=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #401
—August 4, 1994—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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SUCCESSFUL STRATEGIES–PART 1
The ultimate judgment has been rendered on Bill Clinton’s
environmental programs. In July, the leaders of 15 major
environmental groups sent a joint letter to all their members
saying,
“You have never received a letter like this before. This is the
FIRST TIME the combined leadership of the nation’s leading
environmental groups have sent a single call to action to our
combined memberships.
“Even during the Reagan/Watt/Gorsuch years, we have never faced
such a serious threat to our environmental laws in Congress.
Polluters have blocked virtually all of our efforts to strengthen
environmental laws, but still they are not satisfied. Now, they
are mounting an all-out effort to WEAKEN our most important
environmental laws.”
The letter was signed by the leaders of the nation’s 15 largest
environmental organizations, ranging from National Wildlife
Federation to Greenpeace. (Mysteriously missing is Environmental
Defense Fund [EDF] in Washington.)
A serious threat inside Congress? How can this be? With a
Democrat in the White House, a Democratically-controlled
Congress, and a dedicated environmentalist for Vice-President,
where are the corporations finding support for an all-out war on
the laws that supposedly protect us from industrial poisons and
the naked despoliation of our dwindling natural resources?
In truth, Mr. Clinton and the big environmental organizations
bear equal measures of blame. The only consistent thread
running through all of Mr. Clinton’s appointments and policies is
his desire to nourish global corporations (which are the major
source of the re-election funds that he so desperately needs).
Now corporate America is feeling emboldened by Mr. Clinton’s
obvious preference for all things corporate, such as his
appointment of Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court, and his gift
of NAFTA. Global corporations coveted NAFTA and Mr. Clinton
worked hard to get it for them, with active help from most of the
big environmental organizations (excepting Greenpeace, Friends of
the Earth and Sierra Club).
Mr. Clinton’s 1993 “tax reform” law permitted global corporations
to continue to evade their fair share of taxes –a principal
reason why the middle class and the working poor are hurting
today. [1]
Mr. Clinton gave corporations something else they had been
lusting after since 1958: scrapping the Delaney Clause in the
nation’s food safety law. Right now the Delaney clause prohibits
cancer-causing chemicals in processed foods. Instead of
extending this prohibition to raw foods, Bill Clinton has
promised to kill it entirely. After Mr. Clinton has his way with
us, cancer-causing chemicals will be added legally to ALL our
food.
The chemical corporations are drooling over this proposed change.
Delaney has been a major thorn for them. Delaney doesn’t allow
tiny amounts of poisons, or negligible amounts or any other
weasel words. Delaney says zero and it means zero. Industry
wants Mr. Clinton to scrap Delaney and substitute a standard
called “negligible risk” which EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency] defines as “just enough cancer-causing chemicals to kill
one in every million citizens during a lifetime (70 years).” The
citizens who will be killed by Mr. Clinton’s revised wording are
“negligible,” meaning they don’t count for anything. For the
most part, the big environmental organizations have gone along
with Mr. Clinton’s plan to substitute “negligible risk” for the
zero-carcinogens standard now embedded in the Delaney clause.
(Again, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are exceptions.)
In sum, Mr. Clinton has shown himself willing to sell out the
American public on essentially every important environmental
issue, whenever corporate executives tell him to. And the big
environmental organizations have been trotting along at the end
of Mr. Clinton’s leash, hoping to be thrown a bone next time
they’re invited to dine at the White House.
Now it seems the big environmental groups have suddenly
discovered that the baby sitter has set the baby on fire. Thus
their July letter asking ordinary Americans to weigh in with a
letter to Congress–a tactic unlikely to work. In the TV age,
Congress can buy all the votes it needs if it has sufficient
money, and corporate America pours the money in through a giant
funnel.
Where does this leave environmental protection?
In the hands of the rest of us.
All is not lost because the grass-roots movement has some shrewd
strategists at work. For example, Wally Burnstein and Michael
Colby at Food & Water in Vermont. Wally and Michael are
conducting a “negligible risk” campaign. They have sent out
several hundred thousand “declarations” asking people to sign up,
pledging,
“I oppose the government’s ‘negligible risk’ policy which allows
the death of an ‘acceptable’ number of American children by
condoning the presence of pesticide residues in our nation’s food
supply…..
“I oppose allowing the sale of fresh vegetables, fruits, herbs,
spices, grains or foods of any origin which contain pesticide
residues of any type for any reason whatsoever….
“I hereby hold the local, state and federal governments, food
industry, grocery stores, and their executives personally,
individually and collectively responsible for any disease or
affliction, including cancer, birth defects, allergies or other
which might result, now or in the future, from being forced to
consume pesticide residues without my knowledge and/or consent,”
the pledge says.
Food & Water has received TENS OF THOUSANDS of these pledges,
many of them with angry hand-written notes attached, like this
one from Patricia Nowicki in Connecticut:
“I categorically reject anyone deciding that one of us could
legally contract a disease or die so that some corporate entity’s
bottom line ends up black.”
And this one from Traci Davis in Florida:
“My family and I live in South Dade and we are continually
exposed to pesticides sprayed by planes on the crops. The ‘mist’
of chemicals does not only land on the crops but on us and our
property and homes. Is the government trying to ensure the death
of all Americans?!”
These people are mad as hell, and Food & Water is forming them
into Neighborhood Networks. Neighborhood Networks are composed
of people whom Wally Burnstein calls Number Ones –people who get
it and want to DO something. (Number Twos are seeking
information, weighing the alternatives, basically paralyzed.
Number Threes are simply hopeless.) These Neighborhood Networks
of Number Ones are linked together by telephone trees, and they
carry out coordinated phone and letter-writing campaigns. Their
targets are always carefully selected corporations –NEVER
GOVERNMENT. They scare the hell out of selected corporate
targets. When one caves in, they start on the next. This is how
Food & Water killed the plan to irradiate food. When
corporations and government ganged up to treat our food with
radioactivity (to kill germs and extend shelf-life), Food & Water
focused on grocery chains, and on food producers like chicken man
Frank Perdue. They used a simple tactic: they rang the phone off
the hook saying, “There are a lot of us and we’re ready to take
action. If you irradiate chicken, or if you sell irradiated
chicken, we’ll boycott you.” The grocery chains caved in right
away. Even tough-talking Frank Perdue caved in, and so did all
the other chicken producers.
The WALL STREET JOURNAL paid a tribute to the successful tactics
of Food & Water last April with a slashing editorial attack
(April 27, pg. A12):
“…[N]o major supermarket chain is willing to stock irradiated
food, and no major poultry producer is willing to treat its birds.
“The industry seems to be cowed by the hardball tactics of an
outfit calling itself Food & Water. The tiny group (membership:
3,500 [sic]) produces a steady stream of T-shirts and
leaflets…” The JOURNAL went on to accuse Food & Water of being
antinuclear, unscientific, and paranoid. In the JOURNAL’S
lexicon these words mean “successful environmental protectors.”
In truth, there are half a dozen good reasons why irradiating
food is a dumb, dangerous idea, which we will discuss in a future
issue. For today, the point is that Food & Water has developed
successful tactics that the rest of us should be using to protect
our homes, our neighborhoods, our children, and our future.
These are tactics that corporations cannot use against us the way
they have learned to use grass-roots-organizing-with-money
against us. And they are tactics that WORK.
The main idea is to pick a vulnerable corporate target, one that
fears consumer opinion. Use that target as a battering ram to
attack the corporation that created the problem in the first
place. Greenpeace is doing this with its stunning campaign
against TIME magazine, aimed at forcing TIME to abandon
chlorine-bleached paper. If a high visibility target like TIME
caves in (which it will, sooner or later), other major
paper-users will follow. The corporations that supply TIME’s
paper will get the message, and chlorine-bleached paper will
begin to disappear. (If history is any guide, EDF will then
hold a press conference to announce that THEY persuaded the
paper industry to abandon chlorine.) Soon a major customer for
chlorine will be gone and the campaign’s ultimate goal –to end
chlorine production –will have been served. Then on to the
next target. And the next.
[For information on Greenpeace’s TIME campaign (including a
startling poster about breast cancer), phone: (202) 319-2444.]
Notice that this strategy doesn’t rely on government at all.
Government at present is pretty much hopeless –it has been
captured by unpatriotic, tax-evading corporations. [1] Until we
can break the hold of corporations ($$) on the political process,
there’s not much to be gained working in that arena. As more and
more people see that corporate campaigns can get us what we want,
they’ll join in, building the movement. It’s already happening.
When the movement is larger –and current trends in jobs,
justice, environment, health and wealth all promise to make it
grow non-stop –then we can confront the corporations directly
and take back our democracy.
Until then, movement-building is what we must do.
First step: Sign up for Food & Water’s ONE AMERICAN VOICE CAN
MAKE A DIFFERENCE campaign and help put an end to pesticides.
Phone 1-800-EAT-SAFE to find out what you can do. Only Number
Ones need apply.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague
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[1] GET: Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, AMERICA: WHO
REALLY PAYS THE TAXES? (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994). And
GET: AMERICA: WHAT WENT WRONG? (Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel,
1992) by the same authors, who work for the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER.
Descriptor terms: bill clinton; ronald reagan; james watt; anne
gorsuch; congress; nwf; national wildlife federation; greenpeace;
edf; environmental defense fund; corporations; stephen breyer;
united states supreme court; friends of the earth; foe; sierra
club; tax reform; delaney clause; pesticides; carcinogens;
cancer; food safety; delaney clause; epa; wally burnstein;
michael colby; food & water; vermont; strategy; tactics;
neighborhood networks; food irradiation; radioactivity;
radiation; frank perdue; chickens; poultry; domestic animals;
livestock; boycotts; corporate campaigns; wall street journal;
grocers; supermarkets; time magazine; paper; chlorine bleaching;
edf; paper industry; corporations; taxation; taxes; tax evasion;
donald a. barlett; james b. steele; america: who really pays the
taxes?; america: what went wrong?; philadelphia inquirer;