Tag Archives: Indonesia

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Help save the last remaining wild orangutans

10/18/2013 Nativegrl77

Make a $5 gift today and it will automatically be doubled!

To get cheap palm oil, top snack food brands are doing business with companies that are driving the last 60,600 wild orangutans to extinction, committing human rights violations and destroying rainforests.
Put simply, if these companies don’t change the way they’re doing business, orangutans are predicted to be extinct within our lifetime.
That’s why RAN has launched what may be our most ambitious campaign to date—and why two RAN supporters have offered to match every gift dollar-for-dollar up to $50,000 to make sure we have the resources to take the fight to the doorsteps of the top 20 snack food companies using “Conflict Palm Oil” in their products.
Give $5 today and your gift will automatically be doubled, meaning it will have twice the impact to save the endangered rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo and the 60,600 wild orangutans who call them home.
In Indonesia alone, the area covered by palm oil plantations has grown by 600 percent since 1990 to cover twenty million acres (that’s the size of Maine). This really is a critical moment for the world’s last remaining wild orangutans and the forests they call home, and we urgently need everyone who can to chip in to help us meet this match.
We’re only one month into our new campaign, The Last Stand of the Orangutan, and your emails and calls demanding the Snack Food 20 stop using Conflict Palm Oil are already having a huge impact. Some of these companies have started taking steps to address their palm oil problem, but they won’t commit to real, substantial change unless we can amplify our message.
Your support today will help build a powerful grassroots movement to send the loudest and clearest message we can that we expect these companies to eliminate rainforest destruction from their supply chains now. Not tomorrow, not next week, but right now.
Every dollar you give today will double your impact to help save the endangered rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo and the orangutans that depend on them.
We are up against powerful and well-funded opponents, and we know our work is cut out for us. But, by standing together and taking the fight directly to the Snack Food 20, we can make a real difference in our fight to save these endangered rainforests.
So please don’t let this opportunity slip by—make your gift of $5 today to double your impact.
Thanks for all you do. You are making an incredible difference.

		For the great red ape,
		Lindsey Allen Executive Director Rainforest Action Network

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

what happened after I signed the petition?

10/07/2013 Nativegrl77

Dear amazing community,

I often get asked by Avaazers, “what happens after I sign a petition?” And the truth is, a HECK of a lot! Every Avaaz campaign springs from a massive global mandate, and then zeroes in on the best way for our voices to win. Here’s just two of our victories from the last few weeks:

Remember when 2 million of us came together to stop the flogging of a 15-year old rape victim in the Maldives? Her sentence has been quashed! Here’s what our team did to win:

Our ads threatened the profits of officials who owned parts of the tourism industry

Spoke for hours with the Maldivian Attorney-General and Ministers and emailed the President at his personal account.
Commissioned opinion polls showing massive support for reforms to protect girls. And wrote an Op-Ed in a major national paper.
Persuaded a top Islamic scholar to speak out against flogging.
Threatened to run an ad (right) in tourism publications, affecting the country’s major industry.
Visited the Maldives and the location where the girl was held, pressing officials directly.

Ahmed Shaheed, former Foreign Minister of the Maldives said “The Avaaz contribution was the spearhead of the campaign to overturn the flogging sentence; a petition signed by millions, a country visit, a public opinion survey, and persistent follow-up all proved irresistible.”

Another example: Remember how almost 2 million of us rallied to stop the Maasai tribe in Tanzania from being kicked off their land for a hunting reserve? Last week, the Prime Minister announced they could stay! The petition provided a powerful basis for what the team did next:

Maasai women gather to protest the eviction. Photo by Jason Patinkin

Got CNN and the Guardian to visit the Maasai and break the wider story to the world.
Advised Maasai elders on their campaigning strategy.
Flooded Ministers and the President with messages — forcing a debate in cabinet and Parliament.
Ran a hard hitting newspaper ad in an influential paper which publicly shamed the government.
Persuaded diplomats worldwide to raise the issue — embarrassing the government.
Financially supported Maasai elders to travel to the capital where they gathered to ‘occupy’ land outside of the Prime Minister’s office for weeks, refusing to leave until he met them.

Gordon Brown said: “A million dollars has been raised via the brilliant Avaaz.org, in just a few days.” Brazil Open Vote

Key Brazilian Senator joins Avaaz “open vote” naked protest sending a clear message: “we have nothing to hide”

The victory belongs to the Maasai people, but our community helped them win by making this a global issue the government could no longer ignore. This hopefully ends a 20 year land battle!!

Of course, our community does a LOT more than petitions. Last week, we raised a $1 million challenge grant in a few days to donor governments to put Syrian refugee kids in school. At a UN meeting, I was able to put a cheque on the table and issue the challenge on behalf of over 40,000 Avaaz donors. UN Education Envoy Gordon Brown, who chaired the meeting, called our community’s effort a “magnificent and impactful intervention” in getting other governments to give!

And often it’s not the Avaaz team but our community that does the direct lobbying. For example in Brazil, we’re inches away from winning a massive fight to end the shady practice of ‘secret voting’ in the Congress. Our huge push helped win the vote in the lower house and right now, Senators’ telephones are ringing off the hook as Avaaz members across Brazil use our online calling tool to directly tell them to stop this corruption — experts say a win is likely in days!

It’s this unique magic mix between a gigantic and spirited community of citizens able to speak out, donate, and lobby, and a small team of top notch advocates able to take smart, strategic actions at the highest level with democratic legitimacy, that makes our campaigns increasingly unstoppable.

If we keep believing in each other, and growing in size and in commitment, there’s no limit to the good we can do in the world. Thank you so much for the honour and the joy to be part of and serve this community. It’s something truly precious we have here — let’s keep building Avaaz.

With love and appreciation,

Ricken and the team

PS — You might not know that Avaaz is different from just about every other global organization in that we are 100% funded and guided by our community. Every campaign we run is first polled and tested to a random sample (you might think of it as a jury) of our community, that tells us exactly how the whole the community will react. I may be the CEO, but you’re my boss. If you don’t like something (and I don’t mean 51% like it, but 81% like it) then our team go back to the drawing board and come up with a better option for you. We have never, ever, broken this rule. So at the end of the day, it is your wisdom, the collective wisdom of our community, matched with the smartest suggestions the team hears from you and come up with ourselves and from our partners and experts, that determines what we do every single day.

When you add to that the fact that 100% of our funding comes from small online donations (we strictly refuse any donations from corporations, governments, foundations, and even individual donations over 5000 Euros), I think Avaaz may be one of the purest organisational expressions of people-powered change in the world today. Make that an organisation served by a beautiful team of wonderfully talented and deeply committed people that I wish I could introduce you all to, and we’ve got a kind of magic that can build the world we dream of.

PPS — If you want to chip in to help keep it all going, click here: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/october_reportback_a/?biEWLbb&v=29788

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Gemma Tillack, Rainforest Action Network

09/16/2013 Nativegrl77

Call out companies using “Conflict Palm Oil”

Today, I’m excited to announce Rainforest Action Network‘s ambitious new campaign to save some of the world’s most important rainforests and the last remaining wild orangutans from “Conflict Palm Oil.”
It’s called The Last Stand of the Orangutan, and it’s one of the biggest campaigns we’ve ever launched. We’re going after not one, not two, but 20 of the companies most responsible for putting Conflict Palm Oil into our food. We’ve dubbed these companies The Snack Food 20. They are the makers of some of the top name brands in the world, companies like PepsiCo, The Hershey Company and Kraft Foods Group, and they are using Conflict Palm Oil in their products. (See full list of companies below.)
We need your help right now to make sure this campaign starts with a bang that the Snack Food 20 can’t ignore.
Tell the Snack Food 20 that you demand they remove Conflict Palm Oil from our food.
Our campaign launched this morning in grand RAN style at the Chicago Board of Trade, the primary trading center for agricultural commodities, including palm oil. We publicly named the 20 snack food companies that RAN’s campaign will focus on and unfurled a 15-foot banner reading, “Cut Conflict Palm Oil, Not Rainforests.” Several RAN supporters wore orangutan masks and held signs displaying the logos of the Snack Food 20 companies.

Today’s demonstration was accompanied by the release of our new report, entitled Conflict Palm Oil: How US Snack Food Brands are Contributing to Orangutan Extinction, Climate Change and Human Rights Violations, which exposes the increasingly severe environmental and human rights problems caused by industrial palm oil production in Indonesia and Malaysia.
The demand for palm oil is skyrocketing—its use in the United States has grown nearly 500 percent in the past decade. And no wonder, since palm oil is in roughly half of all products on grocery store shelves. But this gives us, as consumers, incredible power to make change, too. If you speak up loudly enough, the Snack Food 20 will have to change the way they do business. The power is in your palm.  
This really is the last stand for the world’s remaining wild orangutans. Only 60,600 orangutans remain in Sumatra and Borneo. Will you stand up with them?
After we convince the Snack Food 20 to cut Conflict Palm Oil from their products, it will have a cascade effect: The Snack Food 20 will have to demand truly responsible palm oil from their suppliers, and, in turn, palm oil suppliers like Cargill will have to demand that palm oil producers in Indonesia stop destroying rainforests, stop driving the orangutan to extinction, and stop trampling on human rights.
In the weeks ahead you can expect to hear a lot more from us about the ways you can plug in to The Last Stand of the Orangutan campaign both online and in the real world. We’re traveling across the US with our The Power Is In Your Palm Tour, visiting the hometowns of many of the Snack Food 20 companies and spreading the word about the critical problems with Conflict Palm Oil. We’re building a movement too loud to ignore.
Together, we will change the way palm oil is made and make sure no more orangutans are killed for snack foods. We have reached The Last Stand of the Orangutan, but it’s not too late. Stand with orangutans now by telling the Snack Food 20 to get Conflict Palm Oil out of their products.

		For the great red ape,
		Gemma Tillack Senior Agribusiness Campaigner @ProbWithPalmOil

Introducing the Snack Food 20:

Campbell Soup Company
ConAgra Foods Inc.
Dunkin Brands
General Mills, Inc.
Grupo Bimbo
H.J. Heinz Company
Hillshire Brands Company
Hormel Foods Corp.
Kellogg Company
Kraft Foods Group
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts
Mars, Inc.
Mondelez International, Inc.
Nestlé
Nissin Food Holdings
PepsiCo
The Hershey Company
The JM Smucker Company
Unilever

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Demand the snack food industry remove rainforest destruction from its products.

07/03/2013 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

www.ran.org

I stand with RAN in calling on the US snack food industry to help stop the destruction of Indonesia‘s rainforests for palm oil.

The rainforests of Indonesia are some of the most biodiverse forests in the world and home to a number of endangered species, like Sumatran orangutans, Sumatran tigers, pygmy elephants and rhinoceros. These rainforests continue to be destroyed to produce palm oil so it can be used in the manufacturing of food products, including in snack foods and sweets that are some of America’s favorite brand name products.

I would prefer my crackers, chocolate, cookies, peanut butter, and ice cream not to come with orangutan extinction. That is why I am standing with RAN in calling on snack food companies to protect Indonesia’s rainforests and all of the people and wildlife who depend on them by cutting palm oil tied to rainforest destruction and social conflict out of their supply chains.

We have reached the last stand for Sumatran orangutans, but it’s not too late to save them.

Many Americans are being made into unwitting accomplices in the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests—which provide crucial habitat for a number of endangered species like the Sumatran orangutan—because palm oil is in half of all the products on their neighborhood grocery store‘s shelves. In the months ahead, we’re going to tackle this problem at its source.

RAN has just sent letters to 20 snack food companies—makers of some of the most popular brand name products in America—alerting them to the rainforest destruction and orangutan extinction in their supply chains.

Stand with us: Sign our petition and demand the snack food industry remove rainforest destruction from its products.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Get the facts. Then share them

05/23/2013 Nativegrl77

Gemma Tillack, Rainforest Action Network

Help spread the word about palm oil’s destructive impact on Indonesia’s rainforests—and how we can stop it!

We’ve been writing to you about the deforestation in Indonesia caused by palm oil production for years now. But you might still be connected to the problem and not even know it.
Palm oil is in roughly half of all the products on your grocery store shelves, including many of the most popular snack foods. Cookies, crackers, ice cream, peanut butter, chocolate bars… You get the point. Palm oil is difficult to avoid, especially if you don’t even know what to look for.
How can you find out if palm oil is an ingredient in your favorite snack? Why are rainforests being cut down for palm oil in the first place? And what can you do about it? Everything you need to know is in this blog post, which you can easily share with your friends and family!
To stop a problem as large as the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests for palm oil, though, it’s not enough to arm ourselves with the facts. We need to spread the word as far and wide as possible. Everyone needs to know their connection to rainforest destruction and how they can be part of the solution.
Is your favorite snack food contributing to rainforest destruction? Get the facts. Then share them.
If you look for “palm oil” in the ingredients list of your favorite snack food, you may not find it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Palm oil often gets listed as something seemingly harmless (though generally with more syllables than real food), like Ascorbyl Palmitate or Palm Kernel Stearin .
We put together all the information you need about palm oil’s destructive impact on the rainforests of Indonesia, and outlined ways you can take action to break the link between America‘s favorite snack foods and rainforest destruction. Arm yourself—and your friends and family—with the facts now.