Mobilization for Climate Justice

Controversial Hire is an Opportunity to Start Building a Democratic Environmental Movement

Dru Oja Jay in Counterpunch

Greenpeace has come a long way since the Rainbow Warrior, the retrofitted trawler used to challenge nuclear testing and whaling, was enough of a threat that the French government dispatched commandoes to sink her in 1985.

On February 13th, Greenpeace International announced that was hiring ForestEthics founder Tzeporah Berman as director of its global climate and energy campaign. The move has provoked intense outrage among many Greenpeace supporters, staff and activists. The conflict raging within Greenpeace has the potential to be an important first step in addressing two heretofore taboo subjects in the environmental movement: the corrupting influence of corporate cash and the absence of democratic structures.

The announcement marked an acceleration of a long-term drift away from Greenpeace’s origins in direct action environmental and anti-war work. Back in 2007, Greenpeace lauded Coca-Cola for its “commitment to use climate-friendly coolers and vending machines.” (The same year, campaigns against Coke’s complicity in paramilitary assassination of union leaders in Colombia were in full swing, while a year earlier, the government of Kerala had banned Coca-Cola after a revolt over overuse and pollution of groundwater.)

If the Coke deal was Greenpeace testing the waters of corporate collaboration, hiring Berman is Greenpeace jumping in.

The hire marks a full-circle return for Berman, who rose to prominence within Greenpeace but left in 2000 to found ForestEthics, where she broke new ground in the “collaborative approach” to conservation. According to Berman’s ethos, “the notion of activists vs. corporations, of good vs. evil, no longer applies… It’s about creating dialogue, and finding the solutions that will be mutually beneficial to all.”

While heading up ForestEthics, Berman undertook a series of collaborations with companies like Home Depot, Dell, Staples and most recently General Electric. Immediately before being hired by Greenpeace, Berman headed PowerUp Canada, an initiative funded mostly by the Tides and Ivey Foundations that pushed the privatization of British Columbia’s rivers in the name of green energy. She has since backed away from the fruits of her efforts, claiming she does not support the privatization of “all” rivers in BC.

Grassroots environmentalists in Canada were furious at Berman long before she took the Greenpeace job, starting with the elimination of public oversight during her stint as lead negotiator of the Great Bear Rainforest deal. (In the deal that was finally signed, only 32 per cent of the rainforest was protected.)

Berman’s return to Greenpeace as it approaches its 40th year of existence has stoked the ire of the organization’s supporters to white-hot levels.

In an email that has made the rounds of Canadian environmental lists, Greenpeace International co-founder Rex Weyler called Berman’s hire “an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself.”

70 people have signed a statement calling on Greenpeace to rescind Berman’s hire and “renounce collaboration and partnership with destructive corporations”.

Greenpeace staffers and activists in Canada — where Berman is well-known, and where Greenpeace has a high-profile anti-tar sands campaign underway — have privately expressed a mix of bafflement and rage at the decision.

One anonymous “Greenpeace activist or staff” remarked in testimony posted to www.SaveGreenpeace.org: “Greenpeace actually started the Kyoto Plus campaign to battle Power Up, the organization that Tzeporah started. And now they’re hiring her. The hypocrisy blows my mind. It’s astonishing. It’s like they just hired the devil. No one will take us seriously… with decisions like this.”

Greenpeace’s decision comes at a point when questions about Environmental organizations lack of democracy or accountability, and their corresponding closeness with corporations involved in environmental destruction, are looming larger than ever.

A recent report in The Nation ends with a 30-year veteran of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) stating outright: “We’re close to a civil war in the environmental movement. For too long, all the oxygen in the room has been sucked out by this beast of these insider groups, who achieve almost nothing…. We need to create new organizations that represent the fundamentals of environmentalism and have real goals.”

The report, whose author was subsequently interviewed on Democracy Now!, raises issues that are echoed in the anonymous testimonies of disgruntled Greenpeacers. Phrases like “disenfranchised,” “no consultation,” “no transparency,” “more concerned with getting a ’seat at the table,’” point repeatedly to the same pair of problems: addiction to corporate and foundation cash and a total lack of democracy.

While the debate rages inside Greenpeace, early reports seem to indicate that many on the inside are channeling their frustration at the lack of consultation and their own disempowerment into rage against the small number of people willing to publicly oppose the Berman hire and discuss her record.

The frustration is understandable, but if the goal is a strong, democratic environmental movement, there are much better targets for their rage.

The overreach of Greenpeace’s turn towards corporate collaboration and the ensuing grassroots backlash affords the rarest of moments: an opportunity to articulate and push for demands that normally bounce harmlessly off of the bureaucratic carapace of big organizations like Greenpeace.

It’s an opportunity to demand an end to corporate collaboration, but it’s also an opportunity to demand democratic accountability to a supporting membership that is there because of the organization’s forty years of direct action. Small-scale financial supporters, volunteer activists and staff alike have no formal say in Greenpeace’s strategic direction. Nearly all of their complaints emanate from the frustration created by that contradiction.

At a moment where tensions are at their highest, the irony of an NRDC functionary describing “civil war” and calling for “new organizations that represent the fundamentals of environmentalism and have real goals” while Greenpeacers seethe, lash out at those pointing to Berman’s record, or quit, should not be lost on anyone.

Greenpeace International’s head office has raised the stakes. If the resistance to Berman’s hire is broken, the descent of the organization will be far swifter than the Coked-up years leading to its fortieth birthday. If the resistance continues to grow and spreads to supporters of other unaccountable, corporate-partnered big greens, then we’ll win with Greenpeace or without it.

If Greenpeace’s transformation into another public relations contractor for corporations and foundations is allowed to continue, everyone loses.

Corporate collaboration will never do more than slightly curtail environmental destruction. In many cases, the results of collaboration have been disastrous. The only things that can stop it are organizations rooted in communities and grassroots movements that are immune to “leaders” selling them out for money and ego.

If that’s what folks working with and supporting Greenpeace want, they won’t get a better shot at it than this one.

Tzeporah Berman is slated to start work in April.

Dru Oja Jay is co-author of the report Offsetting Resistance: The effects of foundation funding from the Great Bear Rainforest to the Athabasca River. He is a member of the editorial collective of the Dominion, and lives in Montreal.

March 8, 2010

Putting a Canadian Liberal in charge of its international climate change program could put one of the world most successful environmental organizations on the fast track to corporate collaboration

by Ian Angus

I like DeSmogBlog. It does wonderful work exposing the machinations of the climate deniers and their corporate funders. Climate Cover-Up, by DeSmogBlog founder James Hoggan, should be mandatory reading for anyone who to understand that disinformation campaign.

But DeSmogBlog also supports the not-very-green Liberal machine in British Columbia. It exposes lies about global warming, but the most radical corrective measure it espouses is that province’s feeble carbon tax — a measure implemented by a government whose environmental record is otherwise appalling.

So, unfortunately, I wasn’t at all surprised that DeSmogBlog recently published a vicious and ill-informed attack on long-time radical environmentalist and anti-tar-sands campaigner Macdonald Stainsby.

Why?

Because he has had the temerity to suggest that Liberal Party supporter Tzeporah Berman, the woman who organized an absurd environmental award for BC’s Liberal Premier during the Copenhagen conference, is an inappropriate person to head Greenpeace International’s climate change program. The pale greens in B.C. stick together, and they don’t like criticism.

Read the rest of this entry »

Environmentalists argue that what began as an initiative to clean up dirty palm oil production practices, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has become little more than an NGO-endorsed greenwashing tool. Rebecca Zhou, of Reportage/enviro reports.

13:56 March 5, 2010Articles, Columns, Papua New Guinea1 comment

Due to an increase in worldwide demand for food, palm oil production has grown dramatically since it began in the 1970s. Image: CELCOR.

Pacific Scoop:
Special Report – By Rebecca Zhou.

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was set up by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to involve companies in creating more sustainable ways of producing palm oil. However environmental experts believe that not only is the RSPO ineffective, it has become a way to green wash poor practices.

“The RSPO gives the companies a green front and encourages more consumption, which is precisely the cause of the problem,” said Valerie Phillips, forest campaigner of the Greenpeace branch in Papua New Guinea, one of the three countries most adversely affected by the palm oil industry.

The Roundtable board includes stakeholders from producers, processors to traders and retailers who work with NGOs to develop a set of ‘Principles and Criteria’ that all member companies must follow to be certified.

One of the environmentalists’ main concerns is that there is no legal framework around the ‘P&C’ and companies work at their own pace to meet them. Often they are not met at all.

“It is a voluntary initiative so the company cannot even be held accountable for failing to meet standards,” said Eddie Tanago of the Centre of Environmental Law and Community Rights (CELCOR) in Papua New Guinea.

“Up till now there are 11 or 12 companies certified under RSPO mechanism, however all of the companies have gotten complaints because of most of them are not following the principles and criteria of RSPO but still have the certificate,” said Agrofuels campaigner from Friends of the Earth Indonesia, Torry Kuswardono.

WWF’s Global Forest and Trade Manager Lydia Gaskell says that companies wanting to be certified are given action plans and targets according to ‘the size of the company and how sustainable they are.’ Read the rest of this entry »

—for immediate release—

Website calls on employees, public to “Save Greenpeace”

Hiring Tzeporah Berman jeopardizes 39 year legacy of environmental activism

VANCOUVER, March 4–Since Greenpeace International announced its hiring of ForestEthics founder and current Power Up Canada director Tzeporah Berman as co-director of its climate campaign, a chorus of long-time environmental activists have voiced their strong opposition.

Today, activists launched a new website they hope will amplify these voices and help convince Greenpeace to change direction: www.SaveGreenpeace.org

Greenpeace International co-founder Rex Weyler (not affiliated with www.savegreenpeace.org) called the decision to hire Berman “an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself.”

“Tzeporah now speaks for General Electric, not for the Earth, not for wilderness, and not for our children’s future,” he added in an email making the rounds in environmental circles.

Since 1980, environmental groups have increasingly partnered with the corporations involved in environmentally damaging activities, trading mild reforms for their seal of approval. Yesterday, a former employee of Conservation International told The Nation that “Not only do the largest conservation groups take money from companies deeply implicated in environmental crimes; they have become something like satellite PR offices for the corporations that support them.” [1]

Tzeporah Berman has been a pioneer of the collaborative approach. As founder of ForestEthics, she drew the ire of BC environmentalists and natives for eliminating public oversight from negotiations around the Great Bear Rainforest, giving the go-ahead to a plan to log 70% of the pristine forest. She has most recently been a vocal supporter of Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government while advocating for the privatization and damming of BC’s rivers as director of Power Up Canada.

Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver in 1971. It has its roots in a frustration with the Sierra Club’s–a dominant environmental group at the time–inaction in response to nuclear testing. Sierra Club brass did not like the direct action tactics of Greenpeace’s founders, and a new kind of environmental organization was born. In 39 years, Greenpeace has conducted hundreds of direct actions confronting destructive corporate practices. The approach resonated: Greenpeace’s membership is 2.8 million strong as of 2008.

“Greenpeace’s original approach was confronting corporations and governments at the scenes of their crimes,” said savegreenpeace.org co-creator Macdonald Stainsby. “That approach has softened lately, but if they hire Tzeporah Berman, they’ll be on the fast track to corporate collaboration, beyond the point of no return.”

“There is a massive struggle going on inside Greenpeace,” he added, “but people who are employees can’t talk about it, so it’s up to the rest of us to oppose this vocally.”

SaveGreenpeace.org invites visitors to sign on to a statement opposing collaboration with corporations, asking the venerable direct action organization to reverse course and not hire Tzeporah Berman.

Contact:

Macdonald Stainsby
780 233 4992
mstainsby@resist.ca

[1] http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/hari

Joshua Kahn Russell on The Understory

Today more than 170 people rallied outside of the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC’s) Annual General Shareholder meeting (AGM) in Toronto after a series of creative non-violent actions all morning. Inside, First Nations Chiefs and community representatives from four different Nations demanded RBC phase out of its Tar Sands financing and to recognize the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent for Indigenous communities. Afterward, Indigenous leaders lead the crowd in a march to rally outside both RBC Headquarters buildings.

Other cities across Canada supported the First Nations voices inside the AGM as well with solidarity actions from (click on a city for pictures) London, Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Victoria and more. Check out photos from those and our events in Toronto.

And see some preliminary media coverage from the Wall Street Journal and Yahoo.

Since 2007 RBC has backed more than $16.7 billion (USD) in loans to companies operating in the tar sands—more than any other bank. Called, ‘the most destructive project on Earth,’ Alberta’s tar sands projects will eventually transform a Boreal forest the size of England into an industrial sacrifice zone complete with lakes full of toxic waste and man-made volcanoes spewing out clouds of global warming emissions.

Outside the shareholder meeting school children, bank customers of every age, First Nations community representatives joined Rainforest Action Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, No One Is Illegal, and Council of Canadians made their outrage at RBC’s investments heard – to the thumping beats of street Samba band, the crowd shouted “Cultural Genocide: who do we thank? Dirty investments from Royal Bank!”

Inside the shareholder meeting, Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake First Nation, Alberta,Vice Chief Terry Teegee of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council of BC, Hereditary Chief Warner Naziel of the Wet’suwe’ten First Nation of BC, and Gitz Crazyboy of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation addressed RBC CEO Gordon Nixon directly about the way tar sands extraction projects have jeopardized their health and their rights.

Downstream communities have experienced polluted water, water reductions in rivers and aquifers, declines in wildlife populations such as moose and muskrat, and significant declines in fish populations. Tar sands has all but destroyed the traditional livelihood of First Nations in the northern Athabasca watershed.

RBC is clearly feeling the public pressure over their tar sands financing. They spent half their shareholder meeting addressing the issue. Recently, the bank convened a high-level meeting with more than a dozen international banks for a “day of learning” about the reputational risks associated with the tar sands. In addition, according to information the bank provided to RAN during a February meeting in San Francisco, RBC is currently evaluating new lending criteria that would apply to the oil and gas sector, in particular to the tar sands. However, the bank has been reticent to include Free, Prior and Informed Consent in its policy, which would ensure that First Nations communities are respected in lending practices.

“RBC’s significant financial relationship with companies pursuing tar sands development activities within our traditional territory and without consent warrants close attention,” said Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake First Nation. “RBC should update their policies to include a recognition of Free, Prior and Informed consent for Indigenous communities; this globally recognized concept was adopted by TD Bank Financial Group in 2007 and is endorsed by Indigenous communities across the political spectrum.”

activists disrupt the RBC shareholder meeting inside

Internationally, tar sands financing is gaining tremendous negative attention. An increasingly vocal group of shareholders and environmentalists turned last month’s BP, Shell and Royal Bank of Scotland annual meetings into a referendum on the oil extraction projects.

Today’s marches, rallies, and actions were a triumphant roar of grassroots power from across the spectrum. The day concluded with an apt chant to RBC Headquarters, foreshadowing the growing flame of tar sands resistance across Canada, “Native communities under attack! We won’t stop until you act!”

Rising Tide North America is pleased to announce the release of our latest publication:

The Climate Movement is Dead… Long Live the Climate Movement!

In the aftermath of the COP15 talks in Copenhagen, the inability of the Big Greens, governments, and market approaches to find genuine and sustainable solutions to climate change is undeniable. As author Naomi Klein so aptly observed at the end of COP15 talks, “A particular model of dealing with climate change is dying.”

DOWNLOAD HERE [PDF]

In the same uncompromising spirit as Rising Tide publications such as Deal or No Deal, and Hoodwinked in the Hothouse, CMID:LLCM delivers a timely critique of the failures of this “particular model” as exemplified by the mainstream NGOs who have grown all too cozy with corporations and the political establishment. It explores the ways in which “green” capitalism,electoral politics, and market mechanisms, far from solving the climate crisis, are some of the climate movement’s biggest obstacles.

Not content with mere polemic, CMID:LLCM charts a course that diverges from the dominant discourse of the mainstream climate movement. The essay lays out a strategy of supporting and escalating frontline struggles againstdirty energy while building a new global climate movement from the ground up, based around core principles of climate justice, grassroots power, solidarity, and direct action.

The Climate Movement Is Dead: Long Live the Climate Movement is a must-read for anyone left disenchanted by the mainstream climate movement, and all who are ready to step it up and fight for climate justice.

You can download a digital copy to view online or print yourself.

Or send us an email to contact (at) risingtidenorthamerica (dot) org with your name, address, and how many copies you would like to receive. We are happy to provide this publication for free but as an all volunteer collective we greatly appreciate donations. Also consider joining in our print run collaboration:

COLLABORATE ON OUR PRINT RUN!

Rising Tide North America is excited to announce a “Print-Run Collaboration” project for CMID:LLCM. Local groups and allies can help us raise the funds necessary for an initial print-run of several thousand copies, and in return, receive a big stack “hot-off-the-presses” at approximately the cost of printing (cheaper than photocopies!).

Click HERE to join in

[NY Times original story - pub. 2/26/2010]

The oil industry’s biggest trade group has nabbed one of the environmental community’s top grass-roots organizers as it ramps up efforts to build a network of citizen lobbyists.

Deryck Spooner, who ran Nature Conservancy’s push to spur legislative action on climate change, will now head American Petroleum Institute’s grass-roots activism arm. The hiring move sends a nervous flutter through environmental groups. By recruiting Spooner, green groups said, API adds someone with both credibility and deep knowledge of grass-roots strategy. Spooner previously ran campaigns for labor group AFL-CIO and abortion rights organization NARAL.

“He’s a big dog,” said Tyson Slocum, energy program director at watchdog group Public Citizen. “It gives API somebody with enormous grass-roots experience running major campaigns. This indicates that API is taking their grass-roots strategy in a very serious direction.” Read the rest of this entry »

Group calls on Xcel to Keep Comanche 3 Closed and Produce 100% Renewable Electricity by 2020

Denver, CO – At 11:45am on Friday, February 26th, local citizens demonstrated at the Denver headquarters of Xcel Energy – located at the corner of 17th St. and Lawrence St. – in protest of the utility’s impending plan to bring a new coal-fired power plant online in Pueblo, CO. The lunch hour protest called on Xcel executives to move Colorado in the right direction by keeping the Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant closed. Protestors demonstrated in a ‘die-in’ in front of the building’s main entrance to highlight the grim consequences that coal has on our lives and those of future generations. Simultaneously, two activists clad in hazmat suits dropped a banner off an adjoining bridge on Lawrence St. Police arrived on scene but no arrests were made.

The 750-megawatt Comanche Unit 3 would be the largest coal-fired power plant in the state, surpassing even the mammoth Cherokee coal plant in North Denver. “At a time when the costs of coal are becoming increasingly clear and the benefits of clean energy are ever more apparent, building the largest coal-fired power plant in the state is taking us 180 degrees in the wrong direction,” said Amy Guinan, an activist with Power Past Coal. Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew MacLeod February 26, 2010 10:02 am

A prominent British Columbia environmentalist has written a letter to Greenpeace International criticizing the recent appointment of Tzeporah Berman to a position heading the organization’s climate and energy campaign.

Berman’s record of collaborating with corporations in B.C. has been disastrous, says the letter signed by the Valhalla Wilderness Society’s Anne Sherrod. “This approach means environmental groups collaborating with some [of] our most destructive corporations and most anti-environment governments,” she wrote. “It is based on the fact that corporations are always willing to give a little to conservation in order to get a lot.”

Sherrod criticized Berman’s group ForestEthics, and others, for endorsing an agreement that allows logging in two-thirds of the Great Bear Rainforest and for supporting the mountain caribou recovery plan even though it fails to appreciably reduce logging in the animal’s habitat.

“Last year Bermann [sic] shocked many B.C. environmentalists by becoming the leading advocate of private power projects on B.C.’s rivers and streams at a time when most of the environmental movement and a large swathe of the general public were fighting them tooth and nail,” she wrote. “Many of these were projects with huge carbon footprints that would do devastating damage to rivers and coastal ecosystems.” Read the rest of this entry »

by Cory Morningstar

This is a follow-up piece to ‘Sleeping with the Enemy; EYES WIDE SHUT | TckTckTck exposé’, and ACTION ALERT! Is Greenpeace International set to become GE – Greenpeace Electric?

This is not a good year for Greenpeace.

First the tcktcktck scandal and things just keep getting worse. Kumi Naidoo is the Chair of TckTckTck, as well as the Executive Director of Greenpeace International.  One can only imagine what damage control must be necessary as Greenpeace conflicts continue to escalate and disrupt all over the world.

British Columbia, Canada | SAVE GREENPEACE!

Greenpeace activists and supporters are not taking lightly to a recent decision by Greenpeace International to hire Tzeporah Berman to direct its global climate and energy campaign. Many fear that Greenpeace will lose its radical edge.  A massive backlash is underway with statements calling for civil society to take urgent action. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Wilkerson on It’s Getting Hot in Here

2 years ago I and several friends shut down construction at the site of the Cliffside Coal Plant in North Carolina. It was April 1^st, Fossil Fools Day. After public hearings, petitions, legislative efforts, and protest failed, we knew we had to do something to up the ante in the fight against coal plants in this country. So it was that we found ourselves locked to Duke Energy’s bulldozers on that dark, drizzly morning.

Did we permanently stop the Cliffside construction site? No. However this action, along with the countless other actions like it by groups around the country, have greatly increased the cost, both politically and economically, of building coal plants in this country. While the construction at Cliffside continues, I feel confident that our direct actions, and those of others, is in part responsible for the wave of coal plants that have been canceled in the US (100 and counting).

No doubt utility companies and state governments pursuing new coal plants took note of the fight against Cliffside and decided that the constant controversy and harassment was not worth it (of course the recession and prospects of CO2 being regulated has helped as well). Well its 2010 and Fossil Fools Day is once again rounding the corner. We’ve witnessed the spectacular failure of Copenhagen, the Obama administration time and again capitulating to big business, and corporations doing there best to stall our efforts.

Yet we’ve seen inspiring resistance around the country, from Climate Ground Zero’s relentless direct action campaign against mountaintop removal to citizens shutting down Chevron’s refinery in Richmond, CA. The question is: What are you going to do to raise the stakes on April 1^st?

www.fossilfoolsday.org

Join Rainforest Action Network and thousands of friends on the internet as we send a message to JP Morgan Chase to stop financing mountaintop removal! JP Morgan Chase is the largest US financier of mountaintop removal coal mining, investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a real American tragedy.

Please join us for a social media day of action.  On Feb. 18, we’ll use our Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and blogs to hold JP Morgan Chase accountable for financing this despicable practice.

Click any button for instructions on how to participate

For Internet Explorerer users scroll below for directions

JP Morgan Chase is the biggest U.S. financier of mountaintop removal.

They have financial relationships with the poster child of mountaintop removal, Massey Energy.  That means their money is funds sludge impoundments like Brushy Fork which is currently holding 7 billion gallons of coal waste above the Coal River Valley.  Their money funds the dragline that 14 of my friends shut down in Twilight last June that scrapes away house size chunks of earth after the mountain has been blasted.  Their money funds the security guards and noise machines that harassed and abused 3 tree-sitters last month defending Coal River Mountain with non-violent direct action.  Their money funds Don Blankenship’s helicopters, mansion and corrupt junkets to Spain with WV Supreme Court Justices .

Chase has hired PR firms to re-brand themselves on the internet as “charitable” and “benevolent” through their “Chase Community Giving sites and Facebook Fan Pages (even though they disallowed “political” groups from participating in any fundraising).  Chase touts themselves as a green environmentally friendly bank.  Their greenwashing, social media branding and high powered PR firms can’t hide the truth about what Chase really does.  They are complicit in destroying Appalachia’s mountains, poisoning it’s communities with dirty water and ruining it’s economy by creating conditions that lead to the worst poverty in the country.

Today, we’re exposing that truth using tools on the internet that will concentrate tens of thousands of people on Chase brand they’ve spent so much money perfecting.  It’s time we amp up the pressure on Chase and take their money out of the coal industry. Read the rest of this entry »

Racketeering: The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (18 USC §§ 1961-1968) prohibits (1) acquiring, establishing, or operating an enterprise with illegally derived income, (2) acquiring or maintaining an interest in or control of an enterprise through illegal activity, and (3) using an enterprise to commit illegal acts (Extortion, Blackmail, Etc. , 31A Am Jur 2d).

As fearless nonviolent protestors occupy the corporate office of a life-threatening and violation-ridden mountaintop removal operation in the Coal River Valley, West Virginia this morning, hundreds of thousands of American citizens are jamming the social media networks today, calling on JP Morgan Chase to end their financing of arguably criminal mountaintop removal coal mining operations in Appalachia.

Al Gore may have called mountaintop removal “a crime and ought to be treated as a crime,” but God bless veteran activists Mike Roselle, Joseph Hamsher, and Tom Smyth and the footslogging Climate Ground Zero nonviolent campaigners who are willing to put their lives on the line to stop mountaintop removal mining. Read the rest of this entry »