My blog on Treehugger.com in defense of direct action

So last week we did an action at Hewlett-Packard's headquarters in Palo Alto, CA, where we re-branded HP as "Hazardous Products" because of their continued delay in phasing toxic chemicals out of their products.



Surprisingly, we caught a decent amount of flak for it, especially from some fellow environmentalists. I think that's because they are mostly the types of "environmentalists" who sit around reading and writing blogs, maybe following some top enviros on Twitter, perhaps they have even changed their light bulbs to CFLs and drive a Prius. In other words — calling themselves "green" but not really doing shit other than what's easy for them to do.

I'm not saying people shouldn't do these sorts of things — on the contrary, every bit helps. But if you're not familiar with non-violent direct action (NVDA) tactics or environmental campaigning, you probably shouldn't be commenting harshly on what other folks are doing and letting the world know just how little you understand about campaigning.

Anyhoo, I wrote a little post on Treehugger, which had posted a poll asking if these types of non-violent direct actions constitute reasonable means of communication for adults. Fairly loaded question, but I was still surprised by the results, which initially were pretty negative about Greenpeace's tactics. Though of course in the end the poll results ended up very much in support of our action.

Okay, I'll save it. Check the post for more.