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According to the Rainforest Action Network’s (RAN) site, they established the Protect-an-Acre program in 1993 to protect the world’s forests and the rights of their inhabitants by providing financial aid to traditionally under-funded organizations and communities in forest regions. The PAA program supports projects that protect forests through grassroots efforts led by local forest communities, Indigenous federations and non-governmental organizations.
The PAA program is an integral part of RAN’s commitment to halting further destruction of the world’s forests while also supporting the livelihoods and right to self-determination of those living in forest communities. PAA projects complement RAN’s efforts to end agribusiness expansion, oil exploration and old-growth logging in critical forest areas.
Supporting Protect-an-Acre
When you donate to Protect-an-Acre, you receive a certificate of recognition acknowledging your contribution, which includes a description of the specific projects you helped fund. More importantly, you get the satisfaction of knowing that you support projects which contribute to saving the world’s endangered forests and protecting the rights of their inhabitants.
Support RAN’s
Protect-an-Acre Program.
I went to the Better Business Bureau to check out their charity report, which they pass with flying colors, so here seems a good cause to give to.
Do something.
-Cara
Rainforest Action Network has 25,000 stickers, a database of household products containing the not-so-awesome palm oil (which they compiled with the help of people who love the rainforest) and a date: August 13.
Bring all three together by signing up for RAN’s August 13th Stick it to Palm Oil Day of Action.
Sign up online and you’ll get a Day of Action packet including “Warning: Product May Contain Rainforest Destruction” stickers and a step by step guide to taking part in the action. I hope the stickers are made from recycled stickers and not new paper, which comes from trees…I’m just saying.
Rainforest Action Network is also sending letters to every company that uses palm oil encouraging them to be responsible by joining forces with RAN to put pressure on agribusiness giants ADM, Bunge and Cargill to stop destroying rainforests for palm oil. They should send emails instead of letters, every piece of paper we can save is fresh…that’s right I said that too.
Help stop global warming, and support the rights of frontline communities across the world, by going here and doing what you can.
Stick it to ’em.
-Cara
Many of you have already joined in Rainforest Action Network’s new effort to target companies that use palm oil which destroys rainforest destruction in food, cosmetics and detergents.
Now we’re kicking this into high gear and I need you join in.
http://www.theproblemwithpalmoil.org/
On July 1, Brihannala Morgan, a Rainforest Agribusiness Campaigner, will start sending letters warning companies that using palm oil in their products just will not be tolerated.
Get your friends to join your “Palm Oil Inspection Team” and visit your supermarket. Check the candy, snack food and soap/detergents aisles and mark down the 12 or 13-digit UPC number of products that contain any of the following:
* palm oil
* palm kernel oil
* palm fruit oil
* palmitate
Download the form outlining what information you need to collect
Enter your UPC codes and score points for every palm oil product or alternative that you’re the first to register.
Fill out the online sleuthing form!
Keep adding more products as you find them. Those who collect the most products will be listed on the site.
The Rainforest Action Network’s next step will be to send letters to all the companies, both those that use palm oil and those that don’t, asking them to join them in putting pressure on ADM, Bunge, and Cargill to
supply a truly sustainable source of the oil.
July 1 is their deadline to identify companies that use palm oil and start the next phase of the campaign. Go to http://www.theproblemwithpalmoil.org/ and enter your products now.
Once RAN put these companies on notice, they’ll be following up with a targeted, hard-hitting campaign in the fall. Your help is the first step in making sure that they warn as many companies as possible that they are not going to stand for the destruction of rainforests and communities in our food and cosmetics, and to put pressure on ADM, Bunge, and Cargill to make real changes and create real, sustainable alternatives.
Visit http://www.theproblemwithpalmoil.org/ by July 1!
Get everyone into the act. The more sleuths they have, the sooner they’ll find all the palm oil products hiding in our supermarkets.
Tell your friends about the problem with palm oil
Or you could film your sleuthing like RAN did and upload your video to YouTube as a video response to their channel.
Keep it real!
-Cara
Growing up in North America the US was always the bad sibling and Canada the good one. You hear about how beautiful the land still is, how they are more open minded, a place where draft dodgers found their refuge from the evil American government, that Canada is not all about the insane capitalism worshiped in America, and how still in this day and age people don’t lock their front doors, so imagine my surprise when cruising the Rainforest Action Network I came upon this action alert, Help Free Political Prisoners in Canada!
Political Prisoners in…Canada? I don’t believe it! I decided to do some investigating, here’s what I found…
On March 17th, 2008, Chief Donny Morris and five other band council members (five men and one woman, KI councilor Cecilia Begg, who sits alone in the Thunder Bay District Jail. A jail which has had three aboriginal deaths in the last four years.) of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation were sentenced to six months in prison by Justice Patrick Smith of the Ontario Superior Court in Thunder Bay, for contempt of a court injunction which prohibits them from interfering with a mineral exploration program by Platinex Inc., where they have lived in the Boreal forest for over 5,000 years.
The KI6 and tribe believe that according to the Adhesions made in 1929 of Treaty 9 it is their right by law to defend their land from Platinex Inc. In 2005, Platinex, prepared to drill on land it had staked a claim pursuant to Ontario’s mining laws, land covered by Treaty 9. KI First Nation members protested on the site, preventing the drilling. Plantinex sued for damages and sought an injunctionto prevent further protests.
KI First Nation, then received an interim injunction. The injunction was granted on the condition that the parties negotiate toward an agreement that would allow Platinex to drill. Ontario joined as the “intermediary”, between the two parties, but no agreement was reached.
Justice Patrick Smith lifted the injunction last May and imposed an agreement, proposed by Platinex and Ontario. This proposal pretty much ordered KI First Nation members to allow Platinex onto their land to drill. When they did not submit, they were found in contempt of court and have been jailed ever since.
What they KI First Nation did was defend an agreement enforced by the Treaty No. 9 to share the land as equals and to protect their land in accordance to their spiritual beliefs. The results was they were inprisoned. Watch out Canada you’re sounding more and more like America here. I enjoy thinking right above me is a place, that if need be, I can run to escape the evils of the U.S.A….don’t ruin it for me now.
Below I listed the KI demands, which I discovered in an article on Canadian Dimension‘s website, by Matthew Brett, an anti-war activist and freelance journalist based in Montreal.
THE KI DEMANDS:
With consultation between the exiled Council members and the Council in Kitchenuhmaykoosib, we take a strong stand on the following:
1. No Parliamentarian, be it federal or provincial member, is allowed in the Homelands of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug;
2. No more free entry to Kitchenuhamaykoosib lands by Platinex or any other mining entity including First Nations mining companies;
3. Ongoing blockade will be more protected and secured in order to protect our KI Homelands;
4. Assembly of First Nations must abandon the partnership agreements with the mining industry in Canada;
5. All First Nation political territorial organizations in Ontario do not speak directly for or on behalf of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, but their support on the issue is welcome;
6. Ontario must respond to our proposal made with our brothers and sisters of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, to establish a joint panel on mining on First Nations lands.
These demands don’t seem so bad when you look at the history between Native Americans and North Americans, but I will not get into all of this here.
If you feel that injustice is being done, there are ways to get involved. First, the Rainforest Action Network has set up a letter to the Ontario government, where you just enter your information and click! Second, send this entry to everyone you know to educate people on what rights violation are occurring towards the KI First Nation. You can also email Premier McGuinty here.
I will leave you with a photo (and thought) I saw on the Free the KI6 site.
Amen.
-Cara
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Reason 62 from, 101 Reasons Why I Am Vegetarian:
In what is still the most comprehensive study of diet and life-style ever made, the China Study found that the consumption of relatively small amounts of animal protein is linked to chronic disease. The findings from this grand epidemiological study are especially compelling because they allowed meaningful comparisons between populations with similar genetic backgrounds, yet with nonhomogeneous diets. All together, the China Study provides the ultimate vegetarian vindication.
The Day After An Inconvenient Truth 
What Did You Say?