meeting that expressed concern. Rev. Martin Woulfe presented a resolution on behalf of the City of New York re: Global Human Rights Standards and Sister Lydia Hayes represented ICCR to announce that they had been in dialogue with ADM about the sustainability of water use in food production. ADM recommended that shareholders not support Global Human Rights Standards resolution. The resolution received 19% of the vote.

After the meeting was adjourned, shareholders approached us and thanked us for being there. We were invited to have lunch (ie…soy burgers) with the employees and shareholders, but we decided to join our friends at the protest instead. We reported back about our experience inside the meeting and held up banners as shareholders left the meeting. From there, we headed out of Decatur and noticed we were being followed by security. They went their way after a few miles, but I thought you’d might like to know that they were really worried about our presence. I think we got our point across. We’ll be back next year ADM!