In mid-March the Sierra Club took the astonishing action of excommunicating its largest group, the 12,000 member New York City Group. The reason: the group was too radical for the conservative leadership of the Club. It pushed to end commercial logging on the national forests, fiercely backed a bill (the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act) that would designate 16 million acres of wildlands in Montana and Idaho as wilderness, and opposed measures backed by some Sierra Club board members to impose tight controls on immigration. (For information on the struggle of the New York City Group click here: New York Sierra.) In return the Club has decommissioned the New York City group and has hired a lawyer named Holly Schadler to press this punitive action. Schadler, a former Sierra Club political operative, works for a Washington, DC firm called Perkins Coie. CounterPunch investigated the other clients of Perkins Coie and found the firm to be larded with some of the most vicious and noxious corporations in American, including arms companies, utilities, factory fishing fleets, chemical companies, waste haulers, and the nation’s biggest timber companies. This is what it has come to with this once admirable organization: it is hiring a firm of legal goons for corporate thugs to attack it’s own grassroots environmentalists. Here’s the list of clients, read it and weep.
?
Aviation/Defense
AlliedSignal Inc.
Alaska Airlines, Inc.
The Boeing Company
Bombardier, Inc.
Boullioun Aviation Services
Delta Air Lines, Inc.
Era Aviation, Inc.
Evergreen International Aviation, Inc.
Martin-Baker Aircraft Co.
Precision Airmotive Corp.
Primex Aerospace Company
Raytheon Aircraft Company
Turbomeca
Twin Commander Aircraft Corp.
Chemicals
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company
Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Inc.
Monsanto Company
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
Reichhold, Inc.
W.R. Grace
Fishing
Arctic Alaska Fisheries Corp.
Puget Sound Shellfish Growers
Mining/Waste
Battle Mountain Gold Co.
Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc.
The Doe Run Company (lead mining co.)
US Ecology (nuclear waste)
Forest and Paper Products
Boise Cascade
Cavenham Forest Industries
Fort James Corporation
Louisiana-Pacific Corporation
Plum Creek Timber Co. L.P.
Rayonier Inc.
TreeSource Industries, Inc.
Weyerhaeuser Company
Wood Heating Alliance
Oil, Gas and Coal
American Coke and Coal Chemicals Institute
B.P. Exploration (Alaska) Inc.
Burlington Resources Inc.
Meridian Oil
Petrosul International
Heavy Manufacturing
BFGoodrich
Birmingham Steel Corp.
Flow International Corp.
Genie Industries
General Motors Corp.
General Electric Co.
Intalco Aluminum Corp.
Jorgensen Forge
Toshiba
Utilities
The Ormat Companies
Puget Sound Energy
Wester Urban Water Coalition
