Check out this update from our friends at OSU

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!

Students sitting-in President Gee’s office at OSU in Columbus, Ohio left peacefully at around 5:00pm yesterday. Everyone who participated in both the sit-in and the rally outside the administration’s building are feeling really good about how the day went and are looking forward to following this action up with more pressure on OSU to adopt a sustainable forest resources policy. We will continue to update this blog with the many happenings of Free The Planet’s amazing activists on OSU campus - stay tuned!

-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

5 students from Ohio State University are still sitting in OSU president Gordon Gee’s office. Gee is refusing to meet with the students and they are prepared to continue the sit-in as long as necessary.

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

Over the weekend, 70+ students from 9 colleges and universities in Ohio gathered in Columbus at Ohio State University to develop a network of student activists, coordinate cross-campus campaign activities and participate in an action to stop development of new coal-fired power plants in Ohio. It was incredibly inspiring to watch these students come together over 3 jam-packed days, and their plans to make Ohio a more socially and environmentally responsible state will surely have huge impacts. Here’s a description that the students wrote describing the conference:

- Annie

Ohio students ask leaders to stop coal plants and need your help!

This Feb. 8-10, over 70 students from the Ohio Student Environmental Coalition gathered in Columbus to set campaigns and form structure for the brand new state network –the Ohio Student Environmental Coalition–and to tell officials that we will not stand for new coal fired power plants in Ohio!

We decided to take our concerns to the top, and have a chat with two people key in deciding on American Municipal Power’s proposed coal power plant in Meigs County, Ohio. More than 50 students dropped by to visit and deliver letters to Director of the Ohio EPA Chris Korleski, and the President and CEO of AMP-Ohio Marc Gerkin on Sunday to let them know that we think that proposed coal power plants are one of the greatest threats facing Ohio today, and that the hearing process on proposed power plants is unjust and disempowering to Ohio citizens.

Ohio DEP director Chris Korleski cordially met us on the lawn in the freezing February weather, carrying his small dog and talked to us for a while, and although he was not sure on all the details of the power plant proposal and permitting process, he promised to “talk to his guys” and learn more. Spokespeople explained about how global warming threatens all of our future and the groundwater toxins, coal waste disposal and air pollution from coal fired power plants is already causing unprecedented rates of cancer in Meigs County, Ohio. Furthermore, rate payers would bear the burden of this expensive, outdated and dirty technology, and counties across Ohio are already thinking (or have) about backing out of contracts for the power plant. While he tried to make us feel really young, we know that meeting with 50 students on a Sunday afternoon made him think and he’ll definitely be talking to “his guys.”

Gerken of AMP-Ohio, a group pushing the power plant forward, was less excited to see 50 students from across Ohio on his sidewalk with letters and wanting to talk to him about global warming and the dangers of dirty coal proliferation. However, he listened to the spokespeople, became somewhat agitated for a few minutes but ended things on a cordial note. It was empowering to take our concerns directly to the top decision makers and have them to listen to us all the way through.

We would like as many people as possible to follow up our visits with as many calls, letters and emails as possible! We want to let them know that we’re serious about stopping coal fired power plants and building a clean just energy future.

Think about setting up a table in a public space on your campus and writing letters, making calls, and/or taking a few minutes during a club meeting to send messages and write letters to Mr. Korleski and Mr. Gerken. Please, leap into action by February 29th! The site permit meeting for this AMPGS plant is in Columbus, OH on Monday, March 3rd, so have your letters in and think about coming down!

Please write AMP-Ohio President Marc Gerken at AMP-Ohio, 2600 Airport Drive,
Columbus, OH 43219 or call 614-337-6222 or contact him by e-mail at mgerken@amp-ohio.org.

Please write Ohio EPA Director at PO Box 1049, Columbus, OH 43216-1049, or call 614-644-2782, or contact him by e-mail at chris.korleski@epa.state.oh.us.

Tell them to just say no to the AMP coal power plant and all coal power plants around Meigs County, Ohio. Tell them that coal causes global warming and releases deadly toxins during the extraction, processing, burning and waste disposal stages and we need to phase our state and our country off of coal — not risk millions of rate payers dollars in out-dated, dirty coal.

Its the day after RAN’s OfficeMax and Grand & Toy day of action, yesterday OfficeMax and Grand & Toy locations across the United States and Canada heard hundreds of activists demand that the stores publicly support a moratorium in Grassy Narrows.

Here are a few of the latest updates:

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

Reports from activists about their OfficeMax and Grand & Toy protests today are trickling in. It was a frigid and blustery day for a day of action, but people came out in force to demand that OfficeMax and Grand & Toy publicly support a moratorium in Grassy Narrows.

In Milwaukee, activists braved -3 degree Fahrenheit temperatures to pay a visit to their local OfficeMax. After flyering both inside of the store, and right outside the main entrance (and getting kicked out of both locations) they took this picture of themselves: The shot is blurry, but wouldn’t any picture be blurry if your snapshot-taking finger was frozen solid?

In Seattle, RAN activists visited OfficeMax’s location near the University of Washington campus. We held a banner outside of the store, on the very busy intersection where OfficeMax is located. We talked to many passers-by and encouraged people to tell OfficeMax employees that they wish OfficeMax would publicly support the moratorium in Grassy Narrows. We got a great response from both people entering the store (we kept a few from going in) as well as people who live in the neighborhood and were just passing by. We delivered a letter to store manager and kept the protest going outside until we were nearly frozen.

In New York, activists paid a visit to OfficeMax in Brooklyn, and delivered a letter to the manager. Pictures are coming soon, but even without photographic proof, its good to know that RAN’s message was delivered.

RAN activists in Humboldt County,Northern California managed to participate in the day of action even though they are among few people in North America who have no OfficeMax or Grand & Toy within 100 miles. Instead of visiting a local OfficeMax store, they started a letter writing campaign to OfficeMax CEO, Sam Duncan, asking him to support a moratorium in Grassy Narrows.

We are still waiting to hear from activists in Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Victoria, New Jersey, Orlando, Vancouver and over a dozen other cities to know how those actions went - look for updates!

-Annie

P.S. Check out the OfficeMax day of action coverage by our friends at www.walletmouth.com as well!

RAN’s international day of action for Indigenous rights is gaining steam! As of today, January 16, activists in 27 cities in the United States and Canada are planning actions at their local OfficeMax and Grand & Toy locations to demand that the companies publicly support a logging moratorium in Grassy Narrows.

We are really excited to see our plans for an international day of action come together, and we are even more excited when an ally organization wants to lend their support, without us even having to ask.

The East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), an organization based out of Oakland, California that works to promote economic and social justice for working families, contacted us earlier this week wanting to help. They buy paper through OfficeMax and wanted to find a way to support our campaign against OfficeMax here in the Bay Area. Because we aren’t calling for a complete boycott of OfficeMax products, (yet) EBASE offered to send a letter to their contact at OfficeMax pressuring them to support a moratorium in Grassy Narrows. I’ve pasted the letter below, with the name of OfficeMax’s account manager removed.

Thanks to EBASE for supporting Grassy Narrows and the struggle for a logging moratorium on their traditional territory!

-Annie

Dear [Account Manager]:

CC: Rainforest Action Network