Doubling Down on WalMart – Ethical Free Falling

Corporations, Foundations, & State Funding Drive Much of the “Environmental Agenda”

Issues Targeted, Positions Taken, Priorities, & Tactics Determined by Funders, Not Science & Public Interest

The camel’s back is broken.

I had thought that whoring for WalMart – while calling your work promotion of  “sustainability” – was about as low as it could go.

(prior to that, I thought supporting a “mitigation deal” for a power line throughout th Delaware Watergap was as low as it could go.

(and prior to that, I thought taking money from Dupont to effectively mask their poisoning of Delware Bay was as low as it could go.

(and prior to that, I thought self interested lobbying for a commercial logging bill on state lands under the guise of “Forest Stewardship” was as low as it could go.

(And prior to that, acceptance of State funding influencing public positions on Barnegat Bay, Sandy response, off shore LNG.

(And prior to THAT ….. (I could go on for quite a while ).

But lets get back to the topic of this post.

Giving South Jersey Gas Company (SJG) a “sustainability” “green team” “Leadership” platform at a University at a time when they are ramming a controversial gas pipeline – designed to carry fracked gas to a new power plant that kills billions of aquatic organisms – through the Pinelands National Reserve in violation of the forest policies, is a pretty close second to WalMart, I must admit.

The concept of “sustainability” being promoted by WalMart and SJG is like the tobacco industry partnering with and funding the American Lung Assc.; or the liquor industry sponsoring AA; Dupont funding the American Cancer Society; Coca-Cola funding diabetes research; or McDonald’s funding the American Heart Association or weight watchers.

At some point, when there is a direct and fundamental contradiction between the stated mission of the non-profit (Sustainable NJ) and that of  the funder (WalMart); basic integrity dictates that there must be limits on who a group takes money from.

Partnering with, promoting, and taking funding from WalMart and South Jersey Gas destroys the credibility of any organization that allegedly promotes “sustainability” (whatever that means). It not only creates an appearance of ethical conflicts, it creates a substantive conflict.

This used to be called “corporate greenwashing”.

Unfortunately, in far too many NJ non-profits – whether spun as “sustainability” or “corporate stewardship”  or “mitigation” or “public-private partnerships” – it increasingly is Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) .

But, the camel’s back had borne the load of all the above mentioned abuses and still was not broken.

But then I read yesterday’s “Sustainable NJ” announcement of awards under their 2013 small grants program.

Actually, the doubling down on WalMart – this time with prominent disclosure of WalMart funding – was not the straw that broke the Camel’s back.

Nor was the $20,000 grant to Mendham – which just happens to be Governor Christie’s home town and one of NJ’s wealthiest towns (most of the SNJ grants go to very wealthy towns who can afford to fund this work).

English ivy invades "The Mount". Source appeared to be landscaping on homes on the perimeter of the park. Goat & herbicide eradication likely only temporary, no sustainable.

It was the $20,000 grant for “Eco-Goats” in Mt. Holly.

You see, Mt. Holly is the town that engaged in what a prominent Princeton attorney called “socio-economic cleansing under the guise of redevelopment”.

I went a little further and called that an outrageous racist abuse of eminent domain powers (for details and photos of that outrage, see: An American Crime: Bulldozing The Gardens – the title is a riff on Theodore Dreiser’s classic “An American Tragedy”).

Any community that would commit such acts should be shunned by all people of good faith, not awarded grants.

But Mt. Holly paid no price for the atrocity at The Gardens – instead they get a $20,000 grant to truck 60 goats into a park to eat  invasive vines (and then spray toxic chemical herbicides on the vegetation that remains, which I’m sure the neighbors with kids surrounding that park know nothing about).

And of, but of course, Sustainable NJ pays lip service to “environmental justice” (see their 2012 “Environmental Justice and Cumulative Impacts Workshop”.

They just fund wealthy white communities and ignore racist abuse like what went on at The Gardens.

But, the straw that really broke the camel’s back was the fact that, in an attempt to legitimize their corporate greenwashing, the cynical bastards at Sustainable NJ actually used good groups – who had no idea about any of these multiple abuses – as a “neutral Blue Ribbon selection committee”.

Specifically, this hit the cumulative impact threshold – this is what made my head explode and broke the camel’s back: (SNJ)

A total of 80 proposals from 18 New Jersey counties were reviewed and scored by a neutral Blue Ribbon selection committee composed of representatives from:  the Association of NJ Environmental Commissions (ANJEC), Verizon, NJ Future, the Citizens’ Campaign, the Center for Executive Leadership in Government at Rutgers University, Richard Stockton College of NJ, the New Jersey Highlands Council and GreenFaith.

I’ve contacted several of those groups to ask whether they were aware of the situation at The Gardens in reviewing the Mt. Holly proposal and whether they support their good names being used in association with WalMart, chemical herbicides, and racist eminent domain abuse.

I also reached out to Chris Daggett, head of the Dodge Foundation, for his response, closing my note with this question:

Dodge and other NJ Foundations have abandoned NJ groups for engaging in activities that Dodge does not support. Some, like myself, feel effectively blackballed in NJ.

So I ask, just what does an organization have to do in promoting corporate interests for Dodge to walk?

We’ll keep you posted on what we hear.

graffiti defaces and weeds overrun a small amphitheater at "The Mount" - park in Mt. Holly NJ - you don't need eco-goats to solve this, you need basic maintenance