Molly Ivins on Timber Co Attack on Enviro Group
Molly Ivins on RAN-Boise Cascade

6/28/01

AUSTIN, Texas -- Now here's an interesting development: The
Boise Cascade Corp. is targeting Rainforest Action Network (RAN), the
environmental group that has gotten Home Depot, Lowe's and other major
companies to stop buying wood from the remaining old-growth forests.
Since the RAN folks have been targeting Boise Cascade to get the company
to stop logging in old-growth forests, this may seem to be a case of
turnabout-is-fair-play. Actually, it's another corporate campaign --
like SLAPP suits (strategic lawsuits against public participation) --
designed to silence critics of corporate practice. Boise Cascade is
working with two industry-supported front groups, trying to get the IRS
to cancel Rainforest's tax-exempt status and to pressure its funders to
cut off the group's money.

Some hilarity attaches to the letter of complaint to the IRS
from something called the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a property
rights outfit headed by former Wyoming Sen. Malcolm Wallop. According to
Frontiers of Freedom (why do they all have names like that?), "RAN
devotes most of its $3 million-plus annual war chest (you understand $3
million is peanuts to Boise Cascade) to pressure campaigns
aimed at forcing corporations to change the way they do business. (END
ITAL) GASP. No! Not that!

Well! Such lese majeste convinced the Frontiers of Freedom,
which seems to have awfully constricted frontiers, that freedom does not
include tax-exempt status for RAN. Its specific claims are that RAN
conducted several peaceful protests, wrote letters, produced street
theater and supported civil disobedience. On RAN's bad-egg side are
several protesters who have gotten arrested for trespassing after
climbing tall buildings to put up large protest banners. These bear such
subversive messages as 'Stop Selling Old-Growth Wood," "Do Your Children
Know You're Buying Old-Growth Wood?" and "Human Rights Before Drilling
Rights."

The complaint huffs, "RAN's objectives are hardly limited to its
tax-exempt purpose -- education." By way of illustration, the group
cites this chilling act of eco-terrorism: "On Oct. 24, 2000, RAN
activists taunted Boise Cascade by floating over the company's
headquarters a 120-foot inflatable balloon shaped like a dinosaur and
bearing a sign reading, 'Boise Cascade: I love logging old-growth.'"

I think we can argue that's quite educational, in the broader
sense. RAN has negotiated and settled agreements with other major lumber
companies, such as Weyerhauser, Canadian Forest Products, etc. RAN is
opposed to all forms of violence and to property destruction.


Boise Cascade has written directly to foundations and other
groups that support RAN, claiming, "Reckless, unlawful and untruthful
attacks," "false and defamatory statements," "harassment and
intimidation" (especially a mean and vicious campaign of Christmas-wish
letters from children to Boise's CEO asking him to stop logging
old-growth forests). Again, this may strike you as a case of
"You harass me, and I'll harass you," but then we all lose sight of the
main point, don't we? That logging old-growth forests does irreparable
damage. There's a wonderful Battle of Quotes going on: By associating
RAN with violent, militant eco-terrorists, Boise can quote all kinds of
splendidly nutty statements. On the other hand, RAN found these gems
from Ron Arnold, vice president of yet another property-rights group
working against RAN -- this one bearing the title Center for the Defense
of Free Enterprise -- who told the Boston Globe in 1992, "We are sick to
death of environmentalism, and so we will destroy it." And he told The
New York Times in 1991, "We want to destroy the environmentalists by
taking away their money and their members."

As we watch RAN's struggle with Boise Cascade and watch
corporations in general develop new weapons against their critics, it is
useful to take a step back. The Program on Corporations, Law and
Democracy (which leaves them with the unfortunate acronym POCLAD) does
just that. The group's thought-provoking work on the questions of
corporate power in a democracy go beyond redressing a specific wrong to
ask what we can do about it in a larger sense. As FDR said, "The
liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of
private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic
State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism -- ownership of
government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private
power." I find POCLAD most useful for the questions it asks: "What
is property? Who decides what is public and private? What is liberty?
Who is it for? Should a business corporation be regarded as a citizen?
Why does the General Motors Corp. have more rights than the United Auto
Workers Union? ... Thousands of groups know how to stop an incinerator,
organize a union, block a timber harvest sale, decrease a toxic
emission, orchestrate a referendum or initiative, enact new permitting
and disclosure regulations. (But) people spend years getting regulatory
agencies to lessen a single corporate harm."

I'm rooting for RAN against Boise Cascade and for an end to
logging in old-growth forests, but I think we need to look at some
larger questions, too.