RAN and the illusion of Corporate Campaigns

In 1999, Rainforest Action Network declared a victory on their Home Depot Campaign. The victory declared that the company had agreed to stop carrying lumber extracted from rainforests. Mahogany toilet seats and plywood from Indonesia were to be a thiing of the past. In 2005 the organization uses its victory as a model for corporate campaigning. But Home Depot still carries those products, in fact nothing has changed, except for corporate America’s ability to deal with environmental corporate campaigners.

A recent visit to Home Depot in Rhonert Park and Wiindsor showed a pallat full of plywood from Sarawak, one of the most heavily logged rainforest regions in the world. Go to any Home Depot and you may find tools with hardwood handles from South East Asia or even South America. You may even find a mahogany toilet seat.

Rainforest Action Network has an overall budget of over 1.5 million annually. A full time staff of about 25 people, its main focus is to persuade corporations to change their practices through “grassroots” pressure. However, at closer look, the organizations actual effect is two fold. 1. To declare victories to recieve maximum funding and 2. To grow so that jobs and paychecks can be sustained within the organization. Recently at the San Francisco Green Festival, Hazel Henderson, an organizer with Global Exchange espoused the success of the Home Depot campaign as a model of corporate campaigning. When two employees of Rainforest Action Network were approached that same day about the contradictions of declaring a victory with Home Depot, the response was “yeah, we’ve been discussing that in our meetings” and “the general public doesn’t know about the problems with Home Depot”. When asked about RAN possibly keeping this under the carpet, there was a mired response. Hazel Henderson and Global Exchange are not just the “general public”. They are campaign partners who are publically misleading an audience of what was 100 people about a campaign that has miserably failed.

Since Home Depot, RAN has declared “victory” on Citigroup, Boise Cascade and other corporations. However, closer look at the whittled down declarations for victory hardly warrant a celebration. Citigroup, the largest bank in the world and bankroller for Pacific Lumber which still continues to plunder the redwoods of Northern California, can hardly be labeled an environmentally sound company. It’s behaviour has not changed. Only RAN’s statements against it have. The Citigroup campaign was first declared in 1999 at the Seattle WTO protest. as the campaign went on, the organization felt tremendous pressure from its funders and board to declare a victory. By 2002, a major shift occurred. Participation in the global justice movement was considered pointless and the organization, under new leadership, decided to take a more draconion approach by firing its grass roots organizer and redifiining the terms of the campaign. The original terms, to get Citigroup out of the fossil fuel industry were whittled down to a vague ask. The problem with such terms is that there is no legal requirement for the corporation to comply once it has agreed. Ask the Executive Director of RAN if any of these companies have signed a legally binding contract to agree to their terms and the resounding response will be “no..they would never agree to such a thing”. If not, then what is the point? Can we really trust the world’s largest and most powerful corporations to their word? Are they really that drivien by honesty and integrity rather than the bottom dollar. Are they that easy to monitor? Is the relationship between illegal logging and corporate business that clear? Naively, RAN seems to think so.

Companies are learning from Home Depot that if they agree to RAN’s terms, the organization will simply go away. RAN is incapable of re-starting up a campaign once it has declared victory because its funders would balk. The organization is so dependent on praise and victories, that it must vehemently hide its failures and weaknesses. It is an organization of mirrors and illusion. A recent threat to Trader Joe’s of a campaign boycott (due to their use of paper bags from Weyerhauser) resulted in Trader Joe’s proclaiming that they would “revisit” their use of the Weyerhauser product. Months later, Trader Joes still carries the bags and RAN is in a quandry. They are unable to step up pressure again because such a step would admit failure.

Recently, the entire staff of RAN (including the receptionist) flew to the far reaches of the Amazon. There, they were met by indiginous leaders, all of whom had high hopes that the organization would support them directly in their struggles against the massive deforestation happening. The group of 25 people went for 10 days. The resort they stayed at had food shipped in for 7 days up the river. A crew of women were brought in to cook for the 25 white (mostly middle-class) Americans. They fished, they enjoyed the beauty of the Amazon. Mike Brune, Executive Director, even had a chief dance for him. The end result of the trip was not a commitment to these people, a greater understanding that these corporate campaigns have failed the indiginous people of these regioons. There was no acknowledgement that the $50,000 spent for their trip was 25 times the amount given to the groups that they had met in support of their struggle. It was a great symbol of the power and arrogance of American NGO’s.

Unfortunately, it comes down to money and power. The corporate campaigning dynamic allows corporations a great greenwashiing tool. It gives organizations like Rainforest Action network consistant funding through its smoke and mirrors effect. Money wins again, as the environment and its inhabitants suffer.