Our friends were arrested this morning at a Home Depot action in Colorado (see details below.) They should be out in a few hours, and we will be back on the road without missing a stop! (but we are missing a chunk of change in our account.. so, if you wanna help us make it up, you can donate online!)
-EF! Roadshow crew (the one’s left on the outside)
[PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG!]
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Hey, all you ‘angry Home Depot customers’ and friends of the Earth
First! Roadshow would you mind callin’ 1-800-553-3199 (press extension # 5), Or you can also, send an email to them direct from this link: DAM HOME DEPOT
Tell Home Depot to drop the charges against our friends in Arapahoe
County Jail, Colorado.. and to get the hell out of wild Patagonia!
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For Immediate Release: May, 27, 2009
Home Depot has Earth First! activists arrested for action against dams in Patagonia
Denver, CO– Two Earth First! activists were arrested at a Home Depot
this morning in Glendale. The arrests followed a banner being hung off
the roof of a Home Depot store reading “Dam Home Depot, NOT
Patagonia!” Supporters of the arrested activists demand that Home
Depot cut all ties and voice their opposition to this project at
tomorrows corporate shareholders meeting tomorrow in Atlanta, Georgia.
The banner-drop action was intended to remind both the public and the company: “We’ve fought The Home Depot before and won.” Almost ten years ago, Earth First! groups around the country joined with Rainforest Action Network and others forced Home Depot to adopt wood product policies that removed old growth from their shelves. But their ongoing economic involvement with the Chilean interests that are proposing to dam wild rivers with the HidroAysen project in Patagonia shows their commitments to ‘green business’ practices to be merely empty Public Relations maneuvering.
International Rivers, an organization working to protect rivers and
defend the rights of communities that depend on them, explains that:
“The HidroAysen project involves 3 dams on the Pascua River and 2 dams on the Baker River that would flood globally rare forest ecosystems and some of the most productive agricultural land in the Aysen region. Electricity from these dams would be sent thousands of kilometers north to serve Chile’s biggest cities and its mammoth copper industry. More than 1,500 miles of transmission lines would require one of the world’s longest clearcuts–much of it through untouched temperate rainforests found nowhere else on the planet. US retailer The Home Depot is the largest buyer of timber products from the main Chilean interest promoting the dams. The Home Depot has been asked by thousands of people, including socially responsible investors, to stop buying timber from suppliers that plan to destroy the rivers and forests of Patagonia.”
According to Ron DeFeo of Home Depot (from a blog post this morning): “we don’t think it’s our place to weigh in on an issue that we have no expertise or influence over.” While DeFeo denies the company’s involvement and refuses to accept the research of International Rivers, his blog post admits that “the president of our supplier’s parent company owns shares, along with his family, in one of the companies that would work on the project.”
Earth First!, which is more of a movement than an organization, has
autonomous groups around the world who target corporations that are
responsible for devastating the planet. The movement currently has a
national Roadshow crossing the country to mobilize people to take
action against companies like Home Depot, which is currently featured
on their website http://www.earthfirstroadshow.wordpress.com
More information about this campaign at:
http://internationalrivers.org/patagonia
xxx