More to come, but take a look at www.pleasehelpusmrsnixon.com.

Members of the Toronto RAN chapter have just deployed a banner outside RBC headquarters directing people to the site:

The site has a video of RAN’s executive director Michael Brune appealing directly to the wife of RBC CEO Gordon Nixon asking her to help get RBC to stop financing tar sand oil expansion.

The Toronto RAN chapter has been flooding downtown Toronto with posters bearing the phrase “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon” and a quick google search reveals that people have been hard at work trying to figure them out.

Mystery solved I suppose.

This, of course, isn’t anyone’s first choice when it comes to addressing global warming, but as Holdren–who has an outstanding legacy of science-based activism–points out, when it comes to global warming we are “in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog.”

His point seems to be that if we don’t take bold action very soon, we might get desperate as we face more and more of the consequences of climate change and have to consider drastic and frightening remedies.

So, please, let’s try to handle this before we have to look at crazy ideas like blocking out the sun.

See, this idea scares me.

Why?

Because I think that’s exactly what the humans tried in The Matrix and they just ended up with ruined cities, a perpetual lightning storm, and giant machines fueled by farming human bodies. Remember?

Got an opinion? Check out The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America bracket and vote.

I think what’s most remarkable about the whole thing, besides being funny and well put together, is that it highlights just how much frustration so many people feel at corporate America right now.

We’ll be live-blogging and posting images and videos all day.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

There are moments in a nation’s — and a planet’s — history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived, and we are writing to say that we hope some of you will join us in Washington D.C. on Monday March 2 in order to take part in a civil act of civil disobedience outside a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill.

We will be there to make several points:

• Coal-fired power is driving climate change. Our foremost climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level—below 350 parts per million co2—lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity.
• Even if climate change were not the urgent crisis that it is, we would still be burning our fossil fuels too fast, wasting too much energy and releasing too much poison into the air and water. We would still need to slow down, and to restore thrift to its old place as an economic virtue.
• Coal is filthy at its source. Much of the coal used in this country comes from West Virginia and Kentucky, where companies engage in “mountaintop removal” to get at the stuff; they leave behind a leveled wasteland, and impoverished human communities. No technology better exemplifies the out-of-control relationship between humans and the rest of creation.
• Coal smoke makes children sick. Asthma rates in urban areas near coal-fired power plants are high. Air pollution from burning coal is harmful to the health of grown-ups too, and to the health of everything that breathes, including forests.

The industry claim that there is something called “clean coal” is, put simply, a lie.But it’s a lie told with tens of millions of dollars, which we do not have. We have our bodies, and we are willing to use them to make our point. We don’t come to such a step lightly. We have written and testified and organized politically to make this point for many years, and while in recent months there has been real progress against new coal-fired power plants, the daily business of providing half our electricity from coal continues unabated. It’s time to make clear that we can’t safely run this planet on coal at all. So we feel the time has come to do more–we hear President Barack Obama’s call for a movement for change that continues past election day, and we hear Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s call for creative non-violence outside coal plants. As part of the international negotiations now underway on global warming, our nation will be asking China, India, and others to limit their use of coal in the future to help save the planet’s atmosphere. This is a hard thing to ask, because it’s their cheapest fuel. Part of our witness in March will be to say that we’re willing to make some sacrifices ourselves, even if it’s only a trip to the jail.

With any luck, this will be the largest such protest yet, large enough that it may provide a real spark. If you want to participate with us, you need to go through a short course of non-violence training. This will be, to the extent it depends on us, an entirely peaceful demonstration, carried out in a spirit of hope and not rancor. We will be there in our dress clothes, and ask the same of you. There will be young people, people from faith communities, people from the coal fields of Appalachia, and from the neighborhoods in Washington that get to breathe the smoke from the plant.

We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested. After that we have no certainty what will happen, but lawyers and such will be on hand. Our goal is not to shut the plant down for the day–it is but one of many, and anyway its operation for a day is not the point. The worldwide daily reliance on coal is the danger; this is one small step to raise awareness of that ruinous habit and hence help to break it.

Needless to say, we’re not handling the logistics of this day. All the credit goes to a variety of groups, especially EnergyAction (which is bringing thousands of young people to Washington that weekend), Greenpeace, the Ruckus Society, and the Rainforest Action Network. A website at that latter organization is serving as a temporary organizing hub: http://ran.org/get_involved/powershift_and_mass_civil_disobedience_updates/. If you go there, you will find a place to leave your name so that we’ll know you want to join us.

Thank you,

Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben

I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f***ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.

No kidding.

Last night’s decisive victory by Barack Obama proved that a message of hope can change the world. It showed us that yes, we can end the cultural divisions that paralyse progress, and that by uniting in a common cause, we can all be agents of change.

In the words of the president-elect, now is our time.

As we embark on a new path of possibility, we must also start a dialogue about how, together, we will move forward. Today, I invite you to join that conversation.

Since the Reagan administration, RAN has served as the mosquito in the tent of corporate America, drawing attention to our planet’s most critical environmental and social issues. We have been and will remain catalysts of change, and we welcome a president who believes that with hard work and a shared vision, we can transform the world for the better.

We have an opportunity to bring about real change in the world’s mightiest corporations. But with opportunity comes responsibility, and now is the time for all of us to work together to protect our planet.

Are you ready to take this historic, grassroots movement to the next level? The question we all have to ask ourselves is how, as individuals, we can work collectively to ensure and shape the change promised by an Obama presidency.

So please, let us know what you think. Use this forum to share your excitement, and lend your voice to this important–and inspiring–discussion.

Moving forward together,

Michael Brune
Executive Director
Rainforest Action Network

Oh, and I like Joanna Newsom, WTF?

Right now, at 7:19 A.M. the lockdown, which is the first project of RAN’s new Action Tank, continues at the site where Dominion Virginia wants to build a 585 megawatt plant.

Pictures from the action deployment are up on RAN’s Flickr site and you can follow all the news and updates today at www.wiseupdominion.org

Note that the solar panels on the barrels are functional and provide power for the illuminated banner.

This plant has been the focus of a major local struggle to resist the expansion of coal industry and support strong sustainable economic development. The area has been devastated by mountaintop removal coal mining and the local economy, despite the huge presence of the coal industry, is struggling.

I toured a mountaintop removal site in Wise County this weekend. The pictures speak for themselves:

Personally I am just so inspired by these activists from across the region, and the country, who have converged to shine a bright light on this issue, to escalate the pressure on the coal industry to stop destroying Appalachia and to take a stand for real prosperity.

Quick background: In northwestern Ontario’s stretch of boreal forest, Weyerhaeuser owns and operates a major mill which obtains wood from the traditional territory of the Grassy Narrows First Nation. The community has not consented to logging on their territory and has backed a moratorium but lacks the ability to enforce it.

So we sent two our finest out to Weyerhaeuser’s construction site to use a bit of their own technology against them. Annie and Adrian found the site yesterday and deployed a large banner reading “Wake up Weyerhaeuser; American Dream Home, Native Nightmare” directly in front of the company’s auotmated webcam.

Ten minutes later, the image made it to Weyerhaeuser’s site.

But why stop there?

Back at home base, we noticed a great feature of the site, an archive:

But it’s password protected:

Luckily, our folks are a bit smarter than their folks:

So, thanks to some carelessness in the realm of online security and picking a really simple password, our activists got inside their site and into the webcam controls:

And we could do fun stuff like zoom the camera:

Cool, we have control of the camera and Weyerhaeuser is inadvertently broadcasting our message out on their site. But we wanted to make sure to get their attention a little more directly.

Once again, thanks to its own fancy system, the company made it pretty easy for us to use the web cam’s administrative tools to email the images directly to the executives at Weyerhaeuser and the iLevel team:

“Thanks for the web cam setup! Native rights now!–RAN”

I’m pretty sure just about the last thing the people at Weyerhaeuser expected in their inboxes today was a giant picture of RAN activists sent by the company’s own PR technology.

So good job to the team who braved the heat to get the banner out. I think they brought just a little more unexpected pressure yesterday.

Check out all the pictures on our Flickr site!

Oh, and if you’d like the username and password for the site, just email: takeaction@ran.org

She looked at it for about three seconds and told me “that’s greenwashing.” She explained the word to me and although I was sad to see my evidence of the mainstream adoption of environmentalism debunked, I realized for the first time that in a lot of ways claiming to “go green” when you’re not can be worse than just doing bad stuff in the first place.

Well, I’ve obviously come a long way since then and you may have already seen one of our “Greenwash of the Week” posts.

You’d think I would be pretty aware of the scope and quantity of greenwashing out there. I thought I was too.

But this past weekend I did something I don’t often do: I watched cable news for a few hours non-stop. And I was, to put it mildly, surprised at just how much of the advertising was straight-up greenwashing.

Most of it was from industry front-groups. The oil and natural gas industry, Chevron, a major freight train operator called CSX, the coal industry, chemical producers, and a few more I didn’t write down.

If you get your news from, say, the news channels, you’d probably think that most of America’s biggest industries are spending most of their time trying to figure out how to protect the environment and make us all happier and safer.

I mean, that’s what their ads say. Not one ad touting anything like “gasoline, because you have to get to work” or “plastic, more convenient than reusing stuff.”

No, the message is always the same: in these ads the solution to the problems we face is to simply let the markets run their course, keep up our wasteful consumption, and trust that the companies who caused so many of these problems in the first place are working hard to develop and sell us wizz-bang technological solutions.

What scares me most, however, isn’t that their message is dishonest, or manipulative, or anything like that. What scares me is the scale of these campaigns.

I can’t help but think of the millions of young people out there who genuinely care about the future of this planet, like I did, see these ads, like I did, but whose parents aren’t environmental activists who know how to explain greenwashing to a ten year-old.

Look, these ads are slick, powerful, inspiring, and emotional. And they’re everywhere. I know that most folks don’t trust these companies and can see through the most flagrant claims, but I’m also pretty sure that some of their messaging is getting through.

My guess is that’s exactly their strategy: just overwhelm us with the message and hope that some tiny part of it sticks. Like, maybe, “clean coal” or “oil is the future” or even just “technology is the answer.”

So how to we stop them? I’m not sure I have the whole answer to that, but I think it has a lot to do with building a culture of skepticism towards their claims and a much broader and deeper awareness about what real solutions look like.

Anyone else have ideas?

The Detroit News covered the event, featuring GM executive Brent Dewar “answering” questions from more than 65 RAN supporters (I use scare quotes because of the large number of questions he ignored and the indirect responses he gave to the most pointed inquiries).

The article quotes Clay Voorhes, an assistant professor of marketing at Michigan State University saying that the effort by GM is “part of a new push for authenticity by companies.”

Of course, it would be more accurate to describe it as a “push for the appearance of authenticity” because the corporate world isn’t really trying to genuinely communicate in an honest way with people. Instead, they believe that if people think a particular corporation is more “genuine” or “authentic” then those people will buy more of whatever the corporation is selling.

Nonetheless, I think it is important for us to recognize that the meme of “authenticity” is taking hold in corporate marketing.

What I loved about this series of actions connected to gmnext.com, was that RAN supporters stood up, together, to challenge that meme. They sent a very clear message to the company that people aren’t just going to accept declarations of “authenticity” by corporations without serious actions and commitments on the corporation’s part behind those declarations.

Otherwise, we’re going to call it like we see it. And what we see is more corporate greenwashing.

On that note, I’ll wrap up by sharing my other favorite part of this whole experience. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a giant company use the term “greenwashing” in their own marketing. But, when I went to the chat, there it was. Looks like we won the framing battle on this one.

We posted pictures of student activists at the Detroit auto show protesting automakers on the site and thousands of RAN supporters flooded GM with comments supporting the students and asking the giant automaker to take real steps, not just greenwashing PR, on climate and green jobs.

Within a matter of hours GM shut down comments on the site.

Then, Christopher Barger, Director of Global Communications Technology for GM, came to our blog and wrote that they turned of the interactive features because “‘dialogue’ does not mean ‘open to demagogues.’” One of his employees–who it seems didn’t realize that her IP address identified her as part of the GM PR machine–going by the name “betty” also commented on our blog and started a lively conversation.

I know, hilarious.

Anyhow, Mr Barger also promised that they “are planning to have an open forum — possibly even a series of them – in the coming weeks where we will address green jobs, the quest for 100 mpg cars and other pressing environmental issues.”

Well, to give him credit, GM has announced the first of those forums.

Mr. Barger left a note on our blog and everyone who left a comment on the site got an email today announcing that:

“GM executive Brent Dewar will be on hand to answer your questions about GM’s environmental policies and initiatives. The chat will take place Wednesday, February 6 from noon to 1 p.m. EST. To access the chat, go to http://www.gmnext.com/LiveChat.aspx and register with your e-mail address. On the day of the chat, click the “Enter Chat” button and join the conversation.”

Great! Let’s ask some questions! I’ll be in the chat and I hope to see lots of RAN supporters there asking GM why they are doing so little about global warming, green jobs and social justice.

Don’t expect a lot of candor or honesty, we are, afterall, dealing with the PR apparatus of one of the biggest corporations in the world. Instead, I expect more of the same–greenwashing slogans and little real action.

To mark its 100th anniversary two weeks ago, General Motors launched a new interactive website, gmnext, where the public was encouraged to submit photos, videos and comments in order to help the company answer questions like “how should GM best address global energy issues we’ll face for the next 100 years?”

Yeah, it’s typical corporate greenwashing, but with a new “web 2.0″ spin where the company pretends to care what the public thinks.

So last week we posted photos on the site of student activists in Michigan protesting at the Detroit auto show. Then we asked our supporters to go comment on the site and tell GM what the public really thinks about how the automakers should address global warming and energy issues.

GM’s response? They turned off public comments.

So much for the fancy interactive that GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said “encourages open and honest interaction.”

I guess it wasn’t really public discussion the company wanted. Big surprise.

One of GM’s PR flacks claimed that they were shutting off the interactive features because “we have no intention of letting a vocal set of activists highjack the conversation with invective and dogmatic misinformation.”

What were these comments filled with “invective and dogmatic misinformation” actually like?

“GM needs to stop thinking of “green” as an advertising term and nothing more. Really committing to better gas mileage and alternative fuels–NOT including ethanol, which is not environmentally sound–will be better publicity for you than mere sloganeering.”

“Since the most famous quote from Ioccoca, “How much clean air do we really need?”, the auto industry has let the public down. Most citizens believe that the auto industry has it’s hands in the oil pockets as well. Whether that is true or not, we will never know. What we do know is that the “green” options are simply not good enough. We don’t wish to see the auto industry pat themselves on the back for what we perceive as a poor job. It is just not good enough yet. This group pushes so that the industry doesn’t stop working on it. No pats are deserved yet. Cutting emissions is great, but we want better. So less patting on the back and more work is what they want.. I have to fully agree. What the production of these batteries do to the enviroment is disgusting. We have a long way to go. No kudo’s until this job is done and done responsibly. Ethanol is not a solution either. It takes just as much energy to produce as oil.. so where is the benefit, and now people are starving due to the lack of corn. Iceland uses meat that is unconsumable. Why are we not? A better job has been done by other countries.. step up to the world plate please and stop patting..”

Sounds less like dogma than clear well-reasoned comments by people who care.

Of course, GM is shutting down the interactive features of their new marketing campaign because the comments they got aren’t in line with their branding, not because they are inaccurate, mean-spirited, or dogmatic.

My take: I think that as more and more companies move towards trying to use fake “web 2.0″ “interactive” features to promote their greenwashing, we’re going to keep on them and show through our actions that the public isn’t going to let them get away with anything short of real action. Greenwashing on the web isn’t going to be easy for them.

So I say thank you to everyone who helped shut down one of the biggest greenwashing campaigns by one of the most powerful corporations on earth.

OK, great. I watched this fantastic little movie last week and although I’d heard nearly all of the info before, I came away so impressed with the its style, presentation, accessibility and substance. I spend a lot of time working on and thinking about the issues in film but for some reason, this particular movie stuck with me over the weekend and I kept seeing a golden arrow everywhere I looked (I told you, watch it and then read this post).

Anyhow, with visions of golden arrows in my head and the phrase “externalized costs” running across my field of vision, I somehow found myself at my local Target on Sunday night.

Yeah, Target, the big giant evil retailer. I needed to get some cleaning supplies. You know.

I haven’t been to a store like that in while and as I looked around, something caught my eye: a whole wall of political t-shirts. Really progressive political t-shirts. Really. My favorite had a picture of a carrot and the words “Support Organic Farmers.”

Of course, these aren’t organic t-shirts. They’re regular old Target shirts made in Asia with, I presume all the usual toxic ingredients using, again I presume, deplorable labor practices.

I just stood there in shock. First I took out my phone and took a bunch of pictures. Then, when I got back to the office and looked at Target’s website, I noticed what has to be the kicker. The price.

$4.99

Did you watch The Story of Stuff?

Radio Shack, boat rides, resource extraction, externalized costs?

For $4.99 who wouldn’t want to support organic farming?

I’m glad that there’s a market for these. I really am. But I’m also somewhat terrified by the prospect of people going to target, buying the shirt, and then feeling like somehow organic farmers are benefiting from the whole deal.

I guess that’s what greenwashing is all about.

I love it because instead of an online petition or a call in day, we’re using the internet to get Citi to call you!

Citi is the leading funder of the coal industry and coal is the single biggest source of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Anyhow, I just got around to actually talking to someone at Citi. It was so fast, within 30 seconds of entering my number I got a call.

The woman had obviously already dealt with a lot of people today who wanted to talk about coal. She told me that she was supposed to collect my information and forward it to “senior management.”

So I gave her my info and asked when I should expect a call from “senior managment.” She said I probably shouldn’t expect a call. So I asked who at Citi did want to hear my voice. At first she said no one.

How sad.

I then asked if I could just get the email address where she was supposed to send my info and, much to my surprise, she gave it to me along with a fax number for the “executive response team.” I’m still undecided about whether to post the number and address or just try to get more people to sign up for a call from Citi.

So, if you’ve talked to Citi today, post your experience here and let’s compare notes!

What makes the new card so special?

Well, everytime you make a purchase you earn points, but instead of using the points to get airline tickets or electronics, MBNA buys carbon offsets.

The more stuff you buy, the more offsets MBNA buys.

So basically the message is: buying things is really good for the earth! Want a new riding lawnmower? Charge it and don’t worry about the impact on the climate!

Just keep on shopping!

And exactly how much goes towards helping offset emissions? According MBNA, one half of one percent of your total purchases.

In case you’re keeping track, that’s 99.5% going to Bank of America, one of the biggest financial backers of the coal industry and .5% to planting trees.

And that doesn’t even mention the much deeper point that over consumption itself is driving the climate crisis in the first place and that shopping is not the answer. (follow that last link for an interesting article on Alternet today)

Final point, let’s not fail to notice that MBNA itself won’t even stand behind the offest program it is trying to promote. Check out the small print on the card’s website: “MBNA does not guarantee the overall effect of the carbon offset purchases to actually reduce carbon emissions.”

So, for being a leading funder of coal, among other destructive industries, and at the same time trying to get Canadians to buy more stuff they don’t need while pretending to address global warming, Bank of America and it’s subsidiary MBNA win this week’s Greenwash of the Week Award.

Congrats.

Oh, and I had a great time shutting down some B of A ATMs today, check out the pics on flickr.

Yesterday Brant blogged about his run in with Toyota executive Bob Carter at the LA Auto Show and included a nice video of the encounter.

In the comments someone using the name “fugazi48″ wrote that “Toyota is a money grubbing company. Buy a car from them is like supporting the third reich as they try to overtake Europe.”

OK, so that’s not just extreme, but actually offensive.

My first guess about who wrote such a thing: a Toyota PR flack trying to make our supporters look like total extremists.

But no, it was written by someone on a General Motors-owned computer in Detroit.

See, thanks to the magic of the internet we can actually see when employees of big corporations use company computers to post on our blog. In this case, the post came straight from General Motors.

So my question: What’s stranger, GM employees using RAN’s blog to call Toyota Nazis or the fact that the person posting the comment seems to be a fugazi fan?

No exactly what I expected to read from Forbes. The article goes on to draw connections between increased meat consumption driving up food prices and even starts out with the startling statistic that “world’s poor spend twice what they did on food just seven years ago, yet still starve in greater numbers.”

I know, it sounds bad. But don’t worry, the article goes on to point out that “investors might find some opportunity amidst the misery.”

Oh, thank goodness.

I was worried that this horrific tale of suffering and injustice might not be good for investment portfolios. Luckily many banking giants have already reaped significant profits by investing in companies like ADM and Bunge–targets of our new Rainforest Agribusiness campaign.

Maybe the problem has something to do with our collective perverse focus on the financial profits generated by industrial agriculture rather than the importance of building a just and equitable food supply.

If you haven’t yet, check out Leila’s post about all the action inside the meeting.

My job was to help put together our outside action. I’ll give you the summary first and you can read more for a blow-by-blow rundown of my experience.

First, the short version:

• go to Decatur
• hear strange things on the radio
• meet with the chief of police
• learn all about ADM and Decatur
• head to Urbana-Champaign to get some student support
• back to Decatur for the protest
• encounter a crazy aggressive/ridiculous/paranoid/intimidating private mercenary security presence contracted by ADM
• get followed out of town
• see a vision of the future
• make it safely back to San Francisco.

I landed in St. Louis two days before the event, rented a flexfuel (how appropriate) vehicle and hit the road for the soy capital of the world, Decatur, IL.

Quick radio side note: the first thing I hear on the radio, no joke, was an environmental radio show on KDHX. And what are they talking about? A protest on RAN’s National Day of Action Against Coal Finance. I was kinda floored by that. I mean, it just seemed like a crazy coincidence.

My first order of business once I arrived was a meeting with the Decatur deputy police chief. He had called me a couple days before and asked if I’d come meet with him. Apparently ADM had told him we were coming. He turned out to be one of the friendliest police officials I’ve ever encountered. He had lots of pictures of RAN’s banner drop in Chicago along with printouts of news releases from our website.

I told him we planned a completely lawful and peaceful demonstration. I think I had him at “lawful.”

He was so pleased to hear that we wouldn’t be scaling any buildings and our conversation quickly turned towards advice on where to park. Fifteen minutes later we exchanged smiles and I took off to check out the location.

Decatur is a very interesting town. First, it stinks. Literally. It just smells terrible from all the corn and soy processing. Pipelines carrying corn syrup, built by ADM to circumvent a labor lockout at in-town competitor (or is co-conspirator a better term) Tate & Lyle run through the town, over and under roadways. Did I mention ADM is not unionized?

Despite my fascination with the town, I did have to leave Decatur and head to Urbana-Champaign. I met up with a few great activist from Students for Environmental Concerns (SECS), a campus environmental group and we painted our final banner in preparation for the early morning protest the next day.

First thing in the morning we head off towards the stench (I again only mean that in the most literal sense) of Decatur.

When we arrive at the shareholders meeting, held in a building that used to be a middle school, we are immediately stopped by a group a special private security mercenaries. We don’t even make it to the regular entrance check point where everyone else has to stop. Our car is surrounded immediately by at least six guard in black. A few of them have video cameras and they clearly want to put on quite a show of recording each of our faces.

The guards, who by the way traveled in $100,000 Mercedes sedans, tell us to park across the street and point to chalk-outlined box on the front lawn of the facility where we are allowed to peacefully hold up our banners.

At this point we have twice as many guards and police as protesters. A news reporter had been waiting for us on location and he set up his camera outside of the designated “free speech zone” to interview Leila. What a dilemma for the guards: do they interrupt the NBC interview to enforce what they called the “white line rule” and risk an embarrassing news report or do they just keep quiet and wait for the cameras to leave?

Of course, they waited. Because keeping peaceful demonstrators in an arbitrarily-drawn box is ridiculous.

ADM had people standing on top of their building sniper-style and the collection of large men they’ve hired spent the whole morning our videotaping our every move. The guards told us that ADM flew them all in just for the protest. The overall vibe was just pointless but clear intimidation.

Personally I mostly find this to be both hilarious and somewhat reassuring:

Hilarious because they’ve got a small army and we show up, quietly hold up some hand-painted banners, and wave to folks as they drive by.

Reassuring because it is such a clear sign that ADM is totally freaked out by us. That’s a good sign to me.

But I also know that I am somewhat insulated from the threat of police/corporate violence and that one of my privileges is that I am far less likely to be harassed or attacked by these people.

So I also see how this display of force is not just funny, but also genuinely frightening and sad. The fact that ADM thinks hiring intimidating guards is somehow an appropriate response to non-violent dissent is disturbing. The fact that the guards and the police we’re chatting it up all morning is disturbing. They took down our license plate numbers, video taped each person there, and ultimately followed us out of town as we left for the airport.

I’m really not sure if I should feel proud, scared, or both.

Finally clear of the mercenary’s vehicle we hit the highway heading toward St. Louis.

My final note comes from the drive back. We stopped at a gas station and came across a row of oversized trucks carrying what we eventually realized were gigantic blades for wind turbines.

Hmm. The future sure looks different from the past.