Laws of the Jungle
1) Don't Harm the Rain Forest 2) Don't Ignore the Rainforest Action
Network 3) Don't Underestimate Randy Hayes
By Steve Chapple
Special to The LATimes
August 8, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-citibank32aug08,1,3968174.story
<http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-citibank32aug08,1,3968174.story?coll=la-home-magazine>
It was a devastating attack ad. Over footage of a dying bird covered in
oil and rivers burning in chemical fires, actress Susan Sarandon states:
"Thousands are standing against Citigroup, the world's largest financer
of environmental destruction." It is preceded by Sarandon and fellow
actors Daryl Hannah and Ed Asner reading the names of Citibank credit
card holders, and then cutting the cards in half. Ali MacGraw snips a
card and then Sarandon's voice-over continues as giant trees fall to the
whine of chain saws: "And when you use a Citibank Card, you fund it
too." She cuts another card and adds: "Tell Citibank, 'Not with my
money.' " With his gravelly trademark solemnity, Asner concludes: "Stop
bankrolling bulldozers. Cut your card."
Sanford I. ("Sandy") Weill, the CEO (now chairman) of Citigroup--the
largest financial services institution in the world--watched the
30-second ad in April 2003. The Rainforest Action Network's campaign had
been building relentlessly for almost three years, and Weill knew the
conservation group's demands: an end to Citigroup's financing of illegal
logging anywhere in the world, no oil drilling in environmentally
sensitive "no-go" zones where fragile plants and animals might be
endangered and indigenous people displaced, and a phase-out of funding
for fossil fuels, which, in the network's view, contribute to global
warming.
Since Citigroup is a leading private funder of global mining, logging
and drilling, these were audacious demands with far-reaching
implications for how banks and multinational corporations do business in
a world of environmental concerns.
But the Rainforest Action Network had chalked up an impressive string of
victories since its founding in 1985 by Weill's nemesis, Randy Hayes.
The rowdy grass-roots organization had forced Burger King to cancel
contracts for "rain forest beef," or cattle raised on newly cleared
tropical rain forest, especially in Central America. It had induced
Occidental Petroleum and Shell to abandon oil pipelines in Colombia that
arguably could have destroyed Amazonian rain forests and displaced the
native U'wa people. In 1999, the group persuaded Home Depot, the largest
seller of wood products in the world, not to buy items manufactured from
old-growth trees unless the trees have been certified by the Forest
Stewardship Council. In 2003, the network persuaded Boise Cascade to
stop logging old-growth forests in Oregon, Canada, Chile and other
places around the globe.
"Whether you agree with his tactics or not, Randy has gotten companies
to live up to their environmental responsibilities," says Jim Brumm,
executive vice president of Mitsubishi, who duked it out with Hayes and
his group in the 1990s over Mitsubishi's use of old-growth forests for
product packaging.
The Boise campaign was particularly bitter, with the Rainforest Action
Network's tax-exempt status attacked and Boise's brand sullied by the
sight of protesters, including musicians such as Bonnie Raitt and John
Densmore being arrested on national television in front of the company's
Chicago offices. Perhaps most damaging to Boise's bottom line, the
network persuaded 400 retail customers, including Kinko's--one of the
largest consumers of paper in the country--to stop using Boise's
products until it abandoned old-growth trees. Such a chain of custody
now exists that it's possible to trace paper to the forests from which
the trees were cut.
These market campaigns enable "an end run around Washington," as
BusinessWeek has put it, during a political period when
"drill-at-full-speed" is the watch-phrase along the Potomac. According
to the Vancouver Sun: "With that one statement, Home Depot . . . did
more to change logging practices in [British Columbia] than 10 years of
environmental wars and decades of government regulations."
"The two things that Rainforest Action Network does best are kick
corporate ass and throw great parties," said actor-director Tim Robbins
upon receiving the group's 2003 World Rainforest Award.
And the life of this green party is its president, Randy "Hurricane" Hayes.
The streets-to-boardroom style came naturally to Hayes, the contentious
54-year-old son of a long-haul truck driver from Florida, with one
grandmother who was part Blackfoot and another grandmother who was part
Cherokee. Hayes moved in the '70s to San Francisco, presiding over a
party house on Jones Street that played host to the city's rock, writer
and environmental communities. He soon gravitated to the Earth Island
Institute circle of doers and thinkers around David Brower's table at
Enrico's, the North Beach bistro. Brower, who had helped save the Grand
Canyon from "dam-nation" during his tenure as the first executive
director of the Sierra Club, touted a two-edged motto: "Think Green."
The idea of rain forests--which once covered 12% of the earth's land
mass, serving as the lungs for the planet--was discussed at Enrico's,
and money from Brower's loose "lunch fund" helped seed the Rainforest
Action Network. As the pixilated Hayes improbably aged, he began to
think large and long. At a meeting of environmental leaders in Los
Angeles in 1992 he proposed a 500-year plan for the planet.
"If you say we need to solve smog and congestion in 20 years, it seems
understandably hopeless," Hayes explains today. "Fifty years, and people
are open; 75, and optimism returns. A 500-year plan clears a lot of air."
But the Citigroup fight was a monumental clash of cultures--ant versus
elephant, a $2-million-a-year nonprofit versus a mega-corporation with a
market value of more than $200 billion.
The Rainforest Action Network's timing was good, however. Citigroup was
in a bad streak: plummeting profits; investment banking scandals (for
which it would pay $300 million in fines); even the allegation that
Weill had finessed the entry of Citigroup stock analyst Jack Grubman's
twin boys into an exclusive Manhattan preschool in return for rating
AT&T, a Citigroup client, favorably. Citigroup did not need a rain
forest monkey on its back.
The Citigroup campaign was launched in 2000, but a key event occurred in
August 2002, when the Rainforest Action Network purchased a full-page ad
in the International Herald Tribune while Weill was visiting his
grandchildren in Europe. The headline blared: "Put a Face on Global
Warming and Forest Destruction." And there was Weill's gentle and
smiling face, framed beside George W. Bush and James Wolfensohn,
president of the World Bank.
Approaching retirement, Weill was concerned about his company's
reputation, and he was puzzled, if not chagrined, to be cast as an
environmental villain.
By early 2003, in response to the print portion of the Rainforest
campaign, about 20,000 credit cards had been cut, with some of the
plastic shards mailed to Weill and some to Hayes' group. Citibank's
retail branches had been disrupted by demonstrators who chained
themselves to entrances in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York
City. An enormous banner had been unfurled across from Citigroup's
Manhattan headquarters that read, in part: "Citi Ethically Bankrupt."
Weill was personally dogged by activists handing out "Wanted" leaflets,
from New York City to his home in Greenwich, Conn.
"My experience with bankers," says Hayes, "is that if you can sit down
with them and open their eyes to a few things they haven't thought
about, then they are often not personally antithetic to the message."
Hayes delivered his message to Weill at an April 3 lecture given by the
executive to several hundred business students at Cornell University.
Weill, class of '55, had donated more than $200 million to the
university. He was describing the upshot of Citibank's investment
banking scandals and speaking of the positive effects of globalization.
A young activist stood up and told Weill that many Cornell students were
bothered by what they saw as Citigroup's funding of destructive rain
forest projects and, luckily, the founder and president of the
Rainforest Action Network happened to be sitting beside her.
"Mr. Weill, meet Mr. Hayes," said the young woman to a chorus of
applause, laughter and boos.
"Well, have him stand up," Weill said.
"Thank you, Mr. Weill," Hayes said. "We both want to bring
responsibility to business and leave the world a better place than we
found it. And although you do not think the world is going to hell in a
handbasket, a fair number of people do. I'd like to work together with
you to bring environmental responsibility to Citigroup, and I'd also
like to invite you to join me in an academic debate on the subject."
"It's good to know there are people dedicating their lives to making the
world a better place," replied Weill, diplomatically. "I think the
environment is an important issue, and Citigroup is taking steps to
address it. We'll be taking more steps in the future, and we look
forward to working with your group and many others on an ongoing basis.
I don't think I have enough experience to join you in an academic debate
on this matter, but I look forward to working with you."
They were two mandarins dancing at arm's length.
Weill reflected on how embarrassed he had been to be reprimanded by his
grandkids over the ad in the International Herald Tribune. Hayes jumped
back up and said, "Well, I hope we can run another ad in the future
where we are both on the same page, working hand in hand to find a
solution to these problems."
Days later, the star-studded attack ad hit the airwaves.
On April 15, 2003, Citigroup was scheduled to hold its annual
shareholder meeting at Carnegie Hall. Michael Brune, executive director
of the Rainforest Action Network, had given notice that the group would
be there in force. Hours before the meeting, Citigroup executives and
the network agreed to start negotiations toward a permanent policy on
environmental standards. As an act of good faith, Citigroup agreed to
stop arranging financing for a pipeline project in Peru that threatened
the rain forest. The Rainforest Action Network agreed to temporarily
halt its campaign for three months.
Three months turn into eight, and there is progress, but still no
agreement. As the Christmas holidays approach, Hayes and Brune purr for
the Oakland airport in Hayes' hybrid Toyota Prius. They are off to Santa
Fe, the first in the group's annual round of high-donor parties, with
actress and card-snipper Ali MacGraw as the advertised draw.
Upon landing, Hayes relays a message to James Gollin, his board
chairman: "Hey, dude, I look forward to partying with you, drinking with
you, sharing a few Alka-Seltzers with you and, most of all, I'm looking
forward to your babe!" Though Hayes counts some of the more politically
correct humans in California as his friends, he has never been accused
of this himself.
At the Hennington Gallery, Hayes surveys the space, tequila in hand.
MacGraw, who has a home in the high desert here, arrives early, but says
she must leave soon for a yoga class. Someone comments on the verve with
which she scissored her Citibank Card in the attack ad.
"I've cut up a lot of credit cards in my time," she jokes.
"Randy called and asked me to do the ad," she says in a later phone
conversation. "The organization seems so less driven by rage than
possibility. It's so easy to read the paper and go, 'God, it's
hopeless,' yet with Randy and RAN, I know they will find a way to effect
change.
"Randy has a very deep quality of--he's very real. He's authentic, he's
humble, he's not the poster boy--I've only met him twice--but his spirit
is . . . ," she laughs, "infectious. If that ad was the nightmare to
make some real thinking happen, then bravo."
After a round of photos, MacGraw excuses herself. Twelve-year-old
tequilas are passed out like Coca-Colas. A man believed to be one of the
richest people in the country--an heir to a forest fortune,
coincidentally--is asked what he thinks of Hayes.
"Randy is . . . awesome," he says, speaking in a slow, measured voice.
"Change--real change--is like a supertanker. Randy goes straight to the
prow and turns the ship."
An investment banker who knows Weill says of Hayes: "Randy gets the job
done. I'm here. I'm having a good time. Understand that this is not on
the record."
Hayes makes a short speech.
"I hung out around the Southwest for 10 years," he says, "basically as
secretary and chauffeur to the Hopi elders, where I learned so much
about what long-term thinking is all about, the marriage of the cycles
of nature with appropriate technology. You can have a modern society
with the accouterments we enjoy without upsetting the balance of the
life-support systems of the planet, of Mother Earth. That, in the
briefest sense, is what RAN is all about."
In the middle of dinner, the bride from a wedding party in the next room
comes over, perhaps to tongue-lash Hayes about the racket. Instead, she
hands him an envelope. It's a check made out to his group. She wants to
start her marriage by doing the right thing, she says.
Brunch the next day is at Gollin's adobe. Burnt Mexican coffee laced
with cinnamon is ladled from a black pot on the stove, while Gollin
mixes a libation of the Brazilian liquor cachaça, thickened with mango,
tamarind and guava--all rain forest fruits. He calls the concoction a
"RANsack."
Gollin was a rare American working amid the tumult of the Tokyo stock
exchange in the '80s go-go years. "So you see," he explains, "RAN is not
anti-capitalist. Our board is cutting-edge capitalist. We just believe
in doing the right thing: 'Stop funding the bad stuff. Start funding the
good stuff' "--a Rainforest Action Network motto, as is "Follow the money."
But would Citigroup use an agreement to make itself look good at the
expense of Hayes' group--what he calls "green-washing?"
"It's not a cynic who thinks Citigroup, or Burger King, or Home Depot,
or Boise Cascade is using Rainforest Action. It's a realist," says
Hayes, relaxing in Gollin's hot tub. "In the case of Citi, it's too
early to say who is using whom. A lot of these things are the lesser of
two evils. There may not be the giant shift to an ecologically
sustainable society, but sometimes the best you can do is dramatically
reduce the harm being done to the earth and buy a little more time.
"That's what I see with Citi. The commitments we're getting on one level
are bold and wonderful, and on the other are really quite weak. But if
it dramatically halts deforestation in certain regions, like Indonesia,
then it is of consequence."
Two days later it's time for another fundraiser. At LAX, Hayes
compliments the Budget car rental people on making the Prius available
to socially conscious customers. On the freeway, Hayes dials Bonnie
Raitt, Woody Harrelson, John Densmore and Ed Asner to let them know he
is in town for the donor party that evening. Hayes is jokey, but careful
to outline the high points of the campaigns with Boise and Citigroup.
On the way to Pacific Palisades for the party, Hayes cites a string of
movies he believes made the rain forest real to millions of people: "At
Play in the Fields of the Lord," "Medicine Man," "The Emerald Forest"
and "FernGully: The Last Rainforest." One might expect tonight's event
to be a serious Hollywood hoedown. But the overflow crowd at the home of
movie producer Bill Benenson and his wife, Laurie, is mostly celeb-free
and, unlike Santa Fe, this gathering is squeaky serious--except for
Densmore's joking recollection of his contribution to the Boise campaign.
"I give RAN $150,000 and they get me arrested," he says.
The after-party is at Chez Jay's in Santa Monica. It's almost closing
time, but there's a distraction that Hayes can no longer tolerate. At
the bar, a young, tall, blond woman with a bare midriff keeps stretching
about, causing her black thong to show. She's with her boyfriend, who
looks like a roadie for a heavy-metal band.
Hayes, who is happily married, walks to the bar to pay his bill. "From
our table," he says to the woman, "I couldn't help but notice the way
your thong . . . ."
The woman lifts a full glass of chardonnay above Hayes' head. A wet and
inglorious finale to the evening seems forthcoming. Then Hayes hangs
back his head, opens his mouth and closes his eyes.
The woman stares at the top of his head, then pours the wine down his
throat. Hayes' party leaves before her boyfriend can demonstrate what he
thinks of the rain forest.
On a December morning, Hayes is in transition with a new part-time job:
sustainability director for the city of Oakland--a title he worries does
not fit elegantly on a business card.
"I haven't really called myself an environmentalist for a while now,"
Hayes explains. "I prefer to talk about sustainability from a whole
systems perspective: the three E's--ecology, economics and social
equity. We knew back in the late '60s that the most fundamental part of
building a sustainable society was how you powered it, with efficiency
and renewable energy, but it didn't happen. We didn't get the job done
in the '70s, or the '80s, or the '90s, either. So, let's do it."
The mayors of the world's 100 largest cities have been invited to San
Francisco for a green symposium in June 2005--the 60th anniversary of
the signing of the United Nations charter. Hayes hopes to green-up much
of Northern California with cost-effective light-rail systems, hydrogen
buses, tide-power generators under the Golden Gate Bridge, and solar
panels atop public schools and participating private businesses. In
1998, he was instrumental in raising about $200 million from two public
bond issues in San Francisco--the beginning, he believes, of a
self-sustaining network of eco-cities. He offers to show off the roof of
Moscone Center, a vast, black, gleaming surface of 5,700 solar panels,
one of the largest displays of solar power in the country.
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown has assigned Hayes the task of developing a
new green architectural design for the city's central police station.
Hayes is amused that someone who has been arrested as many times as he
has for civil disobedience will help oversee the retrofitting of police
headquarters.
Hayes heads for a strategy lunch in San Francisco's financial district.
He explains that there is a snag in the Citigroup negotiations. The
World Wildlife Fund wants the bank not to fund a big pipeline through a
national park in Turkey. Part test, part professional courtesy, Hayes'
group contemplates holding off on a final agreement with Citigroup until
a decision is made.
At the lunch meeting, Ilyse Hogue, director of the Rainforest Action
Network's Global Finance Campaign, recaps the negotiations. Weill came
only to the first meeting, at Citigroup's Manhattan offices, she says,
"to put his ownership on the process." He spoke of his own extensive
holdings in upstate New York, where the difference between old-growth
and secondary forests is evident. He joked to Michael Brune, "Smile."
Brune scowled harder.
"Citi hadn't made any agreements so far," Brune recalls. "I didn't want
to give them premature credit."
Citigroup officials (who declined to comment for this story) then flew
to San Francisco for the next round of meetings at Hayes' offices. These
quarters are homey, with rain forest plants everywhere, and they're
extensive, occupying two floors of a downtown office building. Now the
sessions got wonky. The two sides danced around the difference between
strict "no-go zones" to protect fragile species and pristine places, and
Citigroup's preferred wording, "high-caution zones." They settled on
"critical natural habitat." When the topic of climate change caused by
projects financed by Citigroup was introduced, the company's negotiators
grew angry. "I think they thought they had given away plenty already,"
Hogue says. Hayes recalls that Pamela Flaherty, Citigroup's senior vice
president of global community relations, began to shout.
"Don't you yell at me, and in my own office!" Brune replied.
"These negotiations are always tough," says Hogue, whose father is a
Citibank-affiliated stockbroker. "We were asking Citigroup to make some
pretty dramatic changes. These are emotional moments."
"Everybody walked out," Hayes recalls, chuckling. "I'm left sitting
there alone. After a while, they all came back."
On Jan. 22, in San Francisco and New York, an agreement was finally
announced. The Rainforest Action Network won its demand that Citigroup
cease the funding of illegal logging. Its financing of oil and gas
drilling will be run through an environmental litmus as well, watched
over by Hayes & Co., under threat of further demonstrations. The concept
of the strict "no-go zone" was weakened, labeled as a "high-caution
zone," where development might still be funded, any impacts to be
evaluated by Citigroup. As for reducing greenhouse emissions, Hayes'
group is not entirely satisfied, since Citigroup has not yet committed
to targets and guidelines.
Still, the Rainforest Action Network placed a full-page ad in the New
York Times thanking Citigroup. Pamela Flaherty sent a huge bouquet of
flowers to the Rainforest offices.
On another winter day, Hayes fires up his Prius and drives across the
Richmond Bridge, contemplating his group's next target. The answer is
always in the back of Hayes' mind: Follow the money.
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
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