RAN sent a delegation of four staff to lobby for human rights and rainforest protections at the 9th Annual RSPO Meeting in Malaysia.

As the 9^thAnnual Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) meeting wrapped up on the island of Borneo, the crisis stemming from the uncontrolled expansion of palm oil plantations into rainforests and communities reached a fever pitch.

Consider this: In the few days that RAN’s four staff-member delegation attended the RSPO meeting in SE Asia, the Forest People’s Programme (FPP) released a comprehensive and scathing report that documents Cargill supplier and palm oil giant Wilmar’s complicity in the bulldozing of homes and the use of live ammunition to forcibly evict Indigenous community members on the island of Sumatra.

In a press conference on the human rights impacts of palm oil held during the RSPO meeting, Rukaiyah Rofiq, who goes by Uki and works with the human rights advocacy group Yayasan Setara Jambi, warned that companies producing palm oil under the RSPO umbrella are failing to resolve the social conflict caused by plantation expansion. In a November 24 article in the print version of the Borneo Post titled “RSPO Emboldens Violators of Indigenous Rights – NGO,” Uki said:

Ideally, we had hoped that with the RSPO, these conflicts would be stopped or at least reduced, and the rights of the communities be restored. But we’re not seeing any impact with the RSPO. This is evident in the ninth meeting we’ve had with the RSPO. There has not been any change; the conflicts have not decreased. The presence of RSPO has not reduced or resolved the conflicts.

Uki is referring to the more than 600 cases of social conflict related to palm oil in Indonesia documented by Sawit Watch. In the same press conference, Jefri Gideon of Sawit Watch said: “There is a big hope among everyone that the RSPO can help resolve these conflicts.” He urged RSPO members to go beyond talking about the RSPO principles and criteria and code of conduct and actually implement them.

During the same week, the Jakarta Globe published two articles, “Indonesian Palm Oil Dispute at ‘Crisis Point’” and “Paradise Lost at Hands of Palm Oil Companies“, about a separate conflict surrounding the village of Muara Tae on the island of Borneo.

Muara Tae is in a stand-off with a palm oil firm whose forest clearing threatens the villagers’ entire way of life. Community member Petrus Asuy issued an impassioned plea, saying, “Because of the palm oil plantations, our water has become polluted and many of our springs have dried up. We took our case to the local government, but they ignored us. We are completely against these companies because they have compromised our way of life. What hope is there now for our grandchildren? We are pleading for help for our situation and for this activity to stop.”

It has become abundantly clear that wherever massive international commodity corporations are granted huge forest concessions and allowed free reign to manage them, community conflict and environmental devastation quickly follow.

It is more imperative than ever that companies like Cargill and Wilmar immediately address the serious problems of human rights abuses and rainforest destruction in their supply chains and become a part of the solution to this crisis instead of indiscriminately trafficking palm oil into North American and European markets. Please take a moment to ask Cargill CEO Greg Page to adopt safeguards to keep controversial palm oil out of American food products.

Copper Mesa, until last year, was the owner of a two mining concessions in the Intag. But the company ran into a strong, organized opposition from communities, local government and, eventually even the national government, which eventually stripped Copper Mesa of its concessions in the country.

Now the Toronto Stock Exchange, which had been sued by 3 Intag activists, has delisted Copper Mesa from the exchange.

DECOIN organizer Carlos Zorrilla wrote in an email to Intag community supporters:

“This is a key victory in Intag’s very long and exhausting battle against mining interests. So big in fact, that I still find it difficult to believe. After all, this has been a dream of ours and something we’ve been working on for almost six years.”

Copper Mesa’s shares lost about 60% of their value in the 48 hours after the TSX delisting.

The residents of Minneapolis/St. Paul are living near the fancy headquarters of Cargill, the very corporation that is leveling rainforests in Papua New Guinea to expand their palm oil plantations.
What a realization.

Matilda Pilacapio, human rights and environmental activist from Papua New Guinea

It was a deeply significant experience to hear Matilda Pilacapio’s powerful and poignant personal narrative of Cargill’s rainforest destruction in her community. It was heartbreaking to hear the devastation of traditional ways of life, of matrilineal land ownership, of communities held together by forest subsistence being ripped into unsustainable cycles of brutal plantation work, dismantled family structures, polluted rivers, lost ecosystems, undrinkable water, and deceptive contracts that trick people into giving up their ancestral land. It was sobering to hear that the corporation responsible for these atrocities is in the Twin Cities area, and that the people of Papua New Guinea and everywhere are counting on us to take action in our own communities to literally change the world. It was inspiring to realize that we can.
The positive aspect of globalization is that it has united people and information. We live in a time where it is possible to make ripples that reach literally around the world by affecting the corporations and institutions that are in our communities. What an incredible amount of agency we have as Americans.
It has never been clearer to me that as Americans, we have an opportunity (and a responsibility) to use that agency.
After Matilda’s lectures and slides of the effect of oil palm in Papua New Guinea, people would ask, “What can we do?” “I am hoping that you all will set up a strategy with RAN” Matilda said. Now, students and community members are stepping up to start a RAN- Twin Cities chapter. People have already started to raise awareness about oil palm and participate in Global Days of Action with 350.org to highlight the connections between Big Agriculture, deforestation, and climate change. In spite of being busy students, activists, and parents, people are making time to work on this important issue, largely because of the power of Matilda’s words! We are meeting tonight to figure out specifics of how community members want to make a difference here, and I am so excited and honored to see the brilliance of people here stepping it up in their own backyards to protect the land of people like Matilda and the climate we all share.

Hillary V Lehr is the Grassroots Action Manager for the Rainforest Action Network’s Forests Program.

They will ask Mr. Obama to put pressure on the Canadian government and the TransCanada and Enbridge pipeline companies to agree to a revenue-sharing deal for native people.

Friesen also provides background on seven Native American members of Obama’s transition team including several beltway veterans and a new positon for Wizipan Garriott, the first ever “First Americans public-liason officer” for an incoming administration.

A wave of major coal and oil developments within Native Lands in the US and Canada will no doubt keep the team busy. Aside from controversies in Canada, TransCanada also faces lawsuits from Native communities South of the boarder claiming that the company failed to conduct proper environmental reviews. In Arizona, Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe members are taking direct action to oppose proposed coal mines.

Obama’s team should show leadership on Indigenous rights by embracing the delegation from the North and strongly enfocing US treaty obligations. It should also move to reverse the course set by the Bush Administration by endorsing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People–already signed by 143 members of the United Nations (but not the US and Canada).

As you can read in our letter to the FSC Executive Director (ran-to-fsc-101308), the FSC’s Controlled Wood Standard has serious problems with inclusion of wood fiber in violation of the FSC’s rules. Meanwhile, critics have alleged that ‘an estimated sixty percent of FSC timbers come from ancient forests’. As FSC members, RAN is asking the FSC to respond to this claim by providing accurate data regarding the percentage of FSC timbers derived from primary (never industrially managed) and old-growth (older than 200 years) forests.

As RAN undertakes our strategic review of the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC’s) benefits and costs, how the FSC responds to these controversies will affect whether, and how much, RAN can continue supporting the FSC. In coming months, we will continue to report back our conclusions to our members and supporters. Stay tuned.

Above all, RAN’s Old Growth campaign is committed to end logging in ancient forests worldwide. As part of planning this new phase for the campaign, RAN has begun undertaking a strategic review of the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC’s) benefits and costs. The credibility of the FSC continues to be threatened by controversies with specific certifications, with contentious policies such as the Controlled Wood Standard which operates much lower standard into than the FSC itself, and with the volume of wood certified from old growth forests. These controversies affect whether, and how much, RAN can continue supporting the FSC. RAN staff will attend the FSC annual meeting in November, we will report back our conclusions to our members and supporters as well as through dialogue with other NGOs.

Thanks to everyone for all of your support for this important work!

Jennifer Krill
Program Director

That’s a lot of talking heads and coordinating with this motley can be a challenge in any situation. For a small community like Ft. Chip already overtaxed by endless legal and regulatory fights, it can be nearly impossible.

This morning, all 18 of us met to begin streamlining communication with Ft. Chip and other native communities represented at the conference and settled on some good positions that we hope to formalize in a proposal by the end of the conference:

1. To develop a set of consensus principals to guide relationships and build accountability between NGOs and First Nation communities.
2. To commit resources to enhance community capacity to engage effectively with NGOs.

Wish us well, we’ll need all we can get to keep this boat sailing!

More than 400 crowd into the community hall for the opening plenary. Elected leaders from eight First Nations stretching across Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories welcome us in turn at the front. Translators relay the chiefs’ blessings into five languages from a bank of radio broadcasting booths in the back.

Each of them shares a unique threat to water in their region–tar sands, mining, pulp mills and others–but the unity between them is clear.  Booming expansion of tar sands and other industrial projects in the far North are robbing native communities of their health and culture.

During the next two days, I’m here to learn more about what’s going on in the communities of the McKenzie River Basin, offer the support of Rainforest Action Network, and share the results of both with you. So stay tuned, ask lots of questions, and give us your feedback on how a scrappy bunch of rabble-rousers like us can make a difference in one of the biggest industrial projects in the world.

On July 14th, the Ontario government agreed to prohibit development on at least half of the remaining wilderness areas in the region’s northern boreal forest – protecting about 56 million acres.

To put this in perspective, 56 million acres is about half the size of California, or 80 times the size of Yosemite National Park. It’s about equal to nearly all of the remaining roadless areas in the entire United States. If the government keeps its promise, we’ll have protected the largest untouched forest in Canada and the 3rd largest wetland in the world.

Not too bad, eh?

As much as this is encouraging news for critters and the climate (northern boreal ecosystems store about 97 billion tons of CO2), it’s also an important milestone for human rights in Canada, and maybe even the future of environmentalism. Here’s why. In addition to committing to protect important wilderness areas, the Ontario government also acknowledged its responsibility to seek the consent of its indigenous people, stating: “because any decision on development has the greatest affect on communities, local planning will only be done in agreement with First Nations.”

That might seem like a simple statement, but it has huge ramifications. As we learned in grade school, the last several centuries of human history is filled with ugly, tragic stories of Indigenous people being decimated or forced off their land by settlers and, more recently, industrial development. From the Amazon to Alberta, Indigenous communities continue to be threatened by oil, logging, mining, and other industries. But if the Ontario Government keeps its word, the 36 First Nations communities living in this region would have the right to refuse destructive projects on their territory.

That’s a huge victory, and it was won by a unique coalition that realized that environmental and human rights are one and the same. Indigenous communities such as Grassy Narrows, KI, Ardoch, Six Nations and others have been on the front lines of battles to assert their sovereign rights. In coordination with an international alliance of environmental, labor, and immigrant rights organizations, students, faith-based communities, and human rights groups, they’ve blockaded logging roads, lobbied the provincial government, and have created the political space for change. “It is critical that any development of natural resources in the Far North must respect Aboriginal and treaty rights while supporting an environmentally sustainable economic future for our people,” said Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Stan Beardy.

What’s next? First, we need to follow through to make sure this victory is fully realized. Visit here for the latest update. Meanwhile, a similar coalition of diverse interests can encourage other provinces in Canada to follow Ontario’s lead. On the heels of the boreal victory, last week the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations filed a suit against the Alberta and federal government, asking the court to rule invalid the government authorization for thousands of oil projects on the band’s core territory.

It is clear that we are witnessing a transformation of the values and voices that determine resource extraction in Canada. The boreal is “unspoiled and undisturbed,” Ontario Premier McGuinty says. “And if there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s not going to stay that way forever unless we do something…It’s our responsibility as global citizens to get this right and to act now.”
Amen! Care to join us to make sure he keeps his word?

On June 19th, 2008, RAN hosted a conference call to discuss the Old Growth Campaign’s part in the Indigenous lead efforts that brought us to the tremendous news that AbitibiBowater had decided it was time to leave the Whiskey Jack forest in the traditional territory of the Asubpeeschoseewagong, or Grassy Narrows First Nation people who have lived in that beautiful and priceless area for thousands of years.

(From www.freegrassy.org) Asubpeeschoseewagong – the Indigenous or Ojibway name for Grassy Narrows – is situated 80 kilometers north of Kenora, Ontario in Canada. The community membership is approximately 1,000, and their traditional land use area spans a forest of approximately 2,500 miles. The community has lived sustainably for millennia, using the forest for physical, economic, cultural and spiritual sustenance.  Approximately 50 percent of the community still lives a subsistence way of life where members depend upon hunting, trapping, and gathering berries and medicines from the land.

The Grassy Narrows community has been through many traumas including attendance in white-governed residential schools, forced relocation away from their traditional living areas, mercury contamination, flooding of sacred grounds and burial sites, and clearcut logging of their forests. These traumas have led to many social, health and economic problems, as well as the near devastation of the culture.

For thousands of years this community has been strong and self-reliant.  Now, as a result of the continued economic dispossession and cultural annihilation that they have suffered, Grassy Narrows exhibits the signs of distress that have become typical of First Nations communities across Canada.  Indigenous people, as compared to any other racial or cultural group in Canada, have the lowest life expectancies, highest infant mortality rates, substandard and overcrowded housing, lower education and employment levels, and the highest incarceration rates.

In the face of this oppression, the people of Grassy Narrows are actively resisting the continued destruction of their territories, re-occupying their lands, reviving their culture and fighting for the right to manage their land as they see fit, otherwise known as self-determination.

It is an incredible honor to work in solidarity with these people and their allies, and it is a great day when we can announce the results of our work together in fighting for their land and their rights to self-determination, and for the rights of the Earth.

We hope you enjoy this audio recording of a breakdown of RAN’s involvement in this campaign. In it you will hear from some of our Old Growth campaign staff as well as some of the activists and volunteers who helped make the withdrawal of AbitibiBowater a reality.

In addition to the recording attached to this post, I encourage you to also listen to this interview on CBC National primetime radio with Roberta Keesick, a Grassy Narrows grandmother, trapper, and defender of the land.  It is a great piece and it gives people a chance to also hear directly from someone from Grassy.

LINK to the Grassy Conference Call – click here to listen

RAN joined with more than a dozen other groups to sponsor a week-long occupation of the Ontario Legislature in Ontario. Pictures and news reports are below. Event details can be found here.

Independent News Coverage

• Paul Terefenko, “Natives Stake Their Claim.” Now Magazine. May 29, 2008
• Judy Rebick and Judy Finlay, “Indigenous People Defending Their Land and Our Environment.” ZMag. May 26, 2008.

Mainstream News Coverage

• Kevin Misener, “Rallies mark native day of action.” Canadian Press. May 29, 2008.
• Jonathan Spicer, “Canada’s Aboriginals slam ‘third world conditions.’” Reuters. May 29, 2008
• Peter Koven, “Ontario’s Mining Act assailed.” Financial Post. May 29, 2008
• “Aboriginals march through Toronto on day of action.” CTV. May 29, 2008
• “First Nations Protesters Hit the Streets Thursday.” CityNews. May 29, 2008″
• Jered Stuffco, “Ottawa must intervene in Ontario’s land and mining disputes: Fontaine.” Canadian Press. May 27, 2008
• Toronto Star Editorial: “First Nations vs. Mining Act.” May 27, 2008
• Murray Campell, “Inaction on native issues not helping government or jailed protester.” The Globe and Mail, May 27, 2008
• Tobi Cohen, “Aboriginal protesters kick off weeklong protest at Ontario Legislature.” The Canadian Press. May 26, 2008
• Tobi Cohen, “Native Leaders Jailed in mining protest get temporary reprieve.” The Canadian Press. May 26, 2008
• Gagandeep Ghuman, “Groups walk to protest mining law.” Toronto Star. May 26, 2008
• Jim Coyle, “Why is defending ancestral lands a crime?” Toronto Star. May 26, 2008
• Tobi Cohen, “Aboirginal chief vows to return to jail if Ontario doesn’t negotiate on Mining Act.” The Canadian Press. May 25, 2008.
• Jonathan Jenkins, “Natives to camp out at Queen’s Park.” Toronto Sun. May 23, 2008

Press Releases

• Advisory: “Chiefs speak in support of KI, Ardoch and Grassy Narrows at Queen’s Park.” May 27, 2008.
• Release: “Natives and non natives unite to protect lands and livelihoods.” May 26, 2008.

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.

1. Genetic modification
2. Human experimentation
3. Polluting the environment
4. Causing social injustice
5. Causing poverty
6. Obscene wealth
7. Taking drugs

I’m not a Catholic, so I didn’t know that there’s a whole department of the Catholic Church put in charge of managing sins (the Apostolic Penitentiary) but Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti says that these are really more of an update than brand new sins. Pollution is a new form of gluttony, for instance.

If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has an impact and resonance that is above all social, because of the great phenomenon of globalization.

Rev. John Wauck from Rome’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross explains it further:

We’re seeing now that the kinds of sin that have an impact not on particular individuals—I stole my neighbor’s property or I damaged his property—but I polluted in a way that damaged the entire environment, which doesn’t belong to me … it’s a sin in a certain sense against all of us.

The Vatican is walking the talk, as well, having committed to installing over 1000 solar panels, printing prayerbooks on recycled paper, and starting a reforestation program.

What struck me most about the list was that many companies, and not just the targets of RAN, now have mortal sins as their explicit mission statement. In fact, their charters are often the combination of two or more Seven Deadly Sins, like “Become Obscenely Wealthy by Polluting the Environment through Genetic Modification”.

We’re in the middle of Lent and Father James Martin, acting publisher of the Jesuit magazine America, notes this fact as well:

If you work for a company that pollutes the environment, you have something more important to consider for Lent than whether or not to give up chocolate.

It seems our targets have an authority greater than RAN they need to watch out for now.

That’s right all you environmentalists out there- youth from urban settings, who have a lot more on their plate than whether or not to recycle, consider environmentalists irrelevant and sometimes racist, or at least clueless about social justice.

RAN has been working to challenge white superiority in the mainstream environmental movement and work in the intersections between environmentalism, environmental justice, climate justice, social justice and human rights… But the youth I met this weekend blow us out of the water with their intersections.

I attended Youth Quest an amazing environmental conference put on by the high school students of TEAM – the youth leadership program of the Headlands Institute. They brought together hundreds of teens from all over the Bay Area. All of the workshops were led by youth. I came as a chaperone to 3 amazing young RAN/ RYSE activists – whose picture I would put up here, but it’s all grainy.

The majority of teens there were involved in organizing for the environment and other issues like immigrant rights, education budget cuts or sexual exploitation of minors.

The theme they chose was “if the Earth wasn’t green, what color would it be?”
They had four different answers in the program. My favorite read:

“If the Earth wasn’t green, what color would it be? might reference the emerging intersections of the environmental, social justice and indigenous rights movements. Perhaps we should be thinking about people of all colors, ages, and backgrounds, and how a wide diversity of people is taking action to bring about social change and protect the environment”

One of the leading groups in attendance was IYEL (Inspiring Young Emerging Leaders). They created a documentary about how the national parks exclude people of color (you can see it on their home page) and developed t-shirts that say “I’m an environmentalist” on the front and “and I heart hip-hop” or “and I don’t hug trees” etc. on the back- in a direct and marvelous attempt to redefine environmentalism for their generation.

So basically, this blog post is a challenge to the adult environmentalists to get our act together and merge our social justice and environmental selves already.

We’re in contact with the five inside (and don’t they look chipper?). We’re also in touch with a group of more than two dozen of their supporters rallying outside the President’s office. Police are reportedly on the scene, but have not indicated any intent to arrest at this point. Check back to this post for updates as we receive them.

Support the students by signing on to their petition. Free The Planet is also asking supporters to call the President’s office to encourage him to sign the agreement:

• President Gordon E. Gee, The Ohio State University – (614) 292-2424.

One of the reasons I am so proud to work for this organization is because of the effort we’re making toward making RAN, and hopefully the environmental movement as a whole, a more inclusive, less oppressive place. It’s hard. We have a lot of work to do, both in our organization and throughout the movement. I am given hope by the vision of folks here, and by the work of people like Van Jones and Marcelo Bonta, who wrote this awesome article on Grist.

Like I said, we have a ways to go, but examining our commitment to our Indigenous partners, working in solidarity with folks across the social justice movement, modifying our hiring practices, and making RAN’s culture one that is open-minded and welcoming to all types of folks is where we begin.

For decades, the mainstream environmental movement has been dominated by upper middle-class white people. Whatever the barriers are to diversifying this movement, and they are many, we need to, as Bonta says, “get over it and start taking action.”

Agrofuels are being put forward as a solution to our climate crisis by agribusiness giants like ADM and Cargill, auto makers like GM, and petroleum companies like BP with their own interest and profit motive in mind. They have effectively hijacked the good intentions, true innovation, and essence of family farmers, environmentalists, and communities throughout the world that were pursuing locally produced, small-scale biofuels for local energy needs.

For this reason, Rainforest Action Network along with allies Food First, Grassroots International, Family Farm Defenders, Global Justice Ecology Project, and the Student Trade Justice Campaign, held a press conference on Tuesday (listen to it here) announcing the first official call for a U.S. moratorium on agrofuels. The call for a moratorium is part of a growing movement worldwide which recognizes that there is a need for policy makers to reevaluate the incentives and subsidies which are currently driving a global boom for agrofuels. This agrofuels boom is driving deforestation, climate change, and is linked to human rights abuses from the Gran Chaco in Paraguay to the Brazilian Amazon, to Kalimantan in Indonesia and to Papua New Guinea in the Pacific.

Civil Society groups in Europe launched a similar moratorium over a year ago, and just two weeks ago the EU environment commissioner said that the social and environmental problems caused by agrofuels are “bigger than we thought they were.” As a result, the European Union is now rethinking their agrofuels targets. And in October 2007, Jean Ziegler the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food called for a five year moratorium on agrofuels production citing the rising prices of food worldwide and the impact that this is already having on the poorest people around the world.

We believe that the growing call for a moratorium on industrial agrofuels will help refocus attention on pursuing the genuine answers to our climate crisis, and away from snake oil solutions. One thing is certain: none of the real solutions can or will come at the expense of human rights, the environment, or the world’s most marginalized people, and certainly none should make the climate worse off.

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!

Stay tuned—this campaign is only just heating up.