Woah!
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- Published on Saturday, 06 June 2015 12:15
- Written by editor
A,
I started SumOfUs 4 years ago with the belief that when people come together, we can do extraordinary things.
The last 6 months have proven this to be true -- with you and our almost 6 million strong community, we’ve sent a strong message that people should always be put over profits.
And big corporations are hearing us loud and clear!
I want to share with you some of the extraordinary things we are doing together (and you’ll meet some of our amazing members along the way!):
Meet Wiebke Schroeder, together with superbees Eoin Dubsky and Lea Horak. Last Wednesday, they were buzzing around Bayer’s annual shareholder meeting, one of the huge multinationals behind bee-killing pesticides.
A local newspaper refused to print our ad protesting Bayer's pesticides. But thanks to funding from SumOfUs members and 11th-hour calls to other papers, we pulled together a full-page ad in a national German newspaper on the day of Bayer’s annual meeting -- shining a spotlight on its bee-killing actions. Wiebke delivered a speech and the SumOfUs petition to the Bayer board and shareholders, calling the company to quit making harmful pesticides. As long as the CEO sticks to his neonics (the bee-killing chemicals!), the fight to save the bees goes on.
But across the Atlantic, we’re making progress. After a long SumOfUs campaign Lowe's, one of the world’s largest home and garden retailers, announced it’s no longer going to sell bee-killing pesticides, joining its biggest competitor, Home Depot, in making this historic move.
Máxima Acuña Chaupe is a brave Peruvian woman who is defending her land from a giant mining corporation. When private security agents invaded her home trying to intimidate her into silence, almost 150,000 SumOfUs members stood with her. We called on Newmont Mining to leave her alone, and thousands of us donated to send two of Máxima’s allies from Peru directly to Newmont’s annual meeting. Then something pretty amazing happened -- thanks to this pressure, Newmont’s CEO has publicly committed to not proceed with the Conga mine without a license from communities.
We received a note from our Mirtha Vásquez, one of Maxima’s friends that travelled to the Newmont meeting. When told about the number of petition supporters, Maxima teared up and said:
"I would like to thank everyone from around the world who signed the petition in support of my case. In truth I am fighting with my family for something just, to defend my land, whatever it has cost me. For this I thank you because your support has given me the strength to continue fighting."
This is Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin. Tens of thousands of SumOfUs members have donated to his state’s fight against Monsanto and its allies in the Grocery Manufacturer's Association (GMA), which is suing the tiny, rural state of Vermont to block the labeling of GMOs. Governor Shumlin sent a letter to SumOfUs, thanking members for your donations. He echoed one of the key principles behind our campaign, that: “We have a right to know what’s in the food we buy.”
We’ve been taking our message directly to Monsanto too. SumOfUs turned up in force at the Monsanto shareholder meeting, and delivered Monsanto the award for the “Most Evil Corporation” as voted by SOU members, as well as 170,000 signatures supporting farmers and investors as they demanded Monsanto be transparent about the risks of GMOs.
We're also fighting rainforest destruction for palm oil. Just last week, our stampede of elephants (okay, SumOfUs members in costumes) gathered in front of the luxury Mandarin Oriental hotel in London and New York City to call for the hotel chain to end its role in rainforest destruction.
This is just latest one of our many actions to hold corporations accountable when they destroy rainforests, exploit workers, and endanger indigenous communities for palm oil. And they’re working! In the last few months KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and McDonald’s have committed to protect our rainforests from palm oil destruction.
The tactics that SumOfUs members have funded -- like the viral Doritos video that now has more than 20 million views globally -- are what get us in the door to talk to companies and persuade them to drop their damaging ways.
Thank you to the more than 600,000 people globally who have taken more than 1.3 million actions to help transform the palm oil industry!
Two years ago, many believed that stopping the secretive trade deals (the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP) would be impossible. But thanks to millions of SumOfUs members and organizations across the world, we are actually winning.
Everywhere that world leaders and trade negotiators have gone for their secret talks, from Hawaii to Brussels, we’ve been there too. We’ve teamed up with more than 400 partner organisations to form a European Union-wide, Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP, where a whopping 1.9 million of us have spoken out against the deal. We’ve funded newspaper and radio ads all over the world, and overwhelmed key decision-makers’ offices and email inboxes to stop the secret trade deals. And so far we’ve managed to delay “Fast Track” -- a bill that will speed the TPP through Congress without democratic oversight.
I want to thank you and the millions of SumOfUs members around the world for being a part of this extraordinary movement -- we wouldn’t be able to do it without each and every one of you. Each of us alone may never be able to match the money or the power of massive corporations, but when we stand together, we can do amazing things. I can’t wait to see what we do next.
Thank you for all that you do,
Taren and the rest of the team at SumOfUs
PS. As an independent people-powered movement, we don’t take money from governments or corporations.r0