Protect-an-Acre

KONTAK Rakyat Borneo
$4,000 to carry out a two week field investigation in and around PT Indo Sawit Kekal, a Cargill subsidiary, to gather concrete evidence and documentation of its operations in violation of Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil principles and criteria and Indonesian law, as well as establish a link between Sinar Mas plantations and Cargill mills.

Red de Permacultura America Latina en el Peru (REDPAL-PERU) on behalf of Achual Sustainable Harvest Project
$1,500 to support the Achual community’s permaculture project in the in Peruvian Amazon, which will produce tropical fruits with maximum biodiversity, provide income security, result in the reforestation of depleted areas, and help secure native status recognition of 4,000 acres of rainforest territory.

Maintenance of flooded camu camu plants

Keeper of the Mountains Foundation
$1,500 to support Larry Gibson’s tireless work bringing thousands of people to witness the destruction caused by mountaintop removal coal mining to help build a movement to ensure his ancestral land on Kayford Mountain in West Virginia will not become a part of the 7,000 acre MTR site that surrounds it today.

Ya’axché Conservation Trust
$1,000 to support a comprehensive advocacy campaign to secure the Government of Belize’s commitment to protected area legislation, specifically focusing on the most recent illegal, environmentally and socially detrimental activity, a proposed hydroelectric facility within the most restricted and perhaps most pristine protected area in the country, Bladen Nature Reserve.

Bladen Nature Reserve

Global Greengrants Fund

Secwepemc Nation Youth Network
$5,000 to support a four day Indigenous Peoples Assembly on Secwepemc Nation land located within British Columbia’s inland temperate rainforest just prior to the Winter Olympics to network and draft an action plan related to Canadian mining companies, independent power projects impacting water and salmon, all-season resorts, and other local issues.

Grassy Narrows Women’s Drum Group
$3,000 to support two public events in Toronto, including a public march that will form a human wild river, to raise awareness about the health impacts of mercury poisoning on the Grassy Narrows community on the 40th anniversary of when residents were poisoned by mercury from an upstream pulp mill.

Wild river march for clean water in Toronto

Indigenous Environmental Network
$5,000 to send an Indigenous Environmental Network delegation to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in Bolivia, to provide a platform for a moratorium against new fossil fuel developments in and near Indigenous lands and territories.

ClimAmbiente
$3,5000 to support two workshops in the Ecuadorian Amazon for Indigenous leaders to strengthen participation in international climate change policy debates on adaption, mitigation, and the United Nation’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program, which could have a significant impact on Indigenous communities and rainforests.

Consejo Shipibo-Konibo Xetebo
$4,000 to provide the Council of the Shipibo-Konibo with initial seed money for a new organization to unite Shipibo-Konibo communities in the Peruvian Amazon in their efforts to protect their collective territory from the encroaching world.

Wahana Bumi Hijau Foundation
$5,000 to produce an updated field study, hold an open discussion forum and carry out a road show related to the Rimba Hutani Mas logging company’s activities in the Merang Kepayang peat swamp forest, an ecologically important area that acts as a buffer zone to Sembilang National Park in Indonesia.

Community Alliance for Pulp Paper Advocacy
$1,500 to organize a workshop for 17 representatives of Indonesian organizations to hold a facilitated discussion to share experiences, identify common objectives, and plan specific activities in support of community rights and sustainable land use in an area of Central Kalimantan that is targeted for large-scale pulp industry expansion, which would devastate natural forest and peat lands.

Youth Community Biodiversity Initiative
$3,000 to plant trees in collaboration with 10 schools throughout Uganda and reduce deforestation through the implementation of energy saving stoves that burn rice husks and coffee so less wood needs to be gathered.

It is worth noting that Canada’s largest union (CUPE National) and Canada’s largest private sector union (CAW) both signed onto the letter, along with enviro, faith based, youth, and other labor groups.

The signatories are:

Amnesty International
CAW
Christian Peacemaker Teams
CUPE National
CUPE Ontario
CUPW
KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives
Mining Watch Canada
Rainforest Action Network
Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy, Ryerson University
Sierra Youth Coalition
Toronto & York Region Labour Council

The list would have been longer if not for the rush to get the letter out in a timely way.

An even larger coalition supported Grassy Narrows, KI, and Ardoch this past May as they gathered for four days and nights of ceremonies and rallies at the Provincial legislature. The gathering was attended by 3,000 people at its peak, and generated a lot of pressure for some of the very changes that the premier promised to implement only one month later.

Ontario’s Premier committed to protect 50% of the province’s Northern Boreal Forest from all industry, and to allow new logging and mining only with the support of First Nations through a community landuse planning process that would require First Nations agreement.

Indian Country (The Nations’ Leading American Indian News Source) ran a long article today that began to put the announcement in context.

While the Government may cast their move as a benevolent attempt to ‘do the right thing’ they were really spurred to action by the highly effective and hard fought campaigns of Indigenous communities like Grassy Narrows, KI, Ardoch, and Six Nations. Those communities have not only been on the front lines of the blockades, they are also setting ground breaking legal precedents, and they are galvanizing a solidarity movement that has mobilized people and organizations across the spectrum from mainsteam to radical enviros, human rights, faith-based, labour, student unions, anti-poverty, and immigrant rights organizations.

It is primarily the work of these communities (and their supporters) that has created the political and economic necessity for this change. The work goes on as these communities continue the process of asserting their sovereignty, re-claiming their territories and livelihoods, healing their people, and caring for the earth. They are setting a bold example for the whole world to follow.

RAN, and our allies, have had the honor of working with some of these courageous communities over the last four years. Here are some of the pictures:

Sept. 21, ‘07 action with Grassy, KI, Ardoch, and CPT at the Ontario Legislature, shortly before the elections

June 25, ’07 action at Provincial Legislature with Grassy and KI , and CPT

July, ’06 Blockade of the English River Road with Grassy activists

April ’07 Seattle action at Weyerhaeuser subsidiary right before Weyerhaeuser AGM

March ’07 Seattle action

July 2006 TransCanada Highway blockade near Grassy Narrows

Nov. 2005 Boreal Day of Action – Toronto

May ’08 Gathering, Rally, and Sleepover at Provincial Legislature with Grassy and KI , Ardoch and a huge coalition of supporters

Mind you, this is not terribly surprising–when Canadian customs started seizing our laptops and cameras at the border a couple years back, we kinda figured the snoop was on. What’s unsettling is that snooper was Canada’s shiny new counter-terrorism office.

The Post peeked at 22 secret reports including daily briefings prepared by Integrated Threat Assessment Center (ITAC) during the week last Summer’s protests. Daily briefings! And what does ITAC do? According to the FAQ on its website,

ITAC’s role is to help prevent and reduce the effects of terrorist incidents on Canada and its people, both at home and abroad.

Ok, fine. Good goal… So then what then what the hell were they doing in Grassy Narrows? First, the action wasn’t even in Grassy Narrows that week. It was in Toronto, where we joined the Christian Peacemaker Teams and folks from Grassy and KI to erect a big teepee on the legislature lawn to draw attention to Provincial backsliding on its obligations respect the rights of those communities (pictures, video).

Then there’s that Terrorism thing. No terrorists here, see? Just young folks trying to make a point creatively.

Aside from the astonishing waste of time and money, the unfortunate consequence of this kind of surveillance is that it makes us all less safe. It’s frightening to think that national authorities established precisely to prevent terrorism would rather rather justify their paychecks chasing protesters like us.

CBC National primetime interview with Roberta Keesick

Article on AlterNet

Feature Article in Toronto’s Now Magazine

Article on rabble.ca

Environmental News Service newswire

The Toronto Star

Campaign background

Launched in 1992, the Old Growth Campaign is the oldest campaign at RAN. Our first major victory came in 1999, when it obtained a groundbreaking commitment from Home Depot to phase out the purchase of old-growth wood. Major brands throughout the forest products industry soon followed suit, including companies like Lowe’s, 84 Lumber, Centex, KB Home, and others.

The campaign then moved on to Boise Cascade, another major purchaser of old-growth wood. In 2004, Boise became the first major forest products company to establish a policy against old-growth logging within the United States.

After the Boise Cascade win, the Old Growth Campaign decided to target Seattle-based Weyerhaeuser Corp., the largest lumber company in the world. Weyerhaeuser obtains a significant percentage of its wood from clear-cuts of Canada’s Boreal Forest. More than 10 times the size of California, the Boreal stretches across North America from Alaska to the Atlantic Ocean and forms part of a ring of forest that encircles the entire planet just below the Arctic tundra. It is also the largest terrestrial storehouse of organic carbon – a critical defense against global warming.

Targeting Weyerhaeuser also meant that we could profile the Grassy Narrows First Nation as an example of Weyerhaeuser’s disregard for human rights and environmental protection. The Grassy Narrows community’s traditional territory includes 2,500 square miles of forests, lakes and rivers in northwestern Ontario. The community has struggled against industrial development and destruction of their territory for decades. In 2002, after years of negotiating with the Ontario provincial government and corporations logging on their territory, filing lawsuits to assert sovereignty over their land, and speaking out against the many health, economic, cultural and environmental effects of extractive industry on their land, the youth in Grassy Narrows decided to blockade one of the logging roads on their territory. That blockade is still active today, and stands as the longest running Indigenous logging blockade in Canadian history. The people of Grassy Narrows have stood firm in their demand to determine the future of their land, and in January of 2007 demanded a full moratorium of all industrial activity on their territory. RAN has worked in close partnership with the Grassy Narrows community since 2003, and our relationship with the community has taught all of us at RAN great deal about the importance of taking leadership from communities that are on the front lines of environmental destruction.

On Tuesday, June 3 we got word that AbitibiBowater, the Canadian logging company that is responsible for all of the logging on Grassy Narrows would immediately stop logging on the Grassy Narrows territory because of the conflict with the First Nation community. This was a huge victory for the people of Grassy Narrows, the Old Growth team, and all of the many activists who have taken part in this effort, as our years of hard work targeting Weyerhaeuser, OfficeMax, Grand & Toy and the Ontario government finally means the end of logging in Grassy Narrows – at least for now. We are thrilled and proud to have been a part of the struggle for Indigenous rights for Indigenous people in Canada and the Grassy Narrows First Nation – and we intend to continue to support these struggles in our campaigns in the future.

Campaign strategies

When we decided to target Weyerhaeuser, we wanted to do what RAN does best, pressure Weyerhaeuser in the marketplace. Because Weyerhaeuser is a U.S. based logging company, and most of the wood products from their operations in Canada are destined for the US consumers, we thought that Weyerhaeuser would be a great target for a RAN campaign.

No Weyerhaeuser Grocery Bags!

The Old Growth campaign started out by putting pressure on grocery stores that sold paper bags made by Weyerhaeuser. The campaign was especially strong in southern California where a RAN chapter protested outside of their neighborhood Wild Oats health food stores until they successfully pressured them to stop using Weyerhaeuser bags. Soon after Wild Oats moved away from Weyerhaeuser bags, Trader Joes followed suit.

RAN’s Home-Builder Strategy

Next, the campaign looked to Weyerhaeuser’s home-building subsidiaries in the United States. Weyerhaeuser owns five home-building subsidiaries across the United States, all of which use wood logged in Grassy Narrows in their construction. Activists in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Washington D.C. protested in front of new homes and model homes to put pressure on the subsidiaries to stop building American dream homes from a Native nightmare!

The campaign escalated our protests against these home-building subsidiaries, especially Quadrant homes, which is based in the Seattle area, Weyerhaeuser’s home-town. In February 2007, two RAN activists got significant media attention when they climbed on the roof of a Quadrant Home in a Seattle suburb and refused to leave until Weyerhaeuser pulled out of Grassy Narrows. The two were arrested by police with a fire-fighter’s ladder after several hours, just as helicopters from Seattle area television stations arrived – they were live at 5! RAN also targeted Quadrant’s headquarters in Bellevue, Washington in the spring of 2007 the day before Weyerhaeuser’s annual shareholder meeting, by dropping a banner reading “Weyerhaeuser: Human Rights Abuser.”

Organizing in Canada

In the summer of 2006, the Old Growth campaign hosted an incredibly successful summer internship program in Grassy Narrows. Nine interns from North America spent the summer living in Grassy Narrows on the blockade site learning about the culture, and supporting the struggle of the Grassy Narrows First Nation. In July, the interns along with Grassy Narrows community members and activists from Ontario blockaded the Trans-Canada highway in Kenora, Ontario. The action got attention from Canadian press, and was an incredibly bold statement for Indigenous rights in Canada.

During the campaign, RAN coordinated a number of actions in Canada to highlight the importance of Indigenous land rights. Besides the Trans-Canada blockade, we erected a tepee on the lawn in front of the Ontario Legislative building in Toronto reading “Native Rights Now!,” and we organized a march in coalition with the Christian Peacemaker Teams to unfurl a giant yellow arrow pointing toward the Legislative building reading “Native Land Rights Now.” That banner, which we took aerial photos of, has become iconic of the campaign. Most recently, RAN was integral in organizing a week-long camp out in front of the Ontario Legislative building which included representatives from Grassy Narrows, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI), and the Ardoch Algonquin First Nations in Ontario. A coalition of over a dozen environmental, human rights, and faith organizations in Canada also participated.

Targeting Boise, OfficeMax and Grand & Toy

This past winter, the campaign decided to pivot our focus away from Weyerhaeuser for a moment, and to direct attention to Boise Inc., a company that we had targeted just a few years ago. This time we demanded that Boise stop purchasing pulp from Grassy Narrows. Boise is the other major purchaser from AbitibiBowater, other than Weyerhaeuer, of wood products from Grassy Narrows. We decided to target Boise’s retail presence by organizing a day of action against OfficeMax locations in the United States, and Grand & Toy locations in Canada. The day of action was a huge success, with 34 actions taking place all over North America at the end of January 2008. After the success of the day of action, our attention turned to a group of students at Ohio State University in Columbus who were engaged in a long-running campaign to get their campus to purchase sustainable forest products, excluding copy paper from OfficeMax as long as it was made from wood from Grassy Narrows.

At the end of February we had a major victory when Boise announced publicly that they would no longer purchase pulp coming from Grassy Narrows through logging company AbitibiBowater.

Campaign Accomplishments

Over the course of the campaign, Weyerhaeuser made a few significant changes to the way that they do business that are positive, but have gone without much fanfare on our part. Weyerhaeuser is no longer operating in important rainforests in British Columbia, and when they merged their paper division with Domtar, a Canadian logging company that is committed to FSC certification, it meant that forests now logged under Domtar’s management will have to meet more strict forest management practices.

It has been such an honor to work with so many amazing people on this campaign in the two years that I’ve been at RAN. I have been continually amazed by the level of commitment brought to this work by people all over North America, whether they are people who have spent time in Grassy Narrows, long time forest activists, students, donors or people willing to stand in 100 degree heat with a banner because Indigenous rights is an issue that is critically important to all of us. The people of Grassy Narrows have been struggling to protect their culture, their land, and their rights for decades, and AbitibiBowater’s announcement, while significant, is not the end of the work that remains to be done. I hope that we all can look at this campaign and think about how we can continue to support the community in Grassy Narrows, and apply what we have learned to our work in the future.

-Annie

RAN’s Old Growth team, along with the Grassy Narrows community, ally organizations in the United States and Canada, and hundreds of activists, volunteers, organizers and donors all over North America contributed to this milestone victory.

Whether you were out on the streets protesting for Indigenous rights for Grassy Narrows, sending emails to Weyerhaeuser executives, donating to RAN, or following the campaign on www.ran.org, you can call in on Thursday and get the inside story of how we did it! Join us for a conference call on Thursday, June 19, at 5 p.m. PST (8 p.m EST) to discuss the anatomy of this successful campaign.

Conference call information:

Toll Free Dial-In Number (US & Canada): (866) 864-8698
International Dial-In Number: (660) 422-5053
Conference Code: 7989851056 (enter this number when prompted)

If you ever wondered what strategies we used, which tactics were effective and which weren’t, this is a great opportunity to look back on a great win and learn what worked and what didn’t.

RAN staff and activists who played a key role in this victory will participate during the first portion of the call, and we will be sure to leave plenty of time for questions. Please join us!

- Annie

JB Fobister is a Grassy Narrows member who has been a key part of the community’s work towards self-determination. He sends this message:

Six years ago when we blocked the main logging road near our small community people told us we were crazy to take on two of the largest logging companies in the world. We weren’t crazy, we were just fed up with watching our livelihood, our culture, our medicine, our children’s future – our forests – being carried off our land right before our eyes. We were tired after decades of letter writing, petitions, meetings, protests, speaking tours, legal challenges and rallies, but we refused to give up.

Last night, as I was standing in front of my house looking out at Grassy Lake, it occurred to me that the news I had received a day earlier was something huge. Only at that point did it finally sink in that we had forced AbitibiBowater – the world’s largest paper company – to withdraw from our lands.

I’m really thankful for everybody that made this happen. We couldn’t have done it without everybody’s help over all these years.

I met yesterday with Ministry of Natural Resources regional manager Al Wilcox. His tone was entirely different from past meetings. He said “things will be different from now on.” They sure will be. Grassy will not stop until we are in control of our lands and until our territories have been withdrawn from all clear-cut logging. Our moratorium on industry without our consent still stands, and we will enforce it.

I’m very happy today. People need to hear about what we have done. Then people need to stand up and do something for themselves and for the land too. If Grassy can do it, so can you .

JB Fobister

We couldn’t believe what we were reading. A wave of emotion rushed over David and I – AbitibiBowater is the largest paper company in the world, and the company responsible for all of the logging currently happening on Grassy Narrows territory. Weyerhaeuser buys the wood that they use for construction materials from AbitibiBowater, and Boise Inc. announced in February that they would stop buying pulp from AbitibiBowater because it was sourced from the Grassy Narrows territory.

AbitibiBowater’s announcement today means that, when they stop logging, there will be no logging in Grassy Narrows. We can only hope that AbitibiBowater’s announcement will influence ongoing negotiations between the Grassy Narrows community and the Province of Ontario, and allow the community to achieve the moratorium of all industrial activity that they’ve been demanding for the past year.

RAN has worked with the Grassy Narrows community for several years, campaigning for the right of Indigenous people to give their free, prior and informed consent for industrial projects on their territory. This announcement sets the groundbreaking precedent that a relatively small Indigenous community in a remote area of Canada can demand control over what happens on their land – and win.

The current Old Growth campaign team would like to send heartfelt thanks to past Old Growth campaigners, our organizational allies in the United States and Canada, the staff at RAN, and all the wonderful interns, volunteers and organizers who have worked so hard to make this win possible.

-Annie

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

Update: pictures from the event are here.

This morning, RAN activists gave Weyerhaeuser shareholders an idea of what the company is really about (not the greenwashing lies it posts on its website). About 20 of us descended on the company’s annual shareholder meeting with a 20-foot banner equating the “American Dream” (of big, new homes) with a “Native Nightmare” of flattened forests and eviscerated ecosystems. Three activists locked themselves to the HQ’s front entrance and declared that they wouldn’t leave until Weyerhaeuser got out of Grassy Narrows. Weyerhaeuser had a regular SWAT team of police officers at the ready, and the activists were removed…but not before they ruffled some shareholder feathers by letting them know where–and how–the company gets their quarterly dividends.

(Quick review for those of you not familiar with our battle with Weyerhaeuser: The Grassy Narrows community has been demanding that clear-cut logging stop on their land since 2000, and the Canadian constitution protects their right to preserve their territory for traditional activities such as hunting, which is hard to do when the ecosystem is dead.)

Grassy Narrows also had allies inside the meeting. A handful of RAN sympathizers used the normally polite Q&A period to make Weyerhaeuser execs explain their actions in Grassy Narrows to investors. One woman announced that she had bought Weyerhaeuser stock to support sustainable forestry, but learning about devastation and human rights abuses across the border made her furious. OK, alright: the woman was a plant, but she did call us last night fuming about the blatant lies on Weyerhaeuser’s website.

It was a powerful experience for the activists, and one I’m pretty sure the execs (and security team) won’t forget. One activists is telling me now that I should say a lot of love was felt in the action–and it’s true, it’s love for the planet and for our friends in Grassy Narrows that makes us keep going head to head with a company that is unabashed about its abusive, smarmy business practices.

The petitions came from RAN members who diligently signed and returned them to RAN over the years, and we thought that it was important for Weyerhaeuser to see how many we’ve collected. Liz, Sequoia and I left the petitions with a Weyerhaeuser representative who assured us that he would deliver them to Weyerhaeuser CEO Steve Rogel.

We’ve been pressuring Weyerhaeuser to stop purchasing wood from the Grassy Narrows First Nation’s traditional territory for years now, and they still haven’t gotten the message – hopefully these petitions will help.

Thank you to everyone who signed one of these petitions to Weyerhaeuser!!!!

-Annie

We will go there to feel a little bit of the suffering the land is feeling. We will go there to feel the life of our traditional laws which still roam strong amongst the animals, land, trees, water and spirits. Our laws still exist we just have to bring life to them by exerting them, by living them not just talking about them. They are being undermined by foreign laws and system of government and we are allowing this.

We will eventually head out soon. We will go there to pray for our relatives that are suffering, our kids that are being abused with alcohol and drugs, we will pray that our people remain strong and not fall prey to little deals, we will pray for strength, we will pray for unity, for health….

What this means: Boise’s announcement that they will stop purchasing pulp that comes from Grassy Narrows means that our efforts to recruit support from OfficeMax and Grand & Toy worked! Congratulations and thank you to everyone who participated in the international day of action at OfficeMax and Grand & Toy on January 30th (just a few weeks ago!)

What’s next? Grassy Narrows is still demanding a moratorium of all industrial activity on their traditional territory (including logging), Our primary concern right now is to push Weyerhaeuser and AbitibiBowater to follow Boise’s lead.

We want to hear from you! Now is a great time to weigh in with great ideas. A moratorium in Grassy Narrows is in our sights and creative thinking and clever ideas are definitely encouraged during this critical moment!

Thank You Thank You to everyone who has supported the Old Growth campaign! I am so happy to share the news of this milestone, and I hope that we can celebrate an even bigger victory in the near future.

- Annie

Today, Thursday the 14th, Free The Planet members directly confronted
OSU President Gordon Gee, not once, but twice. This morning I went to
see Kate Wolford, assistant to the President and Director of Operations
here at OSU. She is one of the university’s key negotiators at the
environmental task force (the group in charge of drafting our
sustainable forest policy). I wanted to give her some photos of
clear-cuts in the Boreal forest and another copy of our demands -
seeing as how “blind-sided” she said she felt by FTP members demands for
a full forest resources policy on Tuesday I thought she might like a
refresher before today’s task force meeting. Well, Kate wasn’t there,
apparently she was already off having pre-meetings with other task force
members – but that’s ok, cuz guess who WAS there, and with no Kate as a
body guard, President Gordon Gee!

President Gee was in the middle of an international meeting with a
German university president snapping pictures of handshakes and signing
documents with fancy ink pens. No sooner than Gee suggested “let’s
congratulate ourselves” did things start going downhill for his meeting.
I walked right in (after all the door was open) and placed our demands
and clear-cut pictures right on top of all those fancy pens of theirs
and asked that President Gee please stop destroying endangered forests.
Oh man, can his brows get furled!, (and our poor international guest, he
looked so totally confused). Needless to say, the laughing & snapshots
stopped and Gee kinda flipped. Attempting to remain calm, Gee excused
himself and started jabbing me in the chest with his finger as he said,
“there is a process, you can’t just interrupt my meetings, i’ll have you
arrested!” It was all pretty comical – his fingers are pretty damn bony
though, “ouch man!”. On my way out I chatted with one of the German
reps, apologized for having to interrupt their meeting and filled him in
about our 8hr sit-in on Tuesday and told him i would have much rather
spoke with President Gee then.

Not even 20 minutes later a second Gee Interception (man, Kate, you’re
really dropping the ball here) at the president’s office happened. A
second member of Free The Planet had come in wishing to had Kate copies
of our 2,600 or so petition signatures but walked right into good old
Gordon Gee instead. This FTPer got the same rap about “process” from
President Gee (minus the finger jabbing) but Gee’s not the only one
who’s masted the broken record messaging – our FTP activist retorted
with, “your process doesn’t work for us!” It’s clear FTPers know what we
want and we’re not dealing with process any longer!!!

I guess the moral of the story here President Gee is, “your process
doesn’t work for us!” GET OUT OF ENDANGERED FORESTS NOW!

-Annie

Below is a summary of the sit-in from one of the students who participated:

Today, the students of Free the Planet!, an environmental justice group at OSU, participated in a sit-in at the university’s president’s office. Five students, including myself, went in to try to have a meeting with President Gee to reach a memorandum of understanding about a Forest Resource Policy we’ve been working to get passed on campus, which would ensure that forest products bought by the university would not come from endangered forests or native territories. The president refused to meet with us, instead, sending out his assistant, Kate. Kate told us that the president would not sign our MOU because he was not “well enough informed of the issue,” despite the fact that this group has been working to change the university’s policy for the past couple of school years. So, we told them we’d wait there all day until we met with Gee. In the meantime, we had fun and enjoyed the bowtie pasta salad we brought with us, in honor of the bowties our president is so fond of.

- Afton Avalos
Free The Planet activist

Below is a description of the rally that happened outside the administrative building from two Free The Planet members.

-Annie

Today President Gordon Gee of The Ohio State University is cowering in his office, denying a meeting with representatives of student group Free the Planet! OSU and fellow supporters of The Grassy Narrows First Nation. Protesters serenaded the building with a drum circle, chants, banners, and signs. Chants included: “Gordon Gee, yes you could, stop buying old-growth wood!” and “Tell me what solidarity looks like! This is what solidarity looks like!”

-Glenn Collins and Jane Harrison
Free The Planet OSU activists

Right now Free The Planet’s campaign for a sustainable paper supply on campus at OSU is at a critical juncture and they need support to ensure that paper products coming from controversial sources such as Grassy Narrows will not be falsely considered “sustainable.” Take a minute and sign on to Free The Planet’s petition and support sustainable paper at one of the largest universities in the United States!

- Annie

To: OSU President, Gordon Gee

The Undersigned

In Saskatoon, Saskatchewan 25 people came out in -40 Celsius weather to support Grassy Narrows. Activists also signed letters that they plan to send to OfficeMax CEO Sam Duncan.

In Toronto, Ontario Ryerson University’s Journalists for Human Rights chapter hosted a great action and sent this summary:
At around 4 p.m., five of our chapter members set off from Ryerson happily laden with posters, flyers and caribou antlers and ready to protest. Despite the frigid temperatures and wicked wind, we were very keen to get out there and help spread the message for Grassy.

All in all, we felt we made a good impact on that store and the people in the area at the time, and we join everyone in hoping that this attention will make a real difference for the people of Grassy and their traditional lands.

In Vancouver, British Columbia activists also had a great time and sent a short and thoughtful summary:
The action in Vancouver went very well and it was fun! I delivered a letter to the manager and we stood outside with our signs and our flyers. People were receptive and I think we may have gotten some phone calls out of the crowd and some people to stop buying grand and toy brand paper…people also said that they were going to get their companies to change brands of paper. We were in a pretty high traffic area. The action team all felt very positive about the action. It was great to get out there and talk to people. So often we think that we are powerless…but this reminds me that all we have to do is start talking to people…get out on the street and engage people in a discussion…tell them the facts. Help the shift happen…raise the
consciousness. It was a great action to be a part of.

Check back for more updates as we continue to receive pictures and action updates from activists across North America!

-Annie