My recent article “Controversy a Weapon in the Battle Against Capitalism” discussed the Levi Strauss & Company decision not to employ suppliers that were considered a “controversial” source. The way this story came to my attention was via a Google Alert on a post on the Rainforest Action Network‘s site.
In that January 17, 2012 post, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) stated:
Levi Strauss & Company’s recent public release of its revamped forest products purchasing policy ensures it is not sourcing from the world’s endangered forests. The company’s implementation of the policy makes it the latest major brand that will not be doing business with Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) due to APP’s ongoing involvement in rainforest destruction and human rights abuses in Indonesia.
(The above accusation aside, as you may know from reading here on Telofski.com, Asia Pulp & Paper has been involved for quite a while in public argument over their manufacturing practices. You’ll also know from readings on this site that those practices have been denigrated by some (e.g., Rainforest Action Network) while they are supported by others.)
RAN said that Levi Strauss & Company (LSC) “will not be doing business with Asia Pulp and Paper”. And indeed, Mongabay.com, an environmental news site, on the same date (January 17, 2012) as the RAN statement picked up on that RAN statement saying:
Levi Strauss & Company became the latest firm to drop Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) as a supplier due to concerns over APP’s continued clearing of rainforests in Sumatra, reports the Rainforest Action Network, a green group in the midst of a campaign against APP.
RAN and Mongabay.com need to get their facts straight on two items.
The RAN and Mongabay.com stories are both based on the LSC forest products purchasing policy statement found, per the above RAN statement, at this link. But when I went to that link on the LSC Web site, I found no reference, at all, to Asia Pulp & Paper nor any statement that LSC would no longer be using APP as a supplier. The RAN and Mongabay.com “statements” that LSC would be dropping APP therefore are not statements; they are merely conjecture and supposition.
Additionally, the Mongabay.com article said about a LSC document “According to a forest products purchasing policy [PDF] posted on its web site last month, Levi’s will . . . ” Follow that link to the LSC Web site. The date at the top of the PDF there says “December 2010″. December 2010. December 2010. 2010. Remember that this Mongabay.com article was published on January 17, 2012. How is that last month?
The simple answer is, it isn’t.
Before activists claim victory, perhaps they, and the news organizations that report on them, need to apply more diligence to their reporting. Certainly in this case, this is true.
The “war on capitalism” within the American Republican party was quite ironic. Ironic because Republicans are known to be champions of capitalism and stalwarts for the free market system. When Republican primary candidates snipe at each other for making “too much” money, their wry antics form another battlefield in the war on capitalism. This paradoxical combat zone is well-known thanks to mainstream media which has soaked up the dispute with relish.
Irony attracts eyeballs. Yet, there is another ironic battle against capitalism that is not as well-covered by the mainstream media. This little-known skirmish is a type of conflict surrendered to by business, other stalwarts of the free market. I’ve discussed this type of battle before.
In my article “Controversy Drives Mattel Vendor Selection Process” I talked about how Mattel used controversy, rather than consumer market pressure, as a criterion for the selection of a supplier. The article described how Mattel chose to refrain from purchasing from certain suppliers because activist groups had labeled those suppliers as “unsustainable” and generated controversy in doing so. Similar to the Republican reproachment of free market principles, such actions by business form an ironic action. Eschewing vendors because they or their practices are called by some “controversial,” a controversy generated by small interest groups, subverts the free market system so dependent upon the opinions of great numbers of consumers rather than the narrowly defined agendas of activists. And yet another “controversy” battle against capitalism has occurred, one not covered by the mainstream media.
In its Sustainable Forest Product Procurement Policy, Levi Strauss & Company states that the company “will not knowingly purchase wood and paper products from endangered forests and other highly controversial sources . . .” (Emphasis mine.)
Now that several companies have announced, and probably more companies will announce, that they will avoid “controversial” sources, such a policy greatly simplifies the war on capitalism for anti-capitalist groups. With such an inclination toward supplier selection, the anti-capitalist challenge is made easier, and that is to generate controversy regarding one particularly targeted company or group of companies.
With social media and its ability to distort meaning, and a gullible population willing, seemingly, to believe almost anything in writing, how difficult of a job would the generation of controversy be? And more importantly, how will this make their war against capitalism simpler?
A basic principle taught in journalism school is that the most important points of an article need to be placed in the first few paragraphs. This rule is taught because many people do not finish reading articles. (I hope you finish reading this one.) Reporters know that by organizing an article in this manner the leading ideas will be those that most readers remember.
Was this what United Press had in mind when it published its recent “Chevron Accused of Dirty Deeds in Ecuador“? Here’s how the first paragraph reads:
“Chevron’s own evidence in an oil contamination case in Ecuador shows the supermajor is engaged in dirty business . . .”
And then the sentence says “environmental advocates claim.”
With what kind of an impression does this “objective” news lead leave you?
The next four paragraphs contain polemic statements or quotes from the activist groups Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network concerning their side (opposite that of Chevron’s) on an Ecuadorian court’s decision to uphold a lower Ecuadorian court’s $18 billion judgement against Chevron. It’s not until the article’s sixth through eighth paragraphs that the defendant, Chevron, gets to respond.
Balanced? Technically yes. But given the tenet that readers don’t often hang in through an entire article, I think the actual answer is no.
Crappy reporting? You know my opinion. What’s yours?
The idea that many green groups are anti-capitalist is not exactly news. But what is news is when one of these groups states with clarity their anti-capitlist position. One environmental group recently did just this and stated their anti-capitalist policy in a Huffington Post article.
Rebecca Tarbottom, executive director of Rainforest Action Network (RAN), wrote in “Dismantling Corporate Power: A Call to Action on the Anniversary of Citizens United” that:
“Corporations themselves are victims and beneficiaries of a regulatory system that myopically values profit and shareholder value above all else. Even with the best intentions in the world, the CEOs of most companies can only do so much to change their business practices before they risk running afoul of the doctrine of the dollar. . . we need systemic change to meaningfully confront the breakdown of our economy and our environment.”
Given that she heads a group which claims to have as its goal the protection of the environment, it was nice that in that passage she managed to work in the word “environment.” Yet the overall theme of this paragraph is not foremost the protection of the environment, which is what one would expect from an environmental organization. Indeed the theme of this paragraph and the article entirely is one of anti-capitalism, one of “demanding structural change,” as she characterizes it toward the end of the article, to “our tax system, our trade system, our electoral system, and our judicial system.”
Ms. Tarbottom’s emphasis on the revamping of these societal institutions reveals her organization’s real intentions (as does some of the writing in the organization’s “Pressure Drop Primer,” see PDF page 8 in the link given.) For Rainforest Action Network, their reason for being is to change the nature of the economic and political system, all under the guise of “protecting the environment.”
Would-be donors of this organization need to keep this in mind when contemplating support of this group.
As you may have noticed, recently I’ve been writing a lot about accountability, or rather the lack thereof, in various global activist groups such as Greenepeace, Friends of the Earth, and Rainforest Action Network. For a list of those articles, just click here.
Why this call for accountability? Why now?
Well, it’s not just a tit-for-tat given that the above mentioned activist groups often call upon corporations for accountability information. (See the articles in the above mentioned list for references to this.) Certainly corporations, multi-nationals in particular, given their wide influence upon society need to be accountable to those they affect. But isn’t it just as certain, especially given that activist influence on corporations has increased over the past couple of decades, that those same activists need to be more accountable than they have in the past to the public whose interests they profess to serve?
The research shown in my recent articles demonstrates that, for the groups studied, their concerns about releasing accountability information are lacking. The research also shows, in the few cases where the information was indeed available, that the control of the organization is very tight and highly parochial. Take for example my post entitled “Greenpeace Voting Incestuous.” In this example, Greenpeace did release very pertinent governance information, but this information shows that the governance of this highly influential organization is concentrated among very few individuals. Yet, Greenpeace claims support from over 12 million people. The governance information I found indicates that those 12 million people don’t get a say in how the organization is run. Why not? Can you imagine the outrage that would ensue if Exxon-Mobil suddenly announced that its shareholders would no longer vote?
For activists to be less accountable than the companies they target is simply hypocritical.
This call for activist accountability is being made now because the influence of organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and Rainforest Action Network has reached a critical mass. And if we allow business as usual to continue (pun intended) their narrowly defined influence over the goods and services we all consume may take us in a direction that we don’t want to go.
On September 7th of this year, I blogged about Rainforest Action Network’s (RAN) lack of accountability and transparency. In that article, I said that after reviewing the RAN Web site, RAN.org, for information pertaining to their governance procedures, I didn’t find much of interest. Specifically, I said that I found that:
There was no information provided in the form of annual reports.
There was no information provided which would tell us how RAN governs itself.
There were no organizational bylaws provided.
There was no information provided which tells us how RAN’s board of directors is elected.
There was no information available on who votes for the board of directors.
There was very little information showing their financial condition; only information for fiscal year 2009 was given. (What about fiscal year 2010? As of the date of this post, RAN’s 2010 fiscal year had been over for 14 months.)
Well, go ahead and cross out that first bullet item in the above list because I did some more digging on their site and located some annual reports. But, they didn’t make it easy to find the reports. They didn’t provide a link to their annual reports. I had to search for it. Here is a link to the search results.
RAN, in their corporate campaigns, often demands corporate accountability from the companies they target. But RAN itself doesn’t do much in the way of providing information so the general public can assess RAN’s accountability.
Once I dug through their site to find their annual reports, I perused the reports from 2008, 2009, and 2010. To their credit, in each of the reports, I found a list of their donors. I also found a lot of flashy reporting on the campaigns that they undertook in each of those years. So much the better to woo potential donors for the next year, I suppose.
But I wasn’t seeking information on donors, or campaigns for that matter. I was seeking information about their self-governance and there was no information in those reports about how this influential NGO governs itself. Like the post I wrote on this same subject, but concerning Friends of the Earth US, I had questions.
How are the members of their board of directors elected? Are they even elected? Or are they appointed?
If the members of the board of directors are elected, who votes for them? The donors? The rank and file members? The staff? Other members of the board of directors?
If they are appointed, who appoints them?
If the donors vote for them, how many votes do the donors get apiece? Do they get one vote per donor, or do they get one vote per dollar donated? Sort of like shareholders in a corporation.
The RAN reports, like the FOE-US reports, contained lists of board and staff members. And the RAN reports contained a little bit of financial information, scant as it was. But there was nothing there to tell me, or anyone else, how this organization governs
Continue reading Rainforest Action Network Makes Their Governance Info MIA
|
About  Here at " Richard Telofski on The War on Capitalism," I discuss and analyze the individuals and groups conducting campaigns against capitalism. In the articles on this site, I provide analysis on lesser known facts about this movement. More . . .
 |
Klout.com rates Richard as influential on the subject of activism. |
|
