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Orangutans and palm oil

08/23/2014 Nativegrl77

August 19, 2014, World Orangutan Day!

There are only 60,600 orangutans left in the wild, and unchecked palm oil expansion in Indonesia and Malaysia is driving these beautiful creatures to the brink of extinction. Join people all over the world who are taking a stand for endangered orangutans and ask PepsiCo to get Conflict Palm Oil out of our food.

If you’ve been following our summer campaign push on PepsiCo, you know that things are heating up! Our message that #LiveForNow shouldn’t mean destroying tomorrow is hitting PepsiCo in a big way via all your beautiful photos and tweets, but today is the day to go big. Here is how to make a difference for orangutans on World Orangutan Day:

Sign up right now for Thursday’s Twitter training with our expert digital team. In one hour you will become a social media ninja and walk away with the skills and knowledge to strategically pressure corporations on Twitter.
Download your own sign, get a photo of yourself (bonus: with friends) holding the sign in front of any Pepsi display, product, vending machine or logo and start tweeting at @PepsiCo with YOUR demands and the hashtag #LiveForNow. Not sure what to say? Here’s a tweet I posted as an example.

Join me on World Orangutan Day by taking a stand for our red furry friends! Help us push huge corporations, like PepsiCo, to change.

Thank you!

Ashley Schaeffer Yildiz
Rainforest Action Network

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Campaign Update: PepsiCo and Conflict Palm Oil

08/23/2014 Nativegrl77

On May 20, thousands of us united in a Global Day of Action to tell PepsiCo to eliminate Conflict Palm Oil. PepsiCo responded by announcing a Forestry Stewardship Policy and Palm Oil Commitment, but neither of these new promises are strong enough to guarantee that Pepsi’s use of palm oil is not driving rainforest destruction, species extinction and human and labor rights abuses.

PepsiCo is the largest globally distributed snack food company in the world – the company uses enough palm oil every single year to fill Pepsi cans that would stretch around the Earth 4 times – but it has fallen out of step with its peers and still has no truly responsible palm oil purchasing policy.

This has to change — and with your help it will. Are you with us

Instead of cutting Conflict Palm Oil from its products, PepsiCo continues to push its darkly ironic #LiveForNow campaign. PepsiCo is telling people not to worry about climate change, the fate of the last wild orangutans and children that are forced to work in slave-like conditions on oil palm plantations and just #LiveForNow!

It’s our job to tell PepsiCo that #LiveForNow isn’t good enough. This summer we’re turning up the heat.

PepsiCo is pushing its #LiveForNow propaganda out through it’s “Real Big Summer” marketing campaign which includes Pepsi sponsored concerts and events across the US. We need YOU to crash Pepsi-sponsored events and deliver the message that #LiveForNow shouldn’t mean rainforest destruction, climate change and human rights abuses. As activists on the ground crash PepsiCo events around the country, online activists will amplify their voices across the world using social media to disrupt PepsiCo’s marketing efforts and drive home the point that thousands of us stand together in our call for an end to Conflict Palm Oil.

Will you join us?

Here’s how: Sign up to let us know you’re in. We’ll give you a call and support you every step of the way. We’ll let you know where and when you can take action, provide you with placards to chose from, and invite you to one of our trainings so you can become an expert in using social media to campaign for change.

Because of you PepsiCo has made some progress. With your help we’ll convince the global snack food giant to go further to guarantee that its products – like Quaker Oats and Frito Lay Chips – will be free of Conflict Palm Oil for good.

Let’s turn up the heat!

Gemma Tillack,
Senior Agribusiness Campaigner
Rainforest Action Network

PS: Don’t want to wait? Download our toolkit here and start causing some ruckus immediately!

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the FBI and Washington State

08/23/2014 Nativegrl77

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre testified in Congress last year that we shouldn’t expand the criminal background checks system to cover more gun sales because — he claims — background checks don’t work.[1]Well, we’ve obtained key FBI data that shows more than 40,000 reasons why LaPierre and the NRA are just plain wrong.Since 1998, the federal background check system has blocked 40,976 dangerous people from buying guns in Washington State — including more than 6,000 domestic abusers.

And that’s precisely why we want to expand background checks to cover all gun sales here, including sales between strangers who meet online or at gun shows.

Please help spread the word about this important information on Facebook or on Twitter. Sharing this stat with others will help explain why it’s so important we pass I-594, Washington State’s ballot initiative to expand the state’s background checks law.

If you don’t use Facebook or Twitter, you can still spread the word by forwarding this email to friends and family.

Initiative 594 — on the ballot in Washington this fall — would close loopholes in Washington’s background check law so that a convicted felon or domestic abuser can’t buy a gun at a gun show or on the internet without passing the same quick and easy background check that law abiding citizens do every day at gun dealers throughout the state.

Passing I-594 into law won’t stop all gun violence — but it is the most effective way to make Washington a safer place for our families.

The first step is to make sure our friends, neighbors and family members have the facts about background checks — no matter how hard the NRA’s leadership tries to undermine them. Share the message now: It’s time to close the background check loophole in Washington State.

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Thanks for being part of this important fight,

Meera Bhardwaj
Washington State Organizing Director
Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund

1. “Wayne LaPierre, NRA Leader, Opposes Expanded Background Checks,” Huffington Post, January 2013.