Katie Burgess, executive director of the Trans Youth Support Network, was asked to address the 18th Annual Coming Out Day Luncheon last week. But when she learned that Cargill was a corporate sponsor of the event, she decided to address an issue that was far more important than keeping everyone comfortable. Instead of kissing up [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, October 19, 2011
“[The Occupy movement] is about the corporate takeover of democracy of our lives in every way. The food movement is inherently anti-corporate and it is inherently about rebuilding a real economy… Occupy Wall Street is not just about banking legislation… It’s all connected.” – Author and activist Naomi Klein Cargill Inc., a multi-national corporation worth [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, September 22, 2011
Did you see the palm oil infographic we released today? I hope so! If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out. Were you shocked to find out that palm oil is in half of the products in your pantry? Yep, that’s right, palm oil is in roughly 50% of all packaged goods, from cookies, [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, September 14, 2011
If a place exists where Cargill has spent the time and resources to look as proper as the front row of a church on Sunday, it’s in the wealthy Minnesota suburbs where the quiet giant is headquartered. Unfortunately for everyone else, Minnesota is also the only place (besides the Internet) where Cargill bothers to try [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, August 30, 2011
This post is by Girl Scouts Madison Vorva (age 16) and Rhiannon Tomtishen (age 15), who have been campaigning to get palm oil out of Girl Scout Cookies for the past few years. Five years ago, while doing research for our Girl Scout Bronze Award, we learned that the cultivation of palm oil and palm [...]
Continue reading...Friday, August 12, 2011
RAN Forest Campaigner Lafcadio Cortesi and I traveled to Sumatra, Indonesia last month to meet with and interview an extensive network of allies involved in the movement to resist the rampant deforestation and human rights abuses occurring there. We witnessed firsthand the ecological devastation, tense social conflicts and choking haze of carbon emissions resulting from [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, July 21, 2011
Several weeks ago, three national parks in Sumatra, Indonesia were collectively labeled a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Danger. This inscription reiterates the urgency to issue full protections for the last remaining tracts of unspoiled rainforest on the island. The Sumatran rainforest, named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004 for its wealth of biodiversity, [...]
Continue reading...Friday, July 15, 2011
If you think this title sounds hyperbolic, you probably have not visited Sumatra lately. Before traveling here, I had heard stories about the oceans of oil palm that have been planted where rainforest once stood. But I was not prepared for this. The first sign that something is terribly wrong came before our plane even [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, July 13, 2011
It appears the Malaysian government has decided to allow its drive for industrialization to trump the preservation of some of the world’s most important natural resources. Do the two really have to be at odds in the 21st century? The county of Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo, contains one of the oldest and most diverse rainforests [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Girl Scouts USA’s mission is to empower girls to be leaders “who make the world a better place.” But today, in a shocking violation of its own mission statement, the organization made the decision to censor the comments of scores of its young leaders rather than listen to their concerns about the use of rainforest-destroying [...]
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Monday, October 31, 2011
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