Archive for category: #nonprofitindustrialcomplex
What should we make of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard’s decision to transfer ownership of his company to a special trust and nonprofit dedicated to environmental values? It’s hard to say, given that the public hasn’t been given any details on the matter. Despite this information scarcity, people all over the world are applauding the decision, including the journalists who first reported it. When The New York Times published the exclusive on Wednesday, the deputy editor of their climate newsroom presented the story as a climate “scoop.” Nowhere in this tribute to Chouinard did anyone discuss Patagonia’s questionable “sustainability” initiatives in the past.
The New York Times exclusive, “Billionaire No More: Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company,” called Chouinard’s move “an unconventional spin on capitalism.” The 83-year-old was concerned, according to reporter David Gelles, that when he died the company might diverge from his environmental values. Now, Patagonia’s “socially responsible business” approach will be guaranteed by the Patagonia Purpose Trust, while a separate nonprofit organization will “use the company’s profits to combat climate change.”
In a world ravaged by the climate crisis, with one third of Pakistanis displaced by floods, the Amazon rain forest releasing more carbon dioxide than it absorbs, and carbon cowboys abusing indigenous rights to get their hands on lucrative carbon credits, reporting one privileged man’s decision to donate the wealth he accrued over decades by running a for-profit business as a climate “scoop” is already murky territory. More worrisome still, however, is that the story didn’t mention any of the scrutiny Patagonia’s past initiatives have recently come under for misleading consumers over sustainability claims.
In June, I exposed how a network of for-profit and nonprofit organizations at the heart of the fashion industry were using fake data to promote fossil-fuel based materials as sustainable. Patagonia, partnering with Walmart in 2009, created and funded the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which developed the dodgy database in question: the Higg Materials Sustainability Index. Critics of the Higg MSI claim it was created to greenwash fossil fuel manufacturing for the fashion industry, which depends on cheap synthetic fibers—allowing for massive profits, while masking the products’ true environmental costs. They all point to the fact that the Higg MSI rates polyester, a fiber derived from petroleum, as the most sustainable of all fibers. This is pretty convenient for companies that sell clothes, since polyester is also the cheapest fiber available.
How has fashion gotten away with claiming that cheap petroleum-based fibers are sustainable? Unlike their fossil fuel friends, the fashion industry appears to have gotten ahead of the sustainability problem first by acknowledging it, then by pumping tens of millions into developing their own gold standard for sustainability, creating a closed loop of shared stakeholders with nobody to hold them to account.
The world’s institutions—both brands and NGOs alike— welcomed the Higg MSI with open arms and little to no research. After partnering with the global NGO World Resources Institute, Higg Co., the for-profit selling the index, raised $50 million in funding in April this year, and its index full of dubious data became the accounting metric for New York’s Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act. The legislation has not yet passed, but H&M is now being sued in New York for using Higg data to fleece customers with premium prices for “sustainable” clothes.
A few days after my investigation was published at The Intercept, The New York Times published a similar article, How Fashion Giants Recast Plastic as Good for the Planet, in which they identified Patagonia’s role in leading the organizations that have essentially rebranded petroleum-based fibers. It’s odd not to mention this context when reporting Chouinard’s decision to give the company to the fight against climate change.
Patagonia has had both successes and failures in terms of sustainability. But instead of presenting those side by side, the piece paints both Chouinard and Patagonia as pioneers of sustainability and generosity. “By giving away the bulk of their assets during their lifetime, the Chouinards,” Gelles writes, “…have established themselves as among the most charitable families in the country.” Elsewhere the piece praises Patagonia as “an early adopter of everything from organic cotton to on-site child care,” and notes that Chouinard doesn’t own a computer and “wears raggedy old clothes, drives a beat up Subaru and splits his time between modest homes in Ventura and Jackson, Wyo.”
Celebrating Chouinard’s low-key lifestyle in one paragraph whilst trumpeting capitalism as the world’s solution to the climate crisis is questionable, and feeds into the rhetoric created by the fossil fuel industry which emphasizes individual change over systemic reform. Focusing on Chouinard’s personal attributes, rather than asking how the new trust will ensure prior mistakes are not repeated, skews the narrative. Likewise, quotes from Chouinard, saying he hopes his move promotes “a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” land poorly in a piece that ignores the economic system and neo-imperial globalisation that has allowed Americans like Chouinard to amass billions in the first place.
The message this kind of reporting sends is that billionaires could save us from ourselves if only more of them had the Patagonia spirit. Yet given the raw data on billionaires’ emissions, it’s clear that far more people need to be saved from billionaires than are saved by them. And the society as a whole needs to be saved from the grip their mythology has on our cultural narratives.
Yes, it is critically important to encourage billionaires to redistribute their wealth, but it is equally important to critique claims of authoritative magnanimity in the process. Failure to do so donates collective power to the select individuals who have enough power to wield, often at the expense of the vulnerable.
Who will run this trust? Will it have scientific experts on payroll? Which experts? Which data will be used to decide how to fight climate change? And what will the trust do in the face of overwhelming evidence that economic growth is driving environmental destruction? These are the kinds of questions we need to ask when hearing that Patagonia’s founder has created a trust he thinks will help the world. Without those questions, we’re left with only a PR piece promoting a capitalist future at the expense of us all—from frontline climate communities to factory workers hunched over polyester patterns, far from billionaire sight.
“Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” said Yvon Chouinard. “We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet.”
“Strong unions and worker contracts are a core pillar of the Green New Deal,” the two groups said. “We owe so much to the workers who made one of the most progressive agreements a reality.”
A complaint filed by Los Angeles attorney Walter Mosley outlines a scorching trail of fiduciary misdeeds by the Bowers Consulting Firm and Shalomyah Bowers.
The leadership from Black Lives Matter Grassroots announced that it has filed a lawsuit against its namesake (Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation).
Where and who has control of the multi-millions of donated dollars that poured into the coffers of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation and the administrative stewardship of the money — continues to raise questions of ethics and self-dealing.
“Black Lives Matter Grassroots is Black Lives Matter. We were founded in 2013 by dedicated activists and many of the same people are still doing the work.” said Dr. Melina Abdullah “Today, we are demanding the return of the resources that rightfully belong to the people and the movement.”
The complaint filed by Los Angeles attorney Walter Mosley outlines a scorching trail of fiduciary misdeeds by the Bowers Consulting Firm and Shalomyah Bowers.
The lawsuit says that Shalomyah Bowers, the board secretary of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the non-profit organization that acts as the movement’s administrative arm, used Black Lives Matter, or BLM, as his “personal piggy bank,” and accuses Bowers of “betray[ing] the public trust by self-dealing and breaching his fiduciary duties.” The complaint alleges that Bowers has taken control of Black Lives Matter’s financial accounts and social media accounts, shutting out its founders and most prominent organizers, like Melina Abdullah. It has been reported that Abdullah, a founder of BLM’s Los Angeles Chapter who also heads its grassroots wing, estimates that the Global Network Foundation’s financial accounts hold over $100 million.
The Global Network Foundation’s board of directors, Abdullah said, “are engaging in self-dealing, enriching themselves off of the backs of people who put their blood, sweat, and tears into this movement.” Reported CourtHouse News Service.
BLM Grassroots alleges BLM Global Network Foundation and Bowers engaged in unfair business practices, intentional misrepresentation, fraud, conversion, and unjust enrichment all violations of the California Business & Professional Code Section 17200.
In May, we reported the differences between the now three separate and autonomous organizations that share the same acronym “BLM” and the words, “Black Lives Matter” — but to be clear, BLM Global Network Foundation, BLM Political Action Committee, and BLM Grassroots are separate organizations.
After exhausting efforts to work with and resolve differences between the organizations, a new fight is ahead of the nine year old social justice movement.
The BLM Grassroots Lawsuit
The case filed in Los Angeles County Superior – Central District alleges “this is a case of a rogue administrator, a middleman, turned usurper, who was hired to collect donations and account for expenditures of Black Lives Matter movement, formally operating as Black Lives Matter Grassroots, Inc. (“BLM”).
The court filing goes further into the alleged misdealings of Bower and the BLM Global Network Foundation – attorney Walter Mosley alleges –
These donations were given based on the well-documented work of BLM and with the intent to further support the work of BLM.
BLM organized the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (“GNF”) as a matter of convenience to collect donations and fulfill certain administrative duties for BLM, However, after siphoning off more than $10,000,000 in “fees” from BLM donors. Mr. Bowers decided he could not let go of his personal piggy bank, when more than 300 movement leaders, as well as BLM Founders, insisted that he resign from GNF. Instead, he continued to betray the public trust by self-dealing and breaching his fiduciary duties. His actions have led GNF into multiple investigations by the Internal Revenue Service and various state attorney generals, blazing a path of irreparable harm to BLM in less than eighteen months.
While BLM leaders and movement workers were on the street risking their lives, Mr. Bowers was in his cushy offices devising a scheme of fraud and misrepresentation to break the implied-in-fact contract between donors and BLM. Instead of using the donations for its intended purpose, Mr. Bowers diverted these donations to his own coffers and intentionally took calculated steps to prevent those same resources from being used by BLM for on-the-ground movement work during the Buffalo Massacre and the Jayland Walker protests in Akron, Ohio. Additionally, when BLM confronted this interloper, Mr. Bowers arrogantly changed the passwords of the shared social media accounts, emails groups, website portals and other groups, website portals, and other organizing tools that BLM had built in its nearly ten-year existence. He then hired expensive high-powered lawyers and media consultants to bully the organizers and founders of BLM. As of the date of this lawsuit, Mr. Bowers continues to fraudulently raise money from unsuspecting donors passing himself off as the organization that is doing the work of BLM, padding his own pockets at that of his associates at the cost of BLM’s reputation.
According to the Bower’s Consulting Firm’s website, Bowers lists BLM and others as clients under the work section. The firm’s mission is to support progressive causes and campaigns that are tackling some of the biggest political challenges––domestic and international––facing society today.
An online request to speak with a representative of the Bowers Consulting Firm was not answered at the time of publishing.
Listen to Exclusive Audio from BLM Grassroots Press Conference
This story is developing and will update in the coming days.
Photos By @JamesFarrLive
Lots of nonprofits do important work — like, say, In These Times, which is a reader-supported 501(c)(3). But the “nonprofit-industrial complex” refers to the larger ecosystem of elite foundations and corporate influence-peddling.
Incite, a network of radical anti-state violence activists, convened a conference to detail this relationship in 2004, titled, “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.” Incite had been grant-funded by the Ford Foundation— funding Incite lost because of its support for Palestine.
As outlined at the conference, nonprofits that depend on corporate and foundation funding do so often to the detriment of their missions. Time and energy is spent laundering the reputation of corporate funders, for example, rather than on their stated purpose. Or, rather than building mass movements, talented organizers get funneled into staff and admin jobs just to keep the charity running. In other words, as was said at the conference, the nonprofit-industrial complex model encourages “social movements to model themselves after capitalist structures rather than to challenge them.”
The post Why People Say There’s a “Nonprofit Industrial Complex” appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
The Democratic Party leadership, along with the Liz Cheney wing of the Republican Party, seems intent on provoking a war with both Russia and China at the same time, all supposedly out of love for democracy and opposition to tyranny. The sidewalks of cities across the US are increasingly filled with the stench of the dead, who have passed away inside the tents in which they spent their last days. And you can still hear liberals wondering aloud why anyone would possibly vote for Trump again. More
The post The Progressive Industrial Complex and Our Fascist Future appeared first on CounterPunch.org.