Dahkota Franklin Kicking Bear Brown is a 15-year-old Miwok student who was named a 2013 Champion for Change by the Center for Native American Youth. In 2012, he founded the nonprofit NERDS (Native Education Raising Dedicated Students) to provide peer-to-peer tutoring and mentoring to Native students. His speech for the Center for American Progress on how stereotyped team mascots affect Native youth went viral earlier this year.

Green American/Tracy Fernandez Rysavy: From your personal experience as a student, how are Native stereotyped team mascots harming Native youth?

Dahkota Brown: They really are. Native American youth have the highest dropout rate, the lowest graduation rate, the highest suicide rate among any ethnicity. I honestly believe part of that can be linked to the use of Native mascots. Our teens see things like this fan who goes to all the Philadelphia football games, and when they play the Washington R-word team, he carries a spear with a fake head on it wearing a headdress. We see these people who seem to hate Indians, and it gives this false sense of who we are—they think we’re savage. And these teens lose their cultural identity and don’t feel they fit in anywhere. For me, it’s been a struggle.

I started my own nonprofit, NERDS, or Native Education Raising Dedicated Students. We’re a peer-to-peer tutoring and mentoring program, and a lot of what I hear is that these Native mascots really are offensive to students and do have an effect on their lives.

Green American/Tracy Fernandez Rysavy: Tell me more about NERDS. Why the name “NERDS”? 

Dahkota Brown: Back in 2012, when I was in 8th grade, I saw that some of my friends and cousins were on the verge of dropping out, so I encouraged them to come to our Indian peer education and tutoring group after school. We started out small, just a couple of students, and it was a place to hang out and be around good people. I got more and more students coming. Their grades started to improve, and they were feeling better and better about themselves. 

One who was in 7th grade at the time hadn’t turned in an English assignment all year, and [after participating in the group], he was the first one to turn in an essay. The teacher was so proud of him and read his essay out loud, and his friends were kind of making fun of him, calling him a nerd. He came to me, and I said, “That’s not so bad. Native people have been called a lot worse.” So we decided to use it as an acronym. 
NERDS is now trademarked. We’re a 501(c)3 nonprofit. We started a summer school program last year. We currently have seven chapters in northern California, and we’re trying to reach beyond that. I’ve had contact from Nevada, and I went to South Dakota a couple of months ago to the Rosebud reservation, because they were interested in starting NERDS clubs.

Green American/Tracy Fernandez Rysavy: In addition to removing these mascots, how can schools do better at lifting up Native American youth? 

Dahkota Brown: At my school, we have students who have dropped out because our faculty weren’t willing to work with Native students and our culture and lifestyle. [Schools could make a difference by] actually taking the time to sit down with Native students and talk to them about what they’re going through. Try to relate with us on a personal level about our culture. 

Our Native students, a lot of the time, are really quiet. We won’t speak up to teachers and don’t really have an advocate who can speak out on our behalf. So we can get pushed to the back of the classroom and ignored. 

My brother is going to be a senior at Stanford this year. He’s working on a program for teachers, and he’s testing it out pretty soon in my own district. It provides cultural competence training on how to work with Native students and be sensitive to our beliefs. Schools can e-mail him for more information at dahltonb@stanford.edu.

Brown is also willing to work with any school interested in starting up a NERDS chapter. Contact dahkota.brown@gmail.com. To support NERDS, visit gofundme.com/ansi50/.

When I called up Native American activist Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne & Hodulgee Muscogee) for our article, “The Shame of Stereotypes as Team Mascots,” I had no idea I was in for one of the most moving interviews I’ve ever conducted. I was quite familiar with her work on getting the Washington NFL football team to move away from using the R-word as its name and mascot: She’s the woman who organized the two high-profile cases that challenged the US Patent and Trademark Office to revoke the team’s patents on the basis that the R-word is “disparaging to Native Americans” (Harjo et al. v. Pro Football, Inc. and Blackhorse et al. v. Pro Football, Inc.)

But she is also a poet, writer, lecturer, curator, and policy advocate, who has helped Native Peoples protect sacred places and recover more than one million acres of land. She has developed key laws in five decades to promote and protect Native nations, including the act that established the National Museum of the American Indian. She served in the Carter administration, was principal author of the 1979 President’s Report to Congress on American Indian Religious Freedom, and was a member of the Obama ’08 and Obama ’12 Native American Policy Committee. And she has a breadth of important knowledge of Native American heritage and history that reaches across tribal nations.

After our fascinating two-hour conversation, I knew I had to share more of it than I could fit into the mascot article with our Green American readers. 

—Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, Green America editor-in-chief

Green American/Tracy Fernandez Rysavy: You’ve been working on getting the Washington football team and others like it to eliminate stereotyped names and mascots long before this issue started getting so much press. What drove your passion to start this work?

Suzan Shown Harjo: In 1963, a group was started in Oklahoma, where I’m from, called National Indian Youth Council (NIYC). The Council’s Oklahoma representative, Clyde Warrior, who is Ponca, was a college student who was well-known as a fancy dancer in the pow-wow circuit. He used his fame and organizing ability to call attention to Little Red, the long-time mascot of the University of Oklahoma. 

The mascot was a live person who put on what was supposed to be an Indian outfit and did what was supposed to be an Indian dance. Everyone called him “the dancing idiot.” It was always a white guy. 

But at one point, the administrators asked Native students to dress up as Little Red. Two did, but one went to a game in the outfit and didn’t dance at halftime. People started yelling, and it turned racially ugly really quickly. That was a huge lesson for everyone. 

NIYC had demonstrations on the University of Oklahoma campus and a sit-in in the chancellor’s office. All of the committees across campus, like the Women’s Committee, the Chicano Committee, and the Black Student Union, had endorsed getting rid of Little Red. That coalition of people of color and women was being replicated on other campuses [with stereotyped mascots], but OU led the way. NIYC also organized at Stanford, Dartmouth, Syracuse, Marquette.

Then, in 1970, the OU chancellor made the decision to drop the name and retire Little Red. That was the first mascot to fall in American sports. In ’72 and ’74, Native Peoples eliminated the Stanford and Dartmouth Indians. In ’76, Syracuse’s Saltine Warrior. 

In between, lots of elementary, middle, and high schools and colleges and universities were also dropping their stereotypical names and images. By our count, there were a little over 3,000 racial stereotypes across America when we started. Today there are just over 900. We collectively have eliminated over two-thirds of these stereotypes from the American sports scene. 

Each time we organized, we would bring up the Washington football team, saying, no matter where the rally was, “And the worst one is in Washington, DC, in the nation’s capital.” Because it seemed like the federal government was endorsing the R-word, and it was the national team calling us this.

When my husband and I moved to Washington at end of 1974, he was given tickets to a Washington football game. So we went. We’d been fans of the University of Oklahoma team, so we had a long history of going to games and averting our eyes from Little Red! 

At the game, someone said to the person sitting next to them, “I think they’re R-words,” using the name of the team. 

I said, “No, I’m Cheyenne and Muscogee, and he’s Muscogee.” 

Then someone else said a similar thing. Not to us, just about us. And then a person sitting next to us started tugging our hair, kind of petting it, and saying, “Look! Here’s this R-word hair.”

We had to get up and leave. That is the real effect of objectification, where you take away a person’s humanity and are just touching them in inappropriate ways. I would never, in a million years, sit next to someone and touch their hair. You just don’t do that.

I also hate the name because of its heinous origins. It reminds us of the bounty days, when bounty hunters would take in the bloody red skins of killed Indians as proof of an Indian kill. 

In the bounties, they would say “scalps,” but what they meant was genitalia. They were paid on a sliding scale—so much for a man, so much for a woman, so much for a child. The only way you’d know gender or age was from the genitalia.

[The bounty hunters] were doing things that hadn’t ever been done by Native people in wartime—beheadings and skinnings that were so unusual that in every place I’ve ever been in Indian Country, people talk about it. 

When I was working from 1967 and on repatriation issues—which means the return of dead relatives and sacred objects and cultural patrimony to Native tribes from educational institutions and federal agencies—the People, everywhere we went, talked about a history of fearing they would be skinned, people having a relative skinned, of coming upon trappers who had Indian skins. 

This is the kind of history that comes to mind for Native peoples about the R-word name. This is the worst word that we can be called in the English language. This is the N-word for us. There’s nothing even comparable that’s used for any other peoples.

Green American/Tracy: That quite powerfully contradicts the argument that Native Americans call themselves the R-word, so it’s okay to use it for the team.

Suzan: The first documented use of this word in the English language is of a white person who said an Indian had approached him and had used that word to describe Native people. Of course! It was a common word in English. Native people, especially those in the east, [where this usage occurred], would not have done that [in their own language], because Indians were getting skinned! 

In no Native language that I know does a person introduce themselves by their skin color. It just doesn’t happen. The closest is the Muscogee word Este-cat’e, which means “red person” (or blood relative). But it’s person (not a body part, like skin). 
There are others where a similar word means “relative”—as in establishing kinship with a real relative or with a person you’re not actually related to but with whom you want to get off on a good footing. 

It’s always red “person” or “man”. It’s not the color of your skin or any attribute. It’s who you are, your essence. You’re announcing your humanity.

Green American/Tracy: Another common argument is that the 
R-word name and others like it “honor” Native Americans. How do we respond to that?

Suzan: I often hear, “What about the [Dallas] Cowboys?” 
That’s a profession. Native people are not a profession. 
“What about the Fighting Irish?”
It’d be a different situation in Ireland. You don’t see those kinds of [team names] in Ireland. 

At Notre Dame at one point, the main football players were all Irish, so the Fighting Irish name is closer to self-identification, if you will. I still don’t think it’s right, but that’s up to them. Their name arose at a time when the Irish weren’t treated well and had all sorts of slurs used against them. They were the new immigrants who were being berated. 

Here’s what a name like the Fighting Irish breeds: Marquette played them in the 1990s and sent a person dressed as what was supposed to be a drunken leprechaun onto the field. Notre Dame demanded an apology. Leprechauns aren’t real, but they’re so closely 
associated with the Irish that it was meant as a slur.

Green American/Tracy: You’ve also said that these team names come from the efforts to de-culturalize Native American tribes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Suzan: These names arose from the federal Indian boarding schools where the Bureau of Indian Affairs was trying to de-tribalize and de-culturalize the Native peoples. So they were trying to create pan-Indian events and pan-Indian personae. 

At the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, [a model school for assimilating students into Euro-American culture], they created a plains Indian look with a headdress [for the school mascot], because the head of Carlisle, Richard Henry Pratt, had fought plains Indians under General Sheridan and George Armstrong Custer. 

This is how you had these names arise in schools, during the time when Native people were being confined to reservations. Indians were not being permitted to go to our sacred places and usual hunting, fishing, and gathering places; not permitted to visit other Indians; not permitted to ride ponies; not permitted to dance. These things were criminalized under the Civilization Regulations from 1880s, which were not withdrawn until 1930s. 

The Civilization Regulations outlawed the Sun Dance and traditional giveaway ceremonies for death and birth and marriage. They cut Native people off from the usual places where they got their buffalo, elk, salmon, and other high-protein foods, and confined them to reservations so they had to substitute flour, grains, sugar, rancid meats for this great diet. 

The estimate is that there were about 50 million in all of North America [before the Civilization Regulations]. By 1900, the count of Native people in the US was 250,000 people. That’s so low. 

It was out of this history—and while the Civilization Regs were still in force —that the name of the Washington team arose.

Green American/Tracy: The shocking thing is how little you hear about this in school. I think we’re taught that massacres of Native people like the one at Wounded Knee were isolated events.

Suzan: Every single Native nation had a Wounded Knee. At least one. Almost everyone had a Long Walk or a Trail of Tears.

The people who raised me raised me to do what I’m doing. Everyone said, “Don’t believe anything you read. Believe what you hear. Believe what people are saying, the people who know what has happened. Everyone has a piece of oral history, a piece of the way things really happened.”

The more I do research—and I’ve done a lot of it—the more I really delve into the written documents, the more I see the accuracy of Native American oral history and how the things that I was told about the Sand Creek Massacre and Washita and Little Bighorn are true. 

People tell me, “This happened to me. I saw this happen to this person who was related to us in this way, and she was killed.” 

You hear about very fine people who were just killed. If you grow up with this oral history—with an understanding of all the people we were deprived of, all the great minds or the good spirits or the good-hearted people, or knowledgable people, or the people who could really apply medicine...they were just gone in an instant by a bayonet wound or a gunshot, or they were left to die on the side of the road during those long walks, the trails of tears—you can’t hear this history being passed down without being affected by the sense of loss, by the sense of “what if”. 

All of these things come to mind when we’re mocked in public, and when we have these reminders of this horrible history right in our faces.

Green American/Tracy: Right, or the ones who say there are more important things to worry about.

Suzan: We’re the ones who are also doing those bigger things! But [changing stereotyped team names and mascots] is also one of the bigger things, because it’s foundational and atmospheric and contextual. It sends a signal to our kids that we’re not going to take this anymore. I don’t want my kids and grandkids asking me, “Why didn’t you try to do anything about it?” 

I answer to them. I answer to my elders, to the memory of my elders and what they experienced, and to the coming generations and the people of my own time. 
It’s always about educating people so they’ll understand what happened and try to do something in the modern time that means justice, no matter how big or small. That’s what we’re trying to do with our lawsuit. It won’t be all the justice that’s due, but it’ll be something. 

[The Washington football team mascot] is a symbol, and symbols are important. Symbols come out of attitudes and create attitudes and lead to actions. If people begin to understand that, then they understand the importance of these symbols and what it means to the people who are the target population.

Green American/Tracy: Do you think you’ll see that justice when it comes to the Washington team?

Suzan: I have no doubt that this name is going to change. I don’t know when. But I have no doubt it’ll happen.

Looking for thoughtful green gift ideas for the holidays but worried about holiday-related resource use? 

You’re right to be concerned—the US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the volume of US household trash increases by 25 percent, adding around one million tons of extra garbage. But it is possible to minimize holiday waste, embrace the spirit of giving and green, and make your loved ones smile.

Green America has a growing list of low-impact and DIY gift ideas. 
 

And if you want to find gifts that maximize recycling/upcycling and minimize waste, consider the green companies that made it into the list of top ten finalists for the Summer 2015 round of Green America’s People & Planet Award. Each specializes in recycling in some way.

Green America asked the owners of these green companies to share their best ideas for upcycled products to give as gifts (their own, or other companies’), and for any other tips for reducing waste during the holidays. 

Mr. Ellie Pooh

People & Planet winner Mr. Ellie Pooh produces 100-percent recycled paper products made from 50 percent post-consumer waste paper and 50 percent fiber reclaimed from elephant dung. Since an elephant’s diet is all vegetarian, the staggering 500 pounds of waste per day produced by the average elephant is basically raw cellulose, all of which can be cleaned (It doesn’t smell!) and processed into a linen-like paper.

As a member of the Fair Trade Federation, Mr. Ellie Pooh pays the artisan groups that make its paper a living wage, ensures safe and healthy working conditions, and pays workers a premium for improving their communities.

For the holidays, Karl Wald, owner of Mr. Ellie Pooh, recommends his line of Letter Press Cards, some of which are holiday-specific, and all of which are blank on the inside. Like Mr. Ellie Pooh’s notebooks, loose paper, envelopes, and journals, the cards are produced in Sri Lanka and then printed in the United States.

photo from lur apparel

lur apparel

When asked his advice for greening your holiday gift giving, Mark Heiman, founder of lur apparel,a recycled-fiber clothing company for women, says: “One word: upcycle!”

That’s just what lur apparel does with the cotton scraps it collects from commercial apparel and textile factories, and the post-consumer plastic bottles it recycles into polyester to produce the cotton-poly fabrics of the company’s tunics, dresses, and outerwear. It even recycles the scraps from its own production processes, making them into one of lur apparel’s signature products—the Aphrodite Rope Scarf.

Heiman also invites Green Americans to upcycle on their own for the holidays, crafting new items for loved ones just as lur apparel does on a business scale.

“Instead of going with all-new gifts and purchases these holidays, get crafty instead,” he says. “We all have so much DIY material to work with.”

Heiman suggests giving new life to old clothes by repurposing their fabric into new items—pot holders, pillows, rugs, or anything that can be sewn, stitched, or braided.

Recyclebank

People & Planet finalist Recyclebank, headquartered in New York City, runs a “rewards for recycling” program that partners with communities and brands and has boosted recycling rates in 300 communities across the US. Through the program, people earn points when they recycle, and they can trade those points for discounts from local and national retailers. If your community doesn’t offer a Recyclebank recycling program, you can still earn points through interactive features on the Recyclebank website.

Around the holidays (from November 12 to January 4), Recyclebank also runs an online store called One Twine, which donates five percent of its profits to a greener-schools program. The One Twine store offers a recycled-glass bird feeder; a reclaimed-wood iPad stand; recycled drinking glasses; and other upcycled, reclaimed, or creative-reuse products that make great gifts.

Temperpack 
People & Planet finalist Temperpack has developed a patent-pending plant-fiber insulation designed for e-commerce companies that ship food. The company’s “Jutebox” is made from 100-percent recycled jute plant fiber derived from burlap sacks used to transport coffee and cocoa beans, and can be composted with any other yard or food waste after use.

While the company doesn’t offer any consumer products for holiday giving, Temperpack co-founder Brian Powers reminds Green Americans to compost all organic holiday waste, and suggests that setting up a home compost garden for a friend or loved one can make an excellent holiday gift. 

photo from RockNSocks

Summer 2015 People & Planet Award winner RocknSocks offers 100 percent recycled socks for men and women, made from cotton scraps cast off by textile manufacturers.

RocknSocks 
RocknSocks is proud to be the first made-in-the-USA sock company that repurposes cotton scraps from textile manufacturing to make its products. The company offers an entirely recycled line of socks for men and women.

RocknSocks intends to use the $5,000 prize from winning the People & Planet Award to take its recycling mission to the next level; it will begin recycling its own damaged or returned socks into a line of “sock-creature” toys.

For holiday giving, founder Misty Reilly recommends RocknSocks’ “Elsa Knee Highs,” a unisex line of knee-high socks available in patterns ranging “from classic to psychedelic.”

Reilly also advises Green Americans to look for products from artisans in their local areas who make new clothing out of old clothes. One of Reilly’s favorites in her local community is San Francisco’s Miranda Caroligne, who makes new sweaters, dresses, shrugs, and skirts out of discarded sweaters.

TerraCycle 
Finally, for both recycled gift ideas and for recycling waste that you can’t avoid over the holidays, consider People & Planet winner TerraCycle. TerraCycle develops and runs innovative, free consumer recycling programs for hard-to-recycle waste like baby-food pouches, CLIF Bar wrappers, toothbrushes, make-up containers, e-waste, and more. Under the “Send Your Waste” tab on the TerraCycle website, visitors can purchase a “Zero Waste Box” that will facilitate recycling all categories of waste, including any holiday garbage like wrapping paper.

On both the TerraCycle website and their associated Etsy site, you can find recycled products like “monogram” wine-cork sticky-note boards (shaped like capital letters), wallets made from retired mailbags, and coasters made from circuit boards.

Still, TerraCycle’s Colleen Duncan points out that to reduce waste, there are plenty of options for less-wasteful gifts: “If you’re looking to give a gift that doesn’t involve packaging, for kids, season passes to an amusement park or lessons in their favorite hobby are non-material gifts they’ll enjoy for longer than the latest highly packaged toy.”

In this new Trump era of deregulation, it’s clear the government isn’t going to look out for the common good or for future generations when it deals with corporations. So responsible shareholders are picking up the slack, standing up to Corporate America on behalf of people and the planet.

In fact, they’ve been using their economic clout to pressure major companies to be more responsible since the 1970s, when they issued the first demands that companies pull out of South Africa to protest the country’s racist apartheid regime. 

One of their main weapons is the shareholder resolution, or a 500-word formal request to corporate management. Any shareholder who owns at least $2,000 in company stock for a year or more may put forth a resolution, although the strongest resolutions come from shareholders in coalition, including institutional investors. 

These resolutions appear on a company’s annual proxy ballot, which all shareholders may vote on by mail or in person at the company’s annual meeting.

“The democratic aspect of the US system, which allows an investor who has only $2,000 worth of the company to force a dialogue with management through shareholder resolutions, is phenomenal,” says Amy Domini, CEO of Domini Social Investments. “As a shareholder, you get a unique kind of access to the people behind the corporation.”

Owning just one share of stock gives you the right to vote on shareholder resolutions—making you a shareholder activist. 

The votes aren’t binding, but they do send a powerful message that a company’s stockholders—who are also its customers—want change. 

Investor activists have filed 430 shareholder resolutions related to social and environmental responsibility in 2017, according to the 2017 Proxy Preview report (see box, p. 22) from As You Sow, the Sustainable Investments Institute, and Proxy Impact. Many votes were still pending as this guide went to press.

Shareholders as Activists

Often, major shareholders or shareholder coalitions will first try dialoguing with a company behind the scenes about their concerns, so a request may never go any farther if the company takes action. If dialogues aren’t successful, shareholders may then resort to crafting a resolution. 

If you notice that a particular resolution has been “withdrawn,” that means the company likely agreed behind the scenes to the shareholders’ request. However, in some cases, it may mean that the company successfully filed a “no-action request” with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to have the proposal excluded from the proxy ballot.

Interestingly, SRI resolutions don’t have to win a majority vote to make companies take notice—social and environmental resolutions only reached an average high vote of 20.5 percent in 2016. 

“When we file a shareholder proposal, we don’t expect huge numbers in any given year,” says Pat Miguel Tomaino, director of socially responsible investing at Zevin Asset Management. “Often, a proposal getting a lower percentage of the vote is sufficient to put an emerging issue on the radar of a ... board. We can point to the fact that, let’s say, 16 percent of shareholders view an issue as a material concern.” 

To keep popping up on shareholder ballots year after year—and spurring shareholder discussion and potentially negative publicity for the company—a resolution only needs to earn three percent of the vote its first year on the ballot, six percent the second year, and ten percent thereafter.

“This filing and refiling of resolutions keeps key issues of concern in front of management year after year and doesn’t require majority support to spur change,” says Fran Teplitz, Green America’s executive co-director. 

2017 Victories & Resolutions to Watch

Climate change 

In spite of Washington, the business community seems to be on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and commit to renewable energy—including “a majority” of Fortune 100 companies, says Michael Passoff, CEO of Proxy Impact. 

“Part of this is due to the growing recognition that global warming demands immediate action,” he says. “And part of this is just realizing the financial benefits of being climate-friendly. The Carbon Disclosure Project found that four of five companies earn a higher return on carbon reduction investments than in their overall corporate capital investments, and energy-efficiency investments earned an average 196 percent return on investment.”

For those companies that aren’t climate change leaders, shareholders are putting on the pressure. In 2017, investors have filed more than 80 climate-change proposals. Many ask companies to report on the impacts of climate change to the company bottom lines and their strategies for coping. Others request companies set targets to reduce methane emissions, set goals for and report on renewable energy use, and more. 

Ceres is coordinating the majority of climate-related proposals at oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil and Hess, as well as utilities like Dominion Resources and Xcel Energy. And investors filed ten resolutions asking other companies like UPS, CVS, PepsiCo, Lowe’s and SuperValu to report on or set renewable-energy goals.

So far this season, signs point to a sea change in the amount of shareholder pressure companies are getting on this issue. As Trump moved to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Exxon shareholders cast an unprecedented vote of 62 percent in favor of a resolution asking the company to report on the long-term portfolio risks of its climate-change policies and technological advances. A similar proposal at Exxon last year earned 38 percent of the vote. 

Joining shareholder activists were conventional large-scale investors Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard, which have historically voted against climate resolutions. Blackrock, along with JPMorganChase, had earlier this year agreed to revisit its approach to climate-related shareholder resolutions after dialogues with Zevin Asset Management, according to Tomaino. Zevin was also a co-filer on the Exxon proposal.

“[The Exxon vote] is a clear signal from the capital markets—investors big and small, sustainable and very, very mainstream—that climate risk is a financial risk, no matter what the US does on the policy front. And that we need to see the biggest emitters, folks with most climate risk, acting on climate risk now,” he says. “This is a clear statement from shareholders that Exxon’s previous action and analysis on climate hasn’t been enough.”
Climate-related shareholder resolutions also garnered record support at other companies. A proposal at Dominion Resources earned 47.8 percent, one at Duke Energy earned 46.4 percent, and one at DTE Energy earned 45 percent.   

Recycling 

Led by As You Sow, investors are once again asking several companies to adopt comprehensive recycling policies. A 2017 report from As You Sow calls for the replacement of polystyrene packaging as it’s not recyclable, is a possible human carcinogen, and is clogging up ocean waters and choking wildlife. While the government isn’t taking action on this toxic plastic, 15 major brands—including Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Dow Chemical, Danone, Mars, PepsiCo, and Procter & Gamble—have endorsed the report.

Meanwhile, As You Sow is the lead filer on resolutions asking laggards Amazon, McDonald’s, and Target to phase out polystyrene packaging, and it’s also filed proposals at Kroger, Kraft Heinz, and Mondelez requesting information on their use of non-recyclable packaging.

The resolutions at Amazon and Target were withdrawn after both companies agreed to address the issue. 
The polystyrene resolution at McDonald’s earned 32 percent support. The packaging resolution earned 13 percent of the vote at Kraft and 27 percent at Mondelez. It’s still pending at Kroger as of press-time. All of these votes are more than enough to guarantee the resolutions will return on next year’s proxy ballot. 

Equal Pay 

In March, President Trump signed an executive order rolling back protections for women in the workplace. The order revoked President Obama’s 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order, which ensured that federal contractors complied with 14 labor and civil rights laws—including rules mandating paycheck transparency.

Meanwhile, shareholders are pressing companies to close the gender wage gap. Thanks in large part to investor pressure, more than 100 companies have signed the Obama administration’s White House Equal Pay Pledge. And seven of the nine tech companies that had equal pay shareholder resolutions on their ballots in 2016—including Apple, Intel, Expedia, Amazon, Microsoft, and eBay—did not see similar resolutions on this year’s ballots, as they have made commitments to publicly disclose and close their gender-based wage gaps.

Pax World is filing equal pay resolutions with several companies. So far this season, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon, Verizon, AT&T, and Qualcomm have agreed to “enhance their pay equity disclosure practices.”
A resolution from Zevin  asked Colgate-Palmolive and at TJX to identify and reduce pay inequities based on race, gender, or ethnicity. Zevin withdrew the resolution at Colgate when it agreed to take “material steps in the right direction.” The TJX resolution earned 16 percent of the vote and will be back next year.  

Diversity 

As the White House continues to hire a preponderance of white men in key government positions, shareholders are zeroing in on diversity issues.

Trillium Asset Management is the key filer in most of the 12 proposals filed asking companies like AFLAC, T.Rowe Price Group, Visa, and Amazon to report on diversity and Affirmative-Action efforts.

After being pressed on diversity issues for years by shareholders, 150 companies had joined the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion as this guide went to press, committing to fostering more open discussions about race and gender in the workplace. 

LGBTQ rights 

Shareholders have a long history of pushing for LGBTQ anti-discrimination. Prior to last year’s election, many, including Heidi Walsh of the Sustainable Investments Institute, thought that battle was largely won, as a majority of S&P 500 companies have LGBTQ-friendly policies. 
“Alas, not so fast. We’ve seen some worrying trends,” says Walsh. “This year, we saw ... the transgender discrimination law in North Carolina. And disquieting questions have arisen about how companies will respond to a slate of ‘religious liberty laws’ that are starting to crop up around the country.”
Religious liberty laws would make it legal to discriminate against the LGBTQ community for “religious reasons.” 
Walden Asset Management, Trillium Asset Management, and NorthStar Asset Management have separately filed nine resolutions asking companies to adopt gender identity and sexual orientation anti-bias policies. So far this year, Dentsply, EOG, and Verisk Analysis, and Johnson Outdoors have agreed to update their LGBTQ anti-discrimination policies. 

In addition, “investors, coordinated by Trillium and the New York City Comptroller, called on North Carolina state officials to reject their state’s current wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation,” according to Proxy Preview. A similar effort about pending Texas legislation is in the works. 

Since early January, a wave of anonymous bomb threats against Jewish community centers, day schools, synagogues, and other Jewish-affiliated buildings has swept across the country, from Albuquerque to Chicago to Birmingham. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reports that more than half of all US states and one Canadian province have experienced nearly 150 bomb threats since the year began.

As of March 9th, the Trump administration has yet to meaningfully respond, despite all 100 US Senators sending an open letter to Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and FBI Director James Comey two days earlier.

“We write to underscore the need for swift action,” the lawmakers wrote. “… We are concerned that the number of incidents is accelerating, and failure to address and deter these threats will place innocent people at risk and threaten the financial viability of JCCs [Jewish community centers], many of which are institutions in their communities.”

In addition, three Jewish cemeterieshave been vandalized in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Ft. Wayne, ID, since the beginning of the year. And hate crimes against Muslim communities continue to rise as well, with numbers surging 67 percent from 2014 to 2015, and rising another 7 percent the following year, according to the FBI.

The FBI arrested a St. Louis man in early March whom they say is connected to nine threats, including eight against Jewish institutions and one against the ADL.

The president did condemn the bomb threats, as well as the shooting of two Indian immigrant engineers in Kansas City, in his February 28th address to Congress. However, earlier that day, he’d suggested to state Attorneys General that the threats might have been orchestrated “to make others look bad,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Acts of violence against Muslims and Jews will only make us stronger and bring us together.” — Rabbi Yosef Goldman

“To cast doubt on the authenticity of anti-Semitic hate crimes in America constitutes anti-Semitism in itself, and that’s something none of us ever dreamed would disgrace our nation from the White House,” Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, said in a statement about Trump’s remark.

In the face of White House inaction, Jews and Muslims across the country are reaching out to each other to offer support and aid in the wake of increased hate incidents and crimes.

United Against Hate 

After vandals toppled more than 170 headstones at the Jewish Chesed Shel Emeth cemetery in St. Louis the weekend of February 18th and 19th, Muslim-Americans Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-Messidi knew they had to act.

“While these senseless acts have filled us with sorrow, we reflect on the message of unity, tolerance, and mutual protection found in the Constitution of Medina: an historic social contract between the Medinan Jews and the first Muslim community,” the two wrote in a joint statement. “We are also inspired by the example of our Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, who stood up to pay respects for a passing Jewish funeral procession. When questioned on why he stood for a Jewish funeral, he responded, ‘Is it not a human soul?’”

Sarsour is the cofounder and CEO of MPower Change, a Muslim organization working on social and economic justice for all, and she’s one of the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington. El-Messidi serves as director of Celebrate Mercy, a nonprofit promoting a better understanding of the Prophet Muhammad. The two set up a crowdsource fund on LaunchGood.com, asking for monetary support to repair the headstones at Chesed Shel Emeth.

Just a few weeks later, on March 5th, vandals struck at the Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery in Philadelphia, toppling nearly 100 headstones. Sarsour and El-Messidi added a request for support for the second cemetery to their LaunchGood fundraising page. 

Coincidentially, Mount Carmel is only a few miles from El-Messidi’s home, so he drove to the cemetery to see how he could help. There, he found several fellow Muslims side by side with local Jews and Christians, working together to repair the desecrated stones.

A local rabbi, Yosef Goldman, was at the cemetery as well, and he was also struck by the spirit of fellowship and cooperation between the two communities.

“We’re turning upright the stones that are light enough for us to do so. And I’m feeling that the faith community in the US is strong,” he wrote in a public statement on Facebook. “A caretaker for a nearby Quaker cemetery has been here for hours, and Muslim and Christian friends and colleagues are reaching out. Acts of violence against Muslim and Jews will only make us stronger and bring us together. #sacredresistance #lovetrumpshate”

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that several Muslim military veterans have posted public offers on Twitter to stand guard over Jewish cemeteries and synagogues in several US cities to protect them from vandals and arsonists.

Delivering Chai 

Jews across the US are showing up for their Muslim neighbors in the face of hate incidents and hate crimes as well, says Rabbi Goldman.

“We have shown up in force to rallies in support of immigrants and refugees, and congregations around the country are adopting refugee families and becoming sanctuary synagogues,” he said in a sermon he delivered at the Temple Beth Zion Beth Israel on March 4th, which he shared with Green America. “Jews have shown up at Muslim community centers and mosques in solidarity with our Muslim neighbors, here in Philadelphia and throughout America. We know what it’s like to be on the wrong side of immigration policies and of religious discrimination. And so we’re showing up. And it’s making a difference.”

One particularly moving story of Jews making a difference for Muslim victims of hate crimes comes out of Tampa, FL. Late at night on February 24th, a small fire broke out in the Daarus Salaam mosque. Firefighters later ruled that the official cause was arson.

Although there was only a small amount of fire damage, the mosque’s main prayer hall sustained significant water damage after the blaze triggered the mosque’s sprinkler system. Daarus Salaam has been forced to hold prayer services in a nearby building while the mosque undergoes repairs and law enforcement investigates the arson.

Shortly after the fire, mosque member Adeel Karim set up a crowdsource page at LaunchGood.com to raise funds for the mosque, particularly so it can “continue to promote interfaith events and dialog with our neighbors.”

“This community has held several events for outreach, and the money will double down our efforts to ensure love, empathy, and compassion are instilled,” he wrote on the page. Though Karim’s LaunchGood campaign only had a goal of raising $40,000, the site brought in over $60,000 in less than a week, and it had reached nearly $80,000 by March 9th.

But Karim noticed something odd about the donations.

“I couldn’t understand why people were donating in what seemed like weird amounts to the cause,” Karim wrote on Facebook. “There are sums of 18, 36, 72 dollars, etc. Then I figured out after clicking on the names Avi, Cohen, Goldstein, Rubin, Fisher … Jews donate in multiples of 18 as a form of what is called chai. It wishes the recipient a long life. #chaidelivered”

Karim said that the local Jewish community has shown up “in force” to support the mosque’s worshippers.

Mosque members told Tampa’s WFLA News that they’ve received hundreds of e-mails and text messages of support.

And Jews, Christians, and others attended a solidarity gathering in front of the mosque on February 24th. “When I see a rabbi or I see a priest here, it makes me feel so good. So proud,” mosque member Mahfoud Rabbani told WFLA at the gathering. “Cause … this is what this country is about.”

The tragedy happening in Flint, MI, right now (see People of Color Are on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis) may have finally shone a light on environmental injustice in a way that hasn’t happened in the past. But it’s important to understand that environmental racism, including the climate racism we’ve discussed in this issue, does not begin and end with Flint.

These are not accidents. Communities of color have been targeted for decades by toxic, polluting, climate-warming facilities and are being left out of basic government protections against global warming’s worst effects and more. Purposefully. Willfully.

In fact, the same communities are being targeted multiple times. Flint itself is home to a wood-burning power plant that releases lead and other pollutants, as well as three hazardous waste sites, all near primarily Black communities.

In Perry County, AL, resident Esther Calhoun movingly explains her community’s situation in an article for the Associated Press:

My family has lived in Uniontown, Alabama, for generations. My daddy and granddaddy were sharecroppers who grew cotton, corn, and okra. The people here, mostly African-American like me, have strong ties to the land. They are proud of this piece of the country. At least they used to be. That was before Arrowhead Land ll turned Uniontown into a dumping ground for the eastern half of the nation, before Arrowhead received permission to take in tons of toxic coal ash from the disastrous 2008 coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee. The toxic heavy metals in coal ash arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, selenium, and thallium have been linked to cancer and other illnesses. Children are experiencing nosebleeds, headaches, and breathing problems.

It’s not an isolated incident. Dr. Robert D. Bullard and Dr. Beverly Wright have released several studies showing that communities of color that receive one toxic facility often end up with a cluster a fact that Calhoun confirms, saying Uniontown also has a prison, a catfish-processing plant, and other polluters within its borders. Why did Uniontown become a dumping ground for the eastern half of the country? she asks. No one thought that this poor community would fight back or that anyone would listen to us.

But they are fighting back, with a civil rights lawsuit against the landfill and the EPA. This issue is dedicated to them and all the courageous people who battle these injustices on a daily basis. Join us in pledging to do all we can to stop climate and environmental and our climate justice resources for a place to start.

The US Senate votes against a Congressional Review Act (CRA) measure that would have eliminated Bureau of Land Management’s regulations to limit methane emissions from oil and gas operations on public lands.

Green America's individual and business members spoke out strongly in favor of preserving the rule.  We also mobilized businesses and individuals to support the original rulemaking in 2016. 

People & Planet Award for Green Businesses

Since 2012, our People & Planet Award has recognized outstanding small businesses with deep commitments to social justice and environmental sustainability. This project has been made possible thanks to a special donor committed to giving a boost to innovative entrepreneurs. The People & Planet Award has bestowed over $300,000 on green businesses since its inception. We are pleased to recognize the winners in the final award cycle. 

Following nominations by the public, our top five business nominees for the Award each quarter are determined by our volunteer panel of judges: Justin Conway, Calvert Impact Capital; Tess O’Brien, Clean Power Perks; Erlene Howard, Collective Resource, Inc.; Dale Luckwitz, Happsy.com; Jonathan Reinbold, Organic Valley; Martin Wolf, Seventh Generation; and Scott Kitson, Beth Porter and Fran Teplitz of Green America.

Thank you to all who have nominated and voted for businesses to win the award over the past several years, and thank you to all the great businesses innovating and pioneering to be sustainable and just for all. 

As a shareholder, you have a unique and important role to vote on company resolutions that let management know you want corporate practices that support people and the planet.

Mission-Aligned Business Partnerships

When you make a purchase with the following members of our Green Business Network™ your purchase will support Green America's programs. Check out their offers and know that your dollars are supporting both a responsible business and Green America.

Discover PureLivingSpace.com, your trusted guide for healthy, non-toxic home and personal care products. Tired of worrying about making the best choices for you and your family? We’ve got you covered. We sell only fully-vetted and certified water filters, air purifiers, organic bedding, and safe personal care and cleaning products. Everything you need for a toxic-free home. Free shipping on orders over $50. Plus, save 10% as a Green America member using discount code PURE.

Green America teamed up with Thrive Market to make it even easier to find deep green products from Green America’s certified Green Business Members at a discount. And, when you join Thrive Market, you’ll directly support Green America’s work to create a green economy. Thrive Market is an online community and market that brings you organic, fair trade, vegan, non-GMO products at wholesale prices, saving you 25-50% on natural and healthy products, delivered right to your door.

Green America members can put their power bill to work for good with CleanChoice Energy, which provides 100% clean energy from wind and solar farms. Switching is fast & easy, and your utility will still maintain the wires, prepare your bill and provide reliable service. The big change is that you’ll be supporting 100% renewable energy instead of supplying your home with polluting fossil fuels like coal & fracked gas or nuclear power. And CleanChoice Energy donates to support groups like Green America. »

Green America has partnered with EnergySage to provide a simple way to go solar. The EnergySage Marketplace gets you quotes online from multiple, pre-screened local installers and helps you compare offers in an apples-to-apples format so you get the best deal. »

TheGreenOffice.com features the widest selection of environmentally-friendly office products on the market, all ranked by greenness. And where green solutions won’t do or don’t exist, we offer conventional alternatives for true one-stop shopping. Our 110% Price-Match Guarantee ensures the best pricing on the market and through Green America, you'll save an additional 5% using the discount code “GreenAmericaMember”. »

Introducing the "I am a Green American" T-shirt, made from super-soft, 100-percent certified organic cotton, and produced and printed here in the USA. (See a larger image of the design here.) When you purchase this tee you can be proud to support organic cotton farming, fair wages, and green business practices. (A cool "T-shirt facts" image on the sleeve explains how the shirt was made; now you can wear your values on your sleeve!) Proceeds go to growing the programs at Green America. Order yours today »

Other Ways to Give

Green America is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit. We work for a world where all people have enough, where all communities are healthy and safe, and where the abundance of the Earth is preserved for all the generations to come. By joining Green America (or renewing your membership), you support this important work.

There are many other ways to give as well! We appreciate being part of your charitable giving plan. Our Tax ID is 52-1660746. If we can assist you in any way, please contact us at info@greenamerica.org.

• Stock Gifts 
  Support our work by giving a securities gift through stock and mutual funds.
• Planned Giving 
  Discover options to leave a charitable legacy and support Green America's work into the future.
• Increase or update your monthly gift.
• Increase or update your annual recurring gift.
• Give Gift Memberships 
  Inspire your loved ones with a year of our award-winning resource. 
• Donate Your Vehicle
  Whether your car, truck, boat, motorcycle, or RV is running or not, we'll handle everything including pickup.
• Donor Advised Funds
  Green America gladly accepts gifts and grants from Donor Advised Funds and making a gift from your DAF is easy.
• IRA Charitable Contributions
  If you are 70 ½ years of age or older, you can direct a gift to Green America from your IRA to support our work today.
• Workplace & Matching Gifts 
  Learn more about doubling your donation's value through workplace giving. 
• Shop our Store
  When you purchase a "I am a Green American" T-shirt or bag you are supporting our mission.
• Consider these Mission-Aligned Businesses
  Make a purchase from these green businesses and support Green America’s programs
• Get the Green America VISA Credit Card
  You get the perks you'd expect from a credit card plus a percentage of each purchase is directed back to Green America.
• Donate via PayPal
  Members can now donate to Green America through a PayPal account. 
• Become a member of our dedicated Sustainer Circle making regular monthly gifts or our Leaders Circle of visionary members making commitments of $1,000 or more annually to support our work.

Privacy Policy 

Updated June 10, 2025

Green America recognizes that you are concerned about privacy. We are committed to preserving your privacy and safeguarding your sensitive information. The following statement describes the general information-gathering and usage practices of our sites.

Our staff, contractors, Internet service providers and others involved in this site follow this policy or similarly strict policies regarding your information.

Disclosure

Green America is committed to fully disclosing our policies regarding the collection, use, maintenance, disclosure and security of personal information obtained from users of our site. The term "personal information" includes a name, address, email address, or any other information which could be used to contact you directly or to identify you personally.

Use and Disclosure Limitations

Green America only uses personal information about its Web site users for specific purposes. We do not share user information with third parties except when we have told users about the disclosures, when we have prior consent, or when required by law.

Use Policy: When Green America gathers personal information from users, we ask for permission first. We also disclose, at the time of collection, how the information will be used by us. Personal information is used for activities such as auto-completion of commonly-used forms and helping us contact you when you solicit information from Green America.

Disclosure Policy: We do not normally disclose personal information to anyone outside of Green America unless we have previously informed users about the disclosures. However, some data may be used from time to time by outside contractors, including auditors or consultants, to assist us in carrying out necessary financial or operational activities. These uses will be consistent with this privacy policy and all contractors using this potential personal information must agree to safeguard it, to use it only for the authorized purpose, and to return it or destroy it upon completion of the activity.

Green America might be required to disclose personal information in response to a valid legal process such as a subpoena, search warrant or court order.

Although unlikely, it is possible that we may have to make certain disclosures to ensure the security of our Web site, to protect its integrity, or to take precautions against potential liability. In any of these situations, we will take any reasonable steps to limit the scope of the data disclosed.

Specific Information Collection Activities

• "Contact" Functions. Some pages on our sites offers users the opportunity to email either Green America, its affiliate organizations or other companies or organizations about specific issues.  To do so, users are asked to provide certain personal information to facilitate these communications. This information often includes the user’s name, email address, and, depending on which contact method the user chooses, postal address. This information is used to create a template letter or message from the user to the organization or company and, if the user chooses to email the message using our automated function, it will include the user’s email address to as part of the email message. This provides the organization or company a way to respond to users regarding the content of the message.
   
• "Join," "Donate" or "Give a gift membership" Functions. To contribute to Green America in any way, users are asked to provide certain personal information. This information may include the user’s name, email address, phone number and postal address. This information is used to process and fulfill your membership(s) or donation and to provide relevant information to you for tax purposes.
   
• "Survey" Function. We occasionally ask users to complete surveys on our sites and may ask for personally-identifying information as part of that process.  Unless otherwise clearly specified at the point of the request, this information is not used for Green America for any purpose other than to process or analyze the results of the survey or to fulfill a request that you make as part of the survey.
   
• "Subscription" Function. To subscribe to email newsletters offered by Green America, users are asked to provide certain personal information. This information may include the user’s name, email address, phone number and postal address. This information is used exclusively to fulfill requests related to your email newsletter subscription and to contact you about participation in Green America membership and programs.

All our employees and processors who have access to the personal data of users and are associated with the processing of that data are obliged to respect the confidentiality of users’ personal data.

Text Message Service Privacy Policy

We respect your privacy. We only use information you provide through this service to transmit your mobile messages and respond to you. This includes, but isn't limited to, sharing information with platform providers, phone companies, and other vendors who assist us in the delivery of mobile messages. WE DON'T SELL, RENT, LOAN, TRADE, LEASE, OR OTHERWISE TRANSFER FOR PROFIT ANY PHONE NUMBERS OR CUSTOMER INFORMATION COLLECTED THROUGH THE SERVICE TO ANY THIRD PARTY. Nonetheless, we reserve the right always to disclose any information as necessary to satisfy any law, regulation or governmental request, to avoid liability, or to protect our rights or property. This Text Message Service Privacy Policy applies to your use of the Text Message Service and isn't intended to modify our general “Privacy Policy”, incorporated by reference above, which may govern the relationship between you and us in other contexts.

COSTS OF TEXT MESSAGES

We do not charge you for the messages you send and receive via this text message service. But message and data rates may apply, so depending on your plan with your wireless or other applicable provider, you may be charged by your carrier or other applicable provider.

FREQUENCY OF TEXT MESSAGES

This Text Messaging Service is for conversational person-to-person communication between you and our employees. We may send you an initial message providing details about the service. After that, the number of text messages you receive will vary depending on how you use our services and whether you take steps to generate more text messages from us (such as by sending a HELP request).

OPTING OUT OF TEXT MESSAGES

If you no longer want to receive text messages, you may reply to any text message with STOP, QUIT, END, REVOKE, OPT OUT, CANCEL, or UNSUBSCRIBE. As a person-to-person communication service, opt-out requests are specific to each conversation between you and one of our employees and their associated phone number. After unsubscribing, we may send you confirmation of your opt-out via text message.

CONTACT US

For support, contact us at info@greenamerica.org or (202)872-5307 or Green America."

Complaints

Green America will work with users to resolve any complaints about our privacy policies or practices.

If you have a complaint about our privacy and fair information practices policy or about our implementation of the policy, you can contact us. Green America will try to resolve any problems that arise in a fair and prompt manner.

Technical Issues Related to Your Privacy

Green America uses a number of specific technical tools and techniques to ensure convenient, reliable and timely service. While we work to ensure the security of personal information, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure and some of these tools and techniques may affect your privacy concerns.

As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Cookies and other technologies: Green America uses one or more companies to place advertisements for our organization on third-party sites. Cookies and other technologies such as Web beacons or tags are used to measure the effectiveness of our ads and to determine the display of content and advertising to you based on your interests both on our site, as well as on third-party sites where you may visit. To support this interest based advertising solution, we, and companies who we have contracted with, may use anonymous information about your visits to our and other Web sites. The information collected and used by this process is always anonymous, and does not enable any third-party to identify you individually

Although it is our hope that you find the display of advertising to you based on your anonymous interests valuable, if you would prefer not to participate in the services offered through these solutions, you can always opt-out of this activity by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) website by clicking http://optout.networkadvertising.org

Because of this practice, if you are younger than 18 years of age, we request that you follow the above link to opt out of display advertising.
 

Web Logs: Green America maintains standard Web logs that record basic information about visitors to our Web site. These logs contain:

• The Internet domain from which you came to our Web site.
• Your IP address. An IP address is a series of numbers which uniquely identifies your connection to the Internet. Although it is possible in some instances, certain types of IP addresses may be used by interested persons to identify users but we do not attempt to identify users in this way.
• The type of browser (e.g. Chrome or Safari) and operating system (e.g. IOS or Windows) you use.
• The date and time you visited the site, and the pages you saw.

We use Web log information to design our Web site, identify popular features, and in similar ways. We do not try to identify individuals from Web logs or to link Web logs to other user information. However, if someone tries to damage our Web site or use it in an unauthorized or illegal way, we may share Web log information with law enforcement agencies. Green America may provide aggregate information such as the number of users who visit particular pages of the site, or the number of people who link to certain external sites from our site, to other parties.

Links to Other Sites: Green America does carry advertising on some of its sites and provides links to other sources of information which we believe may be of interest to site visitors.  We have no control over the content of the sites to which we link in Green America's sites and these sites may have different privacy policies, which we encourage you to review. When you click through to other Web sites, you may get cookies directly from them. Green America does not see or use these cookies, and we do not control how other sites use cookies.

Changes to Privacy Policy

Green America's features and services will change over time and our information-gathering practices and policies may also change.

While our philosophy of protecting user information from inappropriate uses and disclosures will not change, this policy will be updated occasionally to include any change that materially affects the collection, maintenance, use, or disclosure of personal information.

Other changes to this privacy policy statement that reflect refinements, improvements, updates, and new features will be made as appropriate and posted as soon as possible. Whenever the privacy policy changes, we will modify the date to reflect that a change was made.

Does Green America rent, share, sell or trade my information?

Green America does not rent, share, sell or trade supporter e-mail addresses and telephone numbers. We occasionally have third parties perform supportive services on our behalf, such as data processing, analytics, billing, etc. These third parties have access to your personal information only as needed to perform their services for Green America and are contractually obligated to maintain the confidentiality and security of the personal information.

If you are a Green America member and you do NOT wish to have your information shared with third parties, please call us toll-free at (800) 584-7336 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST, Monday through Thursday to speak to one of our Member Services representatives or email Members@GreenAmerica.org. It would be helpful if you had your Member ID available, as that will shorten the amount of time it takes to locate your member information.

If you are not a Green America member and you have provided personal contact information on our web site by signing up for a list, or sending us feedback, your information WILL NOT BE EXCHANGED.

How to Request and/or Correct Information

Although Green America has no programs or utilities to collect information other than those which have been outlined in this Privacy Policy, you may request in writing any personal information about you that we hold, or correct or amend information about you if it is inaccurate.

The following Web sites are operated by Green America, located at 1612 K Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20006. Our telephone number is (202) 872-5307.

www.greenamerica.org
www.greenbusinessnetwork.org
www.responsibleshopper.org
www.greenpages.org
www.gmoinside.org
www.centerforsustainabilitysolutions.org

Click here to contact us regarding privacy-related concerns.

Green America's Policy on Accepting Company Funds

Green America is committed to creating an economy that works for people and the planet. An important component of the organization’s work is engaging with companies of all sizes to encourage them to increase their environmental and social responsibility.

Green America has strict policies about accepting company funds.

Green America does not accept donations from companies that generate revenues primarily from tobacco, fossil fuels, mining, production of toxic chemicals (including synthetic pesticides), weapons, and/or armaments.

Dues

Green America accepts dues from companies that meet our published standards for economic and social progress in their industries. Green America only promotes businesses to the public in our National Green Pages® and Green Pages Online that have successfully completed our certification process (in addition to paying dues). Furthermore, only businesses that have successfully completed our certification process may advertise in Green America publications, Web sites, emails, and other electronic comments.

Donations and Sponsorships

We believe that companies should provide funding to support nonprofit organizations that are growing a truly green economy, and that this funding should not influence the mission or programs of the nonprofit. Green America does accept donations and sponsorships from companies that successfully complete the organization’s Green Business Certification and receive certification. These are the leading green business in the US. Green America also accepts donations and sponsorships from companies that demonstrate a clear commitment to the organization’s mission and promote goods and services that benefit people and the planet. Green America provides the logos of sponsoring companies on the Web site pages of the programs being sponsored, and allow sponsors to share content through our social media and email channels.

Green America promotes the products and services of select green businesses to our individual members, and in return, receives a portion of the proceeds. Only businesses that have earned Green America’s certification are eligible to promote products and services to these members. Green America promotes royalties to business members as well. We promote the greenest options available to these members. In limited cases (such as shipping services), there are no green businesses providing a particular service needed by Green America’s business members.

Fees for Service

We believe that when nonprofits assist companies in greening their supply chains those companies should pay for the service. These payments, in turn, provide revenues that the nonprofit can use to promote a more sustainable and equitable economy.

Green America accepts fees for service from companies that are engaged in increasing the sustainability of at least some of their goods or services. Green America provides consulting and educational services to companies to help them adopt social and environmental practices.

Partnerships

Green America may partner with organizations that do accept donations from companies that Green America won’t accept donations from. Green America will only partner with those organizations on projects that further Green America’s mission.

Green America may also partner with companies that have received Green America’s certification in order to execute a campaign or program. These companies may play an active role in executing and promoting a campaign or program but will not influence or change Green America's goals or policy positions.

Disclosure of Funds and Programmatic Independence

Green America discloses the existence of donations, sponsorships, dues, and fees received from companies.

The receipt of company funds does not influence Green America’s position on any issues, or any public statement Green America wishes to make on issues, or critiques of any company’s practices, or campaigns related to those practices. Green America reserves the right to terminate any relationships with a company and/or return company funding at any time.

Copyright Statement

The entire content included in this Site, including but not limited to text, design, graphics, interfaces, or code and the selection and arrangements thereof is copyrighted as a collective work under the United States and other copyright laws, and is the property of Green America. The collective work includes works that are licensed to Green America. Copyright 2005. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names (collectively the "Marks"), including Green America™, Green Pages Store®, WoodWise®, Green Pages Directory™ and National Green Pages™, are trademarks or registered trademarks of and are proprietary to Green America.

Supporting social and environmental shareholder resolutions is as easy as checking a few boxes and tossing the ballot back into its postage-paid envelope. Whatever you do, don't throw your shareholder ballots in the recycling bin! Use your power to raise for your voice on social, environmental, and corporate governance issues.

Using the fictional Fizzy Cola company, Green America walks you through a sample proxy ballot, so you'll be ready to cast your votes in the spring. Click here to read this as a pdf in another tab.

Graphic created by Tracy Fernandez Rysavy and Dennis Greenia.

Learn more about Green America's board of directors, executive team, and staff. We'd love to add you to this page. See Green America's job openings here.

Bob Quinn is the man behind KAMUT® Brand khorasan wheat, a unique ancient grain from Mesopotamia. After receiving a Ph.D in Plant Biochemistry from UC Davis and selling his business interests in Northern California, he moved back to his family farm in Montana. Through the use of a trademark he has dedicated his company to protecting the integrity of khorasan wheat and is able to set high standards for the ways in which it is grown. Kamut khorasan wheat can never be cross-bred with modern wheat and must always be grown organically. 

There are a growing number of wheat growers joining Quinn in a movement to reestablish ancient grains and turn to organic growing methods. This is a forward thinking movement looking at the least chemically intensive, environmentally destructive, while being the most profitable to farmers. At the same time there is a band of biotech companies determined to introduce genetically engineered (GE) wheat.

What’s wrong with modern wheat?

To understand the implications of GE wheat it is important to understand the concerns surrounding modern wheat in general and what differentiates it from ancient grains, such as Kamut khorasan. Ancient grains are those that are derived from ancient civilizations and have been left practically unaltered by human interference since that time. Ancient grains are gaining in popularity, with grains such as spelt, khorasan, einkorn, and emmer (faro) becoming more common to consumers.

The vast majority of the wheat we consume today has been drastically altered from its original form. While wheat has yet to be genetically engineered it has been altered through intensive conventional breeding. According to Bob “what is inherent and drives modern wheat breeding programs are higher yields and more loaves of bread, linked with the national drive to sell cheap food in this country. Cheap food is the main food policy these days. With that being the main goal many things have been changed.  To make higher yields, plants were made shorter and more uniform, they were made more disease resistant, and more resistant to insects.” But all of these changes plus others have had many unintended consequences. “What is probably even more significant is the change in the proteins and starches in the kernel to make more loaves of bread with less wheat.  This is significant because this is the part we actually eat,” says Bob.

The cheap wheat most often consumed today is stripped of much of its nutrients and removes many of the benefits that can be found in ancient grains. All of this is done to lower costs. Research shows that it is how we have altered modern wheat that is resulting in so many health complications linked to wheat. The health implications of modern compared to ancient grains are a major focus area for Kamut International. Bob thinks, “recent changes made to modern wheat is probably at the heart of the troubles that people are having eating wheat, these unintended consequences are what people are struggling with.”

Why GMO wheat isn’t the answer?

The most common types of GE crops, such as corn, soy, and alfalfa, are developed to be herbicide-resistant, allowing entire fields to be sprayed with herbicides without damaging the crops. This increases the amount of pesticide residue left on food and increasingly studies are finding high levels of pesticide residue in our water and our bodies. Major biotech companies are pursuing GE wheat developed to be resistant to glyphosate, dicamba, 2,4-D, and glufosinate.

For Quinn there are a number of reasons that GE wheat simply isn’t the answer. There is the general concern for the impacts resulting from the type of agriculture promoted by GE crops: costly chemical inputs, monocropping, and the impact on surrounding ecosystems. But his concerns go far beyond these and are focused on the farmers growing wheat and consumers. In Bob’s own words, here are some of the main concerns surrounding GE wheat:

The increased cost of production incurred to the farmer:

“In Montana the cost of chemicals is so high compared to what people are getting for their wheat, they can’t afford to grow it anymore. They can’t afford to farm in this way. They can’t pay their chemical bills with the amount they are receiving for the grain they are harvesting. I think that this is a crazy and unsustainable system that is going to lead, many into financial ruin.  Many will be forced to sell their farms and suicide by those who feel trapped has already started to occur. Right now, the price of organic wheat is at 4 or 5 times the price of conventional. With organic you are taking so much more net profit to the bank that it puts you in a very comfortable position rather than being on the edge of break even all the time or even worse, farming at a consistent loss. The current system is an artificial system that is only propped up by large government subsidies, which are starting to disappear. This leaves farmers in a system where they are completely vulnerable and almost unable to make a living.”

Health concerns with herbicide use:

“More and more research is starting to point to the chemicals causing some of the trouble that people are having with wheat. Research in Canada has demonstrated that glypohsate residue is mimicking the symptoms that people have from wheat sensitivities and there have been all kinds of health problems that disappear, in children when they go on an organic diet.”

The economic viability of US wheat abroad:

“Montana’s main customers are Japan and South Korea, both countries have made it abundantly clear that they will not purchase GE wheat. The problem with wheat will be that there is no way to distinguish a GMO kernel from a non-GMO kernel. This will be the problem in the marketplace; there is no way to differentiate it. The first time we end up with a boatload of wheat in Tokyo bay where they find traces of GMOs will produce a huge fall out. Who will pay for the GMO contaminated wheat that is rejected in faraway countries. We have already seen some boycotts of US wheat in 2013 when unapproved GE wheat was discovered in fields in Oregon.  More recently there were other cases of unauthorized, unapproved GE wheat found in a Montana experiment station and in a field in Washington.  Although these finds did not trigger the economic fall out that the Oregon find triggered, they raise serious doubts about how GE wheat will be controlled if it is approved and released.  Contamination seems a certainly and huge loss of markets to the detriment of US wheat growers seem a high probability. “

Lack of control of the seed system:

“The other problem is stripping farmers’ control over the seed and agricultural system. Surrendering those choices to just a few agrochemical companies who prohibit farmers from keeping seed they grow for planting means that the companies will now provide all the seed and all the chemicals in a very controlled way.  Farmers will have no say over price, they will have no say over what seeds they can use, and what chemicals they can spray with. Farmers will be sold a promise that this will make them more money but once they buy into it they will be worse off than they already are now, because they bought into a closed system which is totally dependent on the chemical company. When the prices of the commodities go down and the prices for the chemicals go up they are stuck in a system they cannot escape.”

Beyond the many concerns around the impacts of GE wheat on both the farmer and the environment there is an underlying tension that is being propagated by the chemical companies pitting the conventional and organic farmers against one another. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Bob believes that “farmers don’t need to be at odds. They are being put at odds. The chemical companies are putting out the image of conflict and controversy and battle. Of course they are afraid to lose market share. There main claim is that only they [the chemical companies] can feed the world and now people are starting to see research coming out more and more that debunks that notion.” The chemical companies are misleading consumers and policy makers. At the end of the day farmers simply want to support their families and farms and grow nutritious food for a hungry world, and chemical intensive crops are not the solution.

“The path forward is organic agriculture. The future is organically produced food.  Only this type of agriculture can feed the world.  It is important to understand that with every dollar consumers spend on food; they are voting for chemical or organic agriculture. If people would make the connections between organic food and health and nutrition, then it would be easy to justify choosing organic food. There are other benefits of organic agriculture compared to chemical agriculture such as the reduction of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere from the production of chemical fertilizer and the reduction in chemical pesticides contaminating our water and soil. The impacts of chemical agriculture can be significantly reduced if we move towards more acres under organic production.,” says Quinn.

This interview has been edited for length. 

Kraft Miracle Whip is a household staple full of less-than wholesome ingredients produced in ways that put people, animals, pollinators, and the planet at risk. Half of the ingredients are likely produced from GE crops. The eggs are also problematic because Kraft sources them from factory farms where they are fed diets high in GMOs, as well as live in inhumane conditions.

Concerns about Eggs and CAFOs in Miracle Whip

Corporate and Geographic Consolidation

Gone are the days of pastures, barns, field crops, and farm animals. Eggs are produced in industrial operations with hundreds of thousands of laying hens in each facility, growing by nearly 25 percent from 1997 to 2007. Nearly half of egg production is concentrated in five states: Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, California, and Pennsylvania. Egg operations have grown in size by 50 percent in the same ten-year period, averaging 750,000 hens per factory farm. Though headquartered in Mississippi, Cal-Maine is the largest egg producer in the United States, selling 685 million dozen eggs in 2007 with a flock of 23 million hens.

Animal Welfare

The manner in which laying hens are raised directly affects their wellbeing and health.Egg-laying hens are subjected to mutilation, confinement, and deprivation of the ability to live their lives as the active, social beings they are. More than 90 percent of eggs in the US are produced in confinement conditions. Welfare abuses run rampant in egg CAFOs including: killing male chicks upon hatching because they have no value to the egg industry, debeaking young female chicks causing severe pain, living in battery cages with the equivalent of less than a sheet of paper of floor size, being subjected to a process called “forced molting” where hens are starved and deprived of food for up to two weeks to shock their bodies into the next egg-laying cycle, and slaughtering them after their egg production declines in 1-2 years even though the lifespan of an industry chicken would be 5-8 years.

There is growing concern about the living conditions in which food animals are raised; however, there is little oversight when it comes to product labels, as we have recently seen in the news regarding the label “natural”. The majority of egg labels have no official standards or oversight or enforcement mechanisms, nor much relevance to animal welfare. Labels include: cage-free, free-range, free-roaming, pasture-raised, certified organic, vegetarian-fed, and more. The highest-welfare eggs come pasture-raised with certification from Animal Welfare Approved. Unfortunately, few farms are certified to this standard. Check out the organization’s mobile app to find products near you.

Even certified organic is not without flaws. According to a report by Cornucopia, industrial-scale organic egg producers, with facilities holding as many as 85,000 hens each, provide 80 percent of the organic eggs on the market. This means that less than half of a percent of egg-laying hens in this country are on pasture-based farms. Therefore, it is important to dig deeper and do research into the company. Local producers offer a shorter supply chain and more transparency.

The eggs Kraft Miracle Whip sources come from factory farms and do not have any animal welfare certifications. Hellmann’s at least uses cage-free eggs; while that still results in thousands of hens are kept in an indoor structure with little to no access to outdoor grazing, it does not use battery cages.

Public and Environmental Health

Poor living conditions directly impact public and environmental health. Large-scale factory farm operations produce more than just that little white orb used in baking recipes and for brunch dishes; they are also breeding grounds for disease and pollution.

Large hen facilities house hundreds of thousands of animals in each structure and result in Salmonella poisoning of eggs. Due to a Salmonella outbreak in 2010 where close to 2,000 cases in three months were reported, the US experienced the largest shell egg recall in history—half a billion eggs. While Salmonella rates are higher in battery cage systems, it is still a problem for cage-free facilities due to the sheer number of hens living in such close quarters.

As seen in other factory farm operations for pigs and cows, chicken CAFOs produce higher levels of waste than can be disposed of in a timely and environmentally responsible manner. The imbalance of a large number of animals in an increasingly smaller space causes mountains of fecal matter to pile up. Ammonia levels increase, negatively impacting air quality by creating particles inhaled by animals and people and producing unpleasant odors. Elevated ammonia levels also negatively impact water quality, running off into local streams and rivers. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), ammonia can be carried more than 300 miles through the air before returning to the ground and then into waterways. The nutrients in runoff from animal waste can then cause algal blooms, which use up the water’s oxygen supply killing all aquatic life, leading to “dead zones.” Dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico are growing larger every year, in addition to those along the East Coast.

In addition to having a devastating impact on aquatic life, industrial egg production also contributes to climate change. After assessing the lifecycle of eggs from “cradle-to-grave” production, the Environmental Working Group reported that consuming two extra-large eggs isequivalent to driving a car more than one mile.

Kraft Miracle Whip, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and GMO Labeling Opposition

Not only is Miracle Whip made of bad ingredients, its parent company, Kraft Foods Group, Inc. (formerly Kraft Foods Inc.), has its own tainted history.

Kraft has a long sordid history of company mergers and name changes. In 1915, J. L. Kraft and his brothers began producing processed cheese in tins. This is the company that created the epitome of processed food in America: Kraft Singles American Cheese. In 1988, Kraft, Inc. becomes a part of Philip Morris Companies, Inc., a company made infamous for cigarettes. In 2011, Kraft Foods announced its intent to split into two independent, publically traded companies, Kraft Foods Group, Inc. and Mondelez International, Inc. The new Kraft Foods Group is focused mainly on grocery products for the North American market, while Mondelēz is an international distributor of Kraft Foods snacks and confectionery brands. In March, 2015, 2015 Kraft Foods Group Inc, announced that it would merge with ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co, owned by 3G Capital and Berkshire Hathaway Inc., contributing to the problem of corporate consolidation by forming the world’s fifth-largest food and beverage company. The new company is called The Kraft Heinz Company.

In addition to providing processed foods and continuously changing ownership, Kraft (under various legal names) has been a big player when it comes to funding opposition to state GMO labeling campaigns. Kraft gave $1.95 million to oppose California’s Prop 37.  Though Kraft Foods Group did not contribute directly to oppose Initiative 522 in Washington in 2013, it is still a dues-paying member of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA). The other Kraft spin off company, Mondelez Global, LLC gave $210,335. Kraft got back into the game in 2014 by spending a total of $1.9 million in Measure 92 in (OR) and Prop 106 (CO).

Additional Resources

GMO Inside released an updated mayonnaise scorecard showing how various major brands measure up in terms of GMO ingredients, prevalence of eggs from CAFOs, and sustainability. Within the scorecard you will find better alternatives and highlight which brands to avoid. We also posted recipes for making homemade mayonnaise to give consumers the ultimate ability to control the quality of ingredients used to make the ever-present spread.

*For our purposes, the term mayonnaise includes mayonnaise and mayonnaise-like products known as salad dressings that contain either whole or powdered eggs.

Responsible credit cards from community development banks and credit unions create benefits for people and communities nationwide, while offering you all the conveniences you expect from a credit card. They make a great choice for anyone seeking a credit card.

Since many people are new to community banks and credit unions, they often have questions about how responsible, green credit cards work. People often have questions about the process of switching to a new credit card.

Here are common questions and answers about switching to a responsible credit card, with thanks to our allies at This! Is What We Did for answers to some of these questions.

This is a former Green America campaign, and progress was made! Thanks to the pressure of nearly 40,000 action takers Godiva has issued a public policy on responsible cocoa.

Within this policy, Godiva commits to taking steps to scale child labor monitoring and remediation systems to 100%, commits to working with suppliers so that cocoa farmers earn a living income, and to no deforestation, among other commitments.

Godiva’s golden boxes of chocolates and decadent chocolate-covered strawberries contain some unsavory ingredients: poverty and child labor.   

Nearly 70% of the world’s cocoa, including Godiva’s, is sourced from Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, where cocoa farmers and their families live on less than $1 per day—well below the global poverty line of $1.25/day.  

Child labor, a symptom of extreme poverty, has been a known problem in West African cocoa fields for more than a decade. The US Department of Labor found more than 2 million children work in hazardous conditions growing cocoa—such as burning fields, applying agrochemicals, carrying heavy loads—and many do not attend school.  

Thanks to pressure from Green America members, Godiva has been exploring what sustainability means to the company and what a policy might look like. While we applaud Godiva for taking an interest in sustainability, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Many fair trade chocolate companies have sourced directly from cocoa farmers for years, ensuring fair payments, safe working conditions, and no child labor. 

Educate others about fair trade and help them go sweatshop-free. 

When Carmel Jud decided to help Afghan women suffering from impacts of the Taliban regime, she started holding house parties. Not your everyday gathering, Jud’s house parties focused on selling fair trad goods that Afghan women had made in their homes and sold for fair prices.

“The response was amazing,” Jud recalls. “We would show a video about how the Taliban was forcing women out of schools and professions. Then, we would display the crafts we had for sale and explain how the Afghan women making them were now able to earn money to support their families and maintain their dignity. The guests would be so moved that not only would they buy many of the items we had for sale, but most of them would sign up on the spot to host their own parties.”

With the holiday season approaching, now’s the perfect time to think about hosting a fair trade house party. “The party can be your holiday gift to your friends,” suggests Nancy Potter, director of sales and marketing for A Greater Gift (a program of SERRV International). “You can show them that their choices do make a difference and that their purchasing dollars can provide hope and justice to fair trade artisans.”

Here are details on how you can host a successful party—one that pleases your guests and encourages their support of a fair economic system.

Why Fair Trade House Parties?

In conventional trade, much of the purchase price of a product usually goes to middlemen, and the workers who produce the products often earn poverty-level wages insufficient for supporting their families. Fair trade ensures that producers receive prices that cover their costs of production and allow them to invest in the well-being of their families, their communities, and the Earth.

Fair trade crafts—including jewelry, clothing, and household items—can be obtained from businesses belonging to the Fair Trade Federation (FTF), which screens its members based on fair trade criteria. Fair Trade Certified™ commodities such as coffee, chocolate, and bananas sold in the US bear the seal of TransFair USA, the organization that certifies that the producers have received a fair price for their products.

House parties are an excellent way to support artisans around the world by selling their fair trade products. A host will gather a group of friends, neighbors, or coworkers to explain what fair trade is and to encourage them to purchase fair trade crafts such as embroidered bags, colorful shawls, and handcrafted jewelry, or gift baskets featuring Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate, coffee, and tea. Perhaps most importantly, house parties educate guests about fair trade and spur them to spread the word about it.

“Most of the people attending fair trade house parties don’t tend to know much, if anything, about fair trade,” says Dana Geffner, who often sells fair trade items at house parties through the fair trade organization Pachamama, which she founded in 2002. “Then they get so inspired that they start going to their local supermarkets and asking for Fair Trade Certified™ coffee, or pledging that all of the gifts they buy will be fair trade.

The Gathering

Most fair trade parties are informal gatherings, and Jud suggests aiming for 10–15 guests to keep the group intimate. To encourage attendance, she advises sending invitations that emphasize the social aspect of the evening and the opportunity to purchase beautiful crafts. If you’re holding your party in holiday-shopping season, you can also tell your friends that it’ll be a chance for them to fill all their gift-buying needs in a single evening.

At the party, beverages and finger food—perhaps featuring Fair Trade Certified™ coffee, tea, or chocolate—can help encourage socializing as the guests arrive and everyone gets settled. Then it’s on to the two main activities of the evening: learning and shopping.

Educating Your Guests

To get your guests excited about fair trade, you’ll want to point out the injustice that exists under today’s economic system and explain the solution that fair trade presents. Geffner has brought guest speakers, including members of fair trade cooperatives and human rights groups, to parties, but she says that the host can also fulfill the role of fair trade educator. You can also show videos about fair trade, if you wish.

To brush up on your fair trade knowledge beforehand, consult an organization such as the Fair Trade Resource Network. Vendors from whom you request merchandise or catalogs may also supply educational materials, such as brochures or videos.

In Jud’s experience, a speaker who can talk firsthand about conditions in developing countries can help guests further understand “how their choices affect individuals around the world.” If you wish to go this route, you can appeal to friends, family, or coworkers to connect you to potential speakers; contact a community center of an immigrant group in your area; or appeal to a radio station that broadcasts in a non-English language.

“One of my most powerful speakers came to me through a Spanish-language radio station,” Jud says. “I wanted someone from Mexico who could talk about conditions in Juarez, because so many of the sweatshops that produce clothes for US consumers are located there.” Within ten minutes of the station broadcasting Jud’s request for a speaker, a woman who’d worked in a Juarez sweatshop volunteered to tell her story.

“The guests found her story shocking,” Jud recalls. “She talked about how the buses from the factories to the residential area didn’t have enough space for all of the workers, and how the women would fight to get on because they knew that if they had to walk home, they would risk being attacked and killed, the way several young women there have been.”

Once the host or speaker has highlighted the problem, it’s time to talk about the solutions that fair trade offers. You can provide an overview of how the system works and then use specific 
products and producer groups as success stories.

Unveiling the Fair Trade Products

If you can manage it, a few representative craft items can be useful props when telling stories about individual artisans or cooperatives—and they can help show your guests how beautiful 
and unique their products are. Jud recommends concealing the items before the initial presentation so that people won’t decide what they do or don’t want to buy until they’ve heard the whole fair trade story. She prefers to uncover items one at a time, introducing each one with the name of the person who made it and describing the impact that fair trade has had on that person’s life.

Some organizations have kits available for people holding fair trade sale events, and these kits will often include educational materials as well as sample products or products that you can sell on the spot. If you want to order products or kits, find out how soon before your party they can ship the items and how soon after the party you need to return them.

Ten Thousand Villages has a program designed for larger events, such as community days or church fairs; this is worth considering if you belong to a group that might like to host one of these “Ten Thousand Villages Festivals.” Pre-formed modules contain $4,000 worth of goods, plus promotional and educational materials; hosts are expected to sell approximately $2,000.

The Do-It-Yourself Model is flexible: You obtain a few catalogs (Visit the FTF Web site or peruse the Green Pages™ Online—our directory of green businesses that includes FTF members—and request catalogs from businesses whose products you find appealing), then have your guests fill out order forms at the party and take care of placing the orders on their own. If you own a few fair trade items already, you can show them off as samples. Or, you can buy your holiday gifts early and display them before passing them along to their intended recipients.

Jud’s nonprofit, Rising International, has been holding California fair trade house parties for the past two years. Recently, the organization decided to put the parties on hold while considering the best direction in which to expand. Jud says she’s still happy to serve as a resource for anyone with questions about holding fair trade house parties.

So, if you’ve got space for a small party and a dozen friends or coworkers who could use some help with their holiday shopping, think about hosting a fair trade house party. An evening of learning, shopping, and socializing can direct fair trade dollars to artisans around the world, and it can turn your guests into advocates for an economic system that treats workers fairly.

A burst of over 1,000 hate crimes and incidents have occurred since Election Day, and the President's words and actions are only making perpetrators bolder.

With white supremacists in the cabinet and anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric coming out of the White House, we need green, people-centered solutions that bring people together—and don't depend on Washington.

This is a picture I took while in Yosemite

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Three small green businesses offering green pet and animal products in New York, California and North Carolina are winners of Green America’s People & Planet Award. The winners of $5,000 prizes are: The Honest Kitchen and Front Yard Coop. The grand-prize winner, Full Circle Seed, will receive $10,000 in recognition of having received the highest number of votes.

The People & Planet Award recognizes innovative U.S. small businesses that integrate environmental and social considerations into their strategies and operations. The winners were selected by the public during a month-long online voting period.

“When we talk about benefiting people and the planet, it’s important not to forget how animals play a role,” said Fran Teplitz, Green America’s executive co-director. “Some business practices, including ones commonly used by the agriculture industry, put profits over corporate responsibility. Pet and animal products that are environmentally friendly and produced ethically are just as important today as ever.”

The winning companies are:

• Syracuse, N.Y.-based Full Circle Feed’s treats are made with vegetables, meats, fruits and breads from restaurant buffets that were prepared but not served. The result is a healthy, delicious, environmentally sustainable dog treat, according to the company. For too long, our society has disposed of billions of tons of extra food, which Full Circle Feed now upcycles into high-quality food, the company stated.
• According to San Diego-based The Honest Kitchen, the company offers 100 percent free-range, antibiotic-free and sustainably raised chicken and turkey; only wild-caught, MSC-certified fish and non-GMO produce and organic seeds and grains are used; and all of its manufacturing takes place in North America to reduce transportation and carbon emissions.
• The Front Yard Coop in Asheville, N.C., is the world’s first solar-powered, self-propelled chicken coop, according to the company. While chicken coops are a booming business and a growing segment of the DIY community, the Front Yard Coop is unique, offering technological innovations, solar power and contemporary design, the company states.

  “Full Circle Feed will use the funds to set up a more environmentally friendly production process and drying method,” said Michael Amadori, founder of Full Circle Feed. “In particular, instead of using electricity or natural gas we plan to use waste heat or biogas generated from anaerobic digestion to bake our dog biscuits. This will greatly reduce our ecological footprint and give us the most sustainable dog treats on the market. We are very grateful to Green America for the recognition and being selected in the People & Planet award.”

  Lucy Postins, founder of The Honest Kitchen, said: “It’s a huge honor to have our commitments to sustainable and humane ingredient sourcing and other environmental efforts recognized in this way. We’re working toward furthering our goals in these areas, including the integration of free-range eggs into our supply chain and increasing our usage of grass-fed beef, as well as other initiatives for packaging reduction and recycling. We’ll be using our prize to make a direct impact at our home office, by building a vegetable garden in our outdoor space and adding office kitchen composting facilities to help further reduce our environmental paw print.”

  Peter Zander, founder of Front Yard Coop said: “Winning this award will especially help with new product initiatives as we continue to grow in our new home of North Carolina. The small homestead movement is particularly vigorous in the Asheville region, and we hope that the Front Yard Coop will be a helpful product for the new age homesteader.”

  Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America (formerly Co-op America) provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. 

She may be a beautiful ice princess, but the factory where Elsa is made is allegedly encrusted with mold and filth.

On Wednesday, the nonprofit Green America launched a petition asking Disney CEO Bob Iger to improve conditions at the Chinese factories where Disney toys are made—merchandise including Frozen and Disney princesses as well as Crayola crayons, Bob the Builder, Spin Master, and more.

The petition calls out Iger for his $45 million a year salary, noting the vast disparity between his hourly wage of $21,634 and the $1.32 paid to the factory workers making his company’s toys. 

A June report from China Labor Watch exposed the disgusting conditions and labor abuses at the Zhen Yang toy factory in Dongguan, where Elsa and Anna dolls are made. The report details how workers live at the factory in cramped dormitories with crumbling prison-like walls and rotting bathrooms, and are fed food unsafely prepared in filthy canteens.

“The beautiful world of Disney is merely a fairytale,” Li Qiang, founder and executive director of China Labor Watch, said in a press release on Wednesday. “The real world is one where evil has triumphed over good, and where profits triumph over conscience. We need those who seek justice to come together and fight the villains in the world of Disney, to create a world where Disney is wholeheartedly kind and just.”

Photos from the factory show a hellish living environment that’s a far cry from the crystalline ice palace where Elsa resides.

According to the China Labor Watch report, workers making Frozen toys for Disney clock an average of 12 hours a day with no days off—over 80 hours per week. Their wages for such a grueling schedule amount to about $400 a month. The report details other labor violations as well: Bathrooms have no hot water, and no shower heads—forcing workers to bathe in freezing water using buckets. The Daily Dot has reached out to Disney for comment, but hasn’t heard back as of this posting. 

China Labor Watch claims to have investigated dozens of other factories where Disney products are made, and says that deplorable conditions are the norm rather than the exception. The group has met with Disney executives, the report says, more than 10 times—with little result.

“Americans purchasing Frozen toys for their kids this holiday season need to know the truth behind the toys: Disney is using factories in China that engage in exploitative practices,” said Todd Larsen, executive co-director of consumer and corporate engagement at Green America, in a press release. “We’re asking all consumers to put pressure on Disney to address labor abuses in its factories.”

Marie Angel Hoole moved to California happily in 2015. Her fiancée was about to start school in Los Angeles. Hoole had a bachelor’s degree and years of experience in the restaurant business, from service to management, and good references. She felt confident she would find a job and the couple’s new life in California would be better than it was in Texas.

She didn’t find work easily. As a transgender woman, Hoole had dealt with discrimination before, and she was not the only one to face that struggle. The US unemployment rate is three times for trans people what it is for the rest of the population—four times for trans women of color. The 2015 US Transgender Survey from the Center for Transgender Equality reported that 27 percent of trans people who had applied to or worked at a job in 2015 had been fired, denied a promotion, or not hired because of their gender identity or expression.

As the Green American goes to print, there are rumblings out of Washington that the president may soon sign an executive order on “religious liberty,” which could allow companies to fire employees for not adhering to the boss’s interpretation of religion. That could mean that some LGBTQ people will be out of work because their very existence is “against” someone’s religion. Such an executive order would likely make it even more difficult for transgender people to find good jobs.

Businesses and programs are stepping up to close this gap. Advocates see the trans community as a huge untapped and highly educated workforce, in part since trans people are twice as likely to hold a bachelor’s degree or higher than the general population. With poverty and suicide rates significantly higher for trans people than for the general population, it’s especially important for them to find meaningful work. Therefore, the trans community and allies are calling for economic justice: hiring practices that fairly reflect ability and potential instead of fear or stereotypes.

The US unemployment rate is three times for trans people what it is for the rest of the population—four times for trans women of color.

Journey To A Job

Back in Texas, Hoole had been pressured by employers not to express her gender identity, or had been denied jobs outright because she was trans. She had heard good things about California’s treatment of trans people—it’s one of only 19 states that has legal protections based on gender identity. But even once she arrived in her new state, she still had a hard time moving from applying for jobs to being hired.

“I have a strong resume, and I’m an educated person. And yet, that didn’t seem enough,” she says. “I came to know that Texas wasn’t the only place that needed help in getting the population to understand what the issues are. Laws are not going to change people alone. We have to change our hearts.”

Years before, in the Los Angeles area, Michaela Mendelsohn was having similar thoughts. Mendelsohn is a franchise owner of six locations of the fast food chain El Pollo Loco in Southern California. She’s also the first trans woman to serve on the board of The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ youth. She was volunteering for the Project’s crisis hotline when she had an idea.

“As I was taking calls and helping youth in desperate need, I realized we’re giving them tremendous help. We’re de-escalating the suicidal risk behavior at that moment, and we’re giving them safety plans and resources to improve their lives, and we’re there for follow-up calls,” she says. “But to truly improve their lives on a more permanent basis, there have to be employment opportunities. And here I was, an employer with a possibility to do that in my businesses.”

Opportunities for Open Hearts

Though she bought her first franchise in 1988, Mendelsohn didn’t hire her first trans employee until 2012 after her “a-ha” moment at the Trevor Project. She was pleased by the performance of the employee and the positive response from customers. She kept hiring trans people, and the positive impact grew for her business.

In 2016, Mendelsohn started California Trans Can Work (CTCW), which creates trans-positive restaurant-industry workplaces in California by training management and mentoring trans employees. The program was modeled on the success of the employees in her own restaurants.

“This is a huge pool of employees that we can’t afford to not consider,” says Mendelsohn. According to a 2016 survey from the Williams Institute at UCLA, 218,000 transgender adults live in California, or 15 percent of the US trans population.

“And diversity is just good for business,” she adds. “I think almost all of the Fortune 500 companies have realized that and are on board as well.” Mendelsohn says that since the program has been testing at El Pollo Loco for four years, the next step has been placing transgender job-seekers with a “close-knit” community of employers, including several Dunkin’ Donuts locations in the L.A. area. The next phase, which she says will launch in April, will offer the program in a “much broader range” of restaurants.

Good For Employees & Customers

Mendelsohn’s claim that Fortune 500 companies are recognizing the value of diversity may be true. Every year the Human Rights Campaign publishes the Corporate Equality Index, to see how well Fortune 500 and other large US companies translate that value into LGBTQ-inclusive policies, benefits, and practices. Its 2017 edition rated 1,043 companies, and 49 percent of companies earned a perfect score. In 2002, the first year the index was published, only 4 percent had earned a perfect score. [Editor’s note: Thanks to the pressure socially responsible investors regularly put on large corporations, 89 percent of Fortune 500 companies now prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, and 66 percent based on gender identity as well.]

Recruiting and hiring trans employees may also be good for a company’s bottom line. Mendelsohn says she hears more compliments on her employees who are part of the program than on ones outside of it. She also notes that 30 percent of her trans employees move to management positions, which is a much higher rate than standard in the industry or in her stores in general.

"We’re de-escalating the suicidal risk behavior at that moment, and we’re giving them safety plans and resources to improve their lives... But to truly improve their lives on a more permanent basis, there have to be employment opportunities."

Because of the program, customers are meeting trans people in friendly interactions in their communities, which is “opening people’s hearts,” Mendelsohn says. “They may never have met or realized they had met a transgender person before. The customers are really loving it. And making our customers happy is, of course, one of the most important things.”

The most direct benefit, however, is to the employees. In 2016, Mendelsohn hired Marie Hoole as a cashier at El Pollo Loco through CTCW. And because of her natural leadership tendencies, Mendelsohn also hired Hoole last fall to be a paid trans-visibility advocate with CTCW. As such, Hoole talks to restaurant owners who might be interested in adopting the program about its positive impacts.

“The work that CTCW does has changed my life tremendously,” says Hoole. “It has provided me with a leveled playing field, where I got the chance to show my skills and be appreciated for my hard work. The opportunities [have been] life-changing, and they have made of me a happier Marie. The organization gave me something I really never had, and that is simply to succeed in my own true identity—and so it has for so many others. This is a reality I want the world to know and share.”

Building Economic Justice

The restaurant industry isn’t the only industry in California that’s recruiting transgender employees. As the director of economic development at the San Francisco LGBT Center, Clair Farley works on the Center’s Transgender Employment Program, which was the first of its kind when it was founded in 2007. The program provides job training and placement services to trans people in the Bay Area, as well as connections for businesses looking to hire from that diverse pool. It also is a resource for other organizations that want to set up similar programs.

Unlike the CTCW, the Trans Employment Program is not affiliated with one industry. The website boasts job placement successes in fields from health care to nonprofit leadership and the tech industry. The Transgender Employment Program works in an advisory role to the CTCW, and Farley says she hopes it can help connect the CTCW with hospitality-sector businesses and people as the program grows.

Because of her role at the LGBT Center, Farley has been approached by organizers trying to set up hiring programs in other cities in California, and places as far away as Hawaii and DC.

“We’re looking at how we can continue to support this kind of work across the country, because we feel, a lot of the time, LGBT funding in general ignores economic development or economic justice,” Farley says. “Building self-sufficiency is key to getting folks out of oppression and advocating for themselves and growing their support systems.” Farley says that the work is not done by getting individuals into jobs, though it is a start. The Center’s economic development department is also working with potential employees on job skills training and asset management, and working with employers to add diversity and inclusion to hiring practices.

A Green Economy is Inclusive

A green economy means one in which all people have equal opportunity to do meaningful work for a living wage, in safety and without exploitation. Going the extra mile to lift up trans workers helps level the playing field.

“Many gender non-conforming people are out there right now looking a for a job and are facing discrimination and/or are victims of unfair and unsafe treatment in their workplace, because of their gender identity—especially among people of color. This needs to stop,” says Marie Hoole. “Trans-visibility can change cultural barriers and misconceptions in the workplace about transgender employees. The proactive change we encourage employers to take advantage of creates opportunity and begins with education. There is such a lovely feeling to finally enter the doors of my workplace as Marie, and that’s a title I am most proud of.”

If you want to know the ins and outs of wasting less food, you don’t have to look much farther than Dana Gunders’ book, Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook (Chronicle Books, 2016). In it, Gunders examines how and why we throw away food in America — then provides step-by-step instructions on how to generate less food waste, from reorganizing your fridge to ensure older foods get eaten first, to fine-tuning meal-planning and shopping habits to salvaging wilted or hardened ingredients.

Gunders is senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), with a B.S. and M.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University. She leads NRDC’s work on reducing food waste across the country. Her work on food waste has been featured by CNN, NBC, NPR, the New York Times, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

Green America’s Tracy Fernandez Rysavy talked with Gunders about why food waste is such a big problem in the US and how we can curb it.

Green America/Tracy Fernandez Rysavy: What got you started caring so much about food waste that you wrote a book about it?

Dana Gunders: I got into this topic working on a project [for the NRDC] with the fruit and vegetable industry in California on sustainable agriculture in general. There were several different topics, and one I was focused on was waste on farms, which really dealt more with used irrigation piping and that type of waste. But as I started researching, I saw staggering numbers on how much food was wasted.

We were trying to get farmers to use a little less water, fewer inputs, but 40 percent of the food they grow isn’t getting eaten, and that’s crazy!

Photo courtesy of DanaGunders.com

That discovery led to 2012 report I wrote [“Wasted: How America is Losing Up to 40 Percent of its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill”]. The report was, to our surprise, a complete success with the media, and it plunged me into center of topic. I noticed how much it resonated with people. They would often tell me, “You’re right: I waste so much.”

Nobody wants to waste food, but it’s happening daily in our lives. Part of that is that people are missing certain amount of information [on how to waste less]. So I wrote the book to try to provide the inspiration and information people need in their own kitchens.

Green America/Tracy: Why is food waste such a big deal when it comes to the environment? How serious of an impact does wasting 40 percent of our food have?

Dana Gunders: It’s huge! A quarter of all the water in this country is growing food that never gets eaten. Then there’s the greenhouse gas effects of growing, transporting, cooling, cooking, and letting that food go to a landfill and rot — equivalent to 39 million cars’ worth annually. To say nothing of land, fertilizer, and pesticide use. To add to that, food is the number-one product going into landfills.

“The greenhouse-gas effects of growing, transporting, cooling, cooking, and letting that food go to landfill and rot [are] equivalent to 39-million cars’ worth annually.”

Green America/Tracy: Your book is an excellent resource, and if I could, I’d put a copy in the hands of everyone reading this interview. But given the space we have here, what are the top three or four things people should start doing to curb their food waste?

Dana Gunders: There are a few things that can be really easy, which is a great place to start. Freeze your food. A lot of people don’t think, “I have leftovers — I should freeze them.” But it’s perfectly okay to freeze small amounts of food to eat later: leftover rice, milk, bread, juice. Especially before you go away for the weekend or on vacation.

Another is understanding expiration dates. For most foods, those dates are not telling you to throw the food out. Expiration dates are not regulated, but most are really meant to indicate freshness rather than food safety. Just learning when your food goes bad for real and not blindly throwing food out on those dates is an easy thing to do.

Many of us will throw a frozen pizza in the oven because we’re tired, instead of making the meal we planned. We have to be realistic about those tendencies when we’re shopping, not aspirational. And on a regular night, “Fridge Fridays” or “StirFridays” or whatever, make a leftover concoction with whatever’s in your fridge.

Green America/Tracy: I’m truly bad at improvisational cooking. Terrible things happen in my kitchen when I try it.

Dana Gunders: In the book, I try to give a lot of “use-it-up” recipes that work with a variety of ingredients to empower people who are bad at improvisational cooking!

Green America/Tracy: Let’s go back to expiration dates. I’ve always assumed those dates indicate when the food starts to spoil, but you’re saying that’s not the case. I feel like that’s going to be a hard mindset to let go of.

Dana Gunders: You’re not alone. About 9 out of 10 people at least occasionally toss food prematurely due to expiration dates. It’s really important to understand that those dates are not meant to indicate when food goes bad. They indicate when a product is at its peak freshness and quality. Start with a product that’s really safe like yogurt or cheese, and try it the day after or two days after it expires. Don’t leave it in there for weeks. Try to add a few days, and just see what happens.

Green America/Tracy: So what are the biggest areas of food waste for us as individuals?

Dana Gunders: Going out to eat is a big one. Food expenditures out of home now exceed those in the home. We’re going out to eat a lot. It really boils down to ordering carefully. Where possible, try to get a sense how big a portion comes. If needed, get a half portion, or ask if someone wants to split. Take leftovers when you can.

Green America/Tracy: How do we help businesses waste less?

Dana Gunders: That’s a little more complicated. It comes down to the consumer expectations and attitudes we bring into those businesses. Ultimately, it means having a little more understanding about what those expectations mean for the business.

A typical grocery stores carries thousands of items. But carrying that many items can be really challenging. How understanding can we be if they don’t have everything we want, if the salad bar doesn’t have a wide variety of items at the end of the day, or if we have to wait ten minutes at the rotisserie for an order?

Green America/Tracy: Speaking of portion sizes, in the book, you talk about how portion sizes have changed over the years. What has that meant in terms of how much food we waste?

Dana Gunders: It’s affected that waste tremendously. We waste about 50 percent more food now than we did in 1970s. Since then, we have seen portion sizes grow, as well. My favorite stat is that average cookie has quadrupled in calories since 1980s. When I think back to bake sales when I grew up in 1980s, cookies were a certain size. Then you go to Starbucks, and they literally are four times bigger.

The average Caesar salad has doubled in calories. The list goes on. There are two things happening to that extra food: We’re eating it, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Or we’re not, and it goes to waste.

Green America/Tracy: You say in the book that curbing food waste can even save lives. How so?

Dana Gunders: At the same time we are wasting huge amounts of food, there are a huge number of Americans who don’t have enough to eat throughout the year. So there’s an opportunity for us to capture some of that uneaten food while it’s still good and fresh, and address the food scarcity issue.

Green America/Tracy: At Green America, we like to say that “the green life is the good life.” What are the benefits to us as individuals if we curb our food waste?

Dana Gunders: If done right, wasting less food means eating fresher meals. So while in the book I do spend some time talking about how to revive wilted food, the goal is to more precisely estimate your needs. When you do that, you wind up with fresher food.

Also, when you’re trying to waste less food, you end up getting more creative in your kitchen. You learn all of these tips. That’s a really fun part of it. And you save money. The average family could save up to $1,500 a year by curbing their food waste.

Green America/Tracy: You call yourself a “food-waste warrior” in the book. I’m picturing some rather funny scenarios when you’re out at restaurants….

Dana Gunders: There are some people who are scared to have dinner with me! But what I like to tell them, and I believe truly, is it’s a journey. It’s something where we’re not going to be perfect right away — or ever. Right now, we’re trying to get food waste on people’s radar. Just thinking about it, I’ve found, makes people make different little decisions that add up to wasting less.

It won’t fix everything, but being aware of it, you may find that on a day where you want to order out, you cook what you have at home instead.

In my life, I have an 18-month-old, so I’m confronting the challenge of not wasting food with kids. It’s the balance of trying to teach the whole spectrum of good eating habits while trying not to waste food: Trying to let her know she doesn’t have to finish if she’s not hungry. You don’t want her to overeat, but she can’t waste. Wanting to put things on her plate so she can try them, but then deal with it if she doesn’t like them.

It’s hard, and it’s been kind of comical at times. We’re refining as we go. Overall, when it comes to addressing your own food waste, it takes a mix of dedication and also understanding and humility. You need to continually address it, but give yourself a break that it’s not going to be 100 percent all the time. Don’t knock yourself too hard. Even just addressing it to a limited degree helps.

For more on Dana Gunders and her book, visit her website.

Those “expiration dates” printed on your food? In most cases, they’re not really expiration dates. The stamped “use by,” “sell by,” and “best by” dates on food most often do not indicate safety*.

Manufacturers establish and print the dates, in general, to indicate when an item is at peak freshness and optimal taste. In other words, they have nothing to do with your health.

But the fact that most people and businesses interpret the stamped dates as when the foods start to spoil means a lot of food is prematurely thrown out. In his book American Wasteland (Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2011), Jonathan Bloom reports that grocers toss an estimated $2,300 per day of food that is “out of date”. Most stamped dates on food are not federally regulated but are regulated “inconsistently and intermittently” at the state level, says Dana Gunders, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council and author of WasteFree Kitchen Handbook (see the note at the bottom of this page). “Many foods will stay good for days or even weeks after the date on the package.”

The only federally regulated exception is baby formula, and the dates on it indicate when nutrients start to decline, not that it’ll make your child sick.

Bottom line: A food past its stamped date may not necessarily be bad, so don’t automatically toss it out. Gunders says that a lot of waste could be spared if people better understood food date labels: “Taste the product, smell the product. If it seems fine to you, it’s probably fine to eat,” she says. Try the tips below to tell when your staple foods are safe to eat and can be revived — and find more foods in Gunders’ book.

Adapted with permission from Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook by Dana Gunders (Chronicle Books, 2016).

• A NOTE OF CAUTION: Gunders advises being careful with products that experts tell pregnant women to avoid for safety, such as deli meats and unpasteurized dairy products. “The reason they tell pregnant women to avoid those is because of a pathogen called listeria. Listeria is exceptional in the world of bacteria because it can survive, and actually multiply, under refrigerated conditions, where others can’t.” While listeria is most likely to be found on those two foods, the Dept. of Health and Human services also calls out hot dogs, soft cheeses, refrigerated smoked seafood, and raw sprouts as having potential for contamination. Cooking the item kills the bacteria.

Doug Rauch doesn’t care about food waste. Food waste to him is the scraps on your plate that get pushed into the trash. It’s the crumbs at the bottom of a box of cereal. What Rauch does care about is wasted food: Perfectly good tubs of yogurt, cans of beans, speckled peaches, and wilting veggies. Food that is going into a dumpster instead of making it from a field, warehouse, or grocery store onto the plate of someone who wants to eat it.

He’s dedicated to combating food waste, through an innovative grocery store called Daily Table, in Dorchester, MA. Since ten percent of food is wasted at the retail level, the store serves as a model for how a business can help strike down barriers to good-food access in a community, while simultaneously tackling the problem of food waste.

Doug’s Big Move

Rauch used to work in the upper management of a little grocery store you might have heard of: Trader Joe’s. In 2008, he retired after 31 years, including his last 14 as president of the company. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do next, but he knew it wasn’t going to involve a rocking chair.

As unsure people often do, he went back to school. He became part of Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, a program for established leaders looking to make a social impact. There, he learned about the extent that food goes to waste in the US: Between farmers and consumers, about 40 percent of food that is produced is thrown out or wasted, according to the USDA. With so much experience in the grocery industry, Rauch also became concerned by the problem of food access.

The USDA defines a “food desert” in an urban area as a place that is more than a mile from a grocery store; in rural areas, the number changes to ten miles. When people live in food deserts, it’s more difficult to obtain healthy foods, especially if they are lower income and don’t have a car. So they may end up settling for what’s within reach — often, junk food snacks from convenience stores, or fast food.

“The problem … isn’t that you can’t get to the grocer. The problem is that you can’t afford what you should get when you’re there. So you end up getting food you shouldn’t be eating, because that’s what you can afford.”

But Rauch found that even when people could get to the grocery store, it wouldn’t necessarily help them eat better. Foods high in sugar and salt are often cheaper than more nutritious options. A 2007 paper from the California Law Review confirms and has a name for that problem: “food oppression.” So Rauch started a store called Daily Table to create a new model of grocery store that would address the twin problems of food insecurity and food waste.

“The problem … isn’t that you can’t get to the grocer. The problem is that you can’t afford what you should get when you’re there. So you end up getting food you shouldn’t be eating, because that’s what you can afford,” Rauch says. “So for me, Daily Table isn’t so much about going into areas that don’t have other grocers; it’s about going into an area that has food insecure [people] who can’t afford to buy the foods they should be eating.”

Putting Health First

Daily Table sits in the heart of Dorchester, MA, Boston’s most culturally diverse neighborhood. While it’s not a food desert — there are plenty of grocery stores in the area — many residents do have trouble affording fresh, whole foods at every meal. Walking into Daily Table doesn’t feel like walking into a supermarket. Your average grocery store carries about 42,000 items as of 2014, according to the Food Marketing Institute, a grocery store trade group. Daily Table, on the other hand, is limited to 275 different products.

Right from the start, you can see all four of the store’s walls — it has a largely open plan, with shelves along the perimeter, but not rows upon rows clogging up the middle. The warm lighting and friendly staff make it feel a lot like a small Trader Joe’s without the trademark Hawaiian shirts.

Walmart might not be interested in milk only a week before its best-by date…But Daily Table is. It prices the food for quick sale — perhaps for half or two-thirds of what items would cost at a conventional store.

Though limited, the store’s shelving is similar to what you’d find at a health food store. Refrigerated shelves stock regular grocery items like milk, yogurt and hummus. Dry-goods shelves on the far side of the store have things like bread, canned vegetables, beans, pasta, and peanut butter. In the middle of the store, bins (both refrigerated and not) have meats, fish, and fresh fruits and veggies. The store has a Nutrition Task Force that reviews the nutritional value of each item before approving it to be sold. The task force looks for low sugar and salt content, high fibers, healthy fats, and other factors that would be considered part of a balanced diet. Candy, potato chips, and soda are not products you’ll see on Daily Table shelves, never mind hundreds of types of them. But all of this isn’t what really makes Daily Table a unique model.

A New Kind of Grocery Store

Rauch compares Daily Table to Goodwill Industries, except instead of running on donations of clothes and furniture, it gets food donations directly from producers or manufacturers. The donated food generally doesn’t have enough time before its stamped “best-by” date to be sold to a grocery store. For example, Walmart might not be interested in milk only a week before its best-by date, or a canned good four months before.

But Daily Table is. It prices the food for quick sale — perhaps for half or two-thirds of what items would cost at a conventional store. For example, Newman’s Own salad dressing has sold at Daily Table for $1.29 per bottle, compared to its $3.99 price at Stop and Shop (a New England grocery chain).

Both paid staff and a group of regular volunteers help keep the store running. After a shift, which tend to average three hours, volunteers get a $2 coupon to the store. That might not sound like much, but volunteer Mike Moloney says it goes a long way toward getting a good lunch.

“Whenever I shop there with the coupon, usually I’m able to get a full meal that you can heat up in the microwave, along with a salad and salad dressing for the $2,” Moloney says. “My bill’s always under $3 to $4, and I can get a bunch of stuff for a meal, so your dollar goes pretty far.”

Since Daily Table doesn’t give the food away, people don’t have to prove their income is low enough to get good food at a deep discount; they can just come in and shop. The original plan for the store had been to sell food that had passed its expiration date, since expiration dates often only indicate when a food is at peak freshness, rather than when it’s spoiled.

After extensive research on the community it was moving into, founders of Daily Table realized they couldn’t sell expired food, safe or not. Community members, mainly people of color, were concerned that being seen as people who would eat old food not sold to wealthier, whiter customers would only increase negative stereotypes. Giving space for people of all incomes to shop in a “manner that honors our customer, engendering dignity,” is part of Daily Table’s mission statement, so it pulled back on its plan to sell safe food past its recommended “best by” date. Even so, the store manages to recover about 10,000 pounds of food each week that conventional stores would have already trashed.

“It’s easy for people to go in and get things they need for their nutritional value or for their recipes. And they can do it quickly and within their budget. It’s really good for the community. It helps people to be able to have much healthier options.”

Good Food on the Go

While launching Daily Table, Rauch and his staff soon discovered a high demand for prepared foods for busy people on the go. So it began offering some as a way to both meet that need and to find a purpose for even more food headed for the landfill. At the back of the store sits a professional kitchen. Shoppers can watch through a large window as prep chefs take produce and meats to create the prepared meals that will be on the shelves later that day or the next. Instead of fried burgers, the chefs whip up soups, prepared salads, or a plate with meat and sides that can be heated up at home.

Here’s the best part: The chefs make use of food that might not be pretty enough to be sold fresh, like wilted greens or droopy broccoli, cooking it into something that is perfectly safe, healthy, and tasty.

Once or twice a week during his volunteer shift, Moloney often preps fruits and vegetables there while chatting with employees and volunteers.

“If you’re someone who’s on a lower budget and might not be able to afford healthier food, at those prices, [Daily Table is] such a lifesaver,” he says. “It’s easy for people to go in and get things they need for their nutritional value or for their recipes. And they can do it quickly and within their budget. It’s really good for the community. It helps people to be able to have much healthier options.”

A Successful Model

Since its launch in June 2015, Daily Table has been a resounding success. The store did a record $170,000 in sales in August 2016, an amount that may look paltry to big grocers. But, since prices are about half to a third of what conventional grocery stores charge, that would be equal to a regular grocery store selling $340,000-$510,000 based on less than one percent of its inventory. Daily Table’s basket/transaction size has increased since it opened by an average of 65–70 percent.

“Now why is that [increase] so important?” Rauch asks. “Because the vast majority of our [5,000 regular] customers are economically strapped. They don’t waste money on food. When they buy it, they eat it. So we are becoming a larger part of their diet. That’s the important thing.”

It’s not just sales that show that Daily Table is making a difference. Cathy Schoen is a full-time mom who has been volunteering at Daily Table since it opened. Her 17-year-old son has worked at the store for two summers and plans to continue when he starts college in Boston next fall.

“Volunteering for as long as I have, and spending time with the staff and other volunteers, as well seeing the same customers come in, day after day, week after week — and having conversations with them about what they’re doing, where the food is from, their concerns as parents — the general feeling that I get is that we’re doing something in a very small way right now,” says Schoen, “but it’s giving people the chance to make better choices. It gives them an affordable option to eat some different food than they might have normally because of the cost.”

Rauch plans to open more Daily Table stores throughout greater Boston and, eventually, in cities across the US: “We placed Daily Table in a food nutrition desert, in the sense of an affordable nutrition desert,” he says. “And you know, it turns out that almost everywhere in America is an affordable nutrition desert.”

Are you expecting a delivery? Mail-order meal kits are popping up everywhere, maybe even on your doorstep. Blue Apron and Hello Fresh might be the ones you’ve heard of, but there are dozens of similar plans out there.

The insulated boxes they deliver include enough goodies to quickly whip up a meal for two or four, and there’s no denying the childlike excitement of opening one up to see portioned, sometimes prepped, ingredients along with recipe cards, based on your dietary needs and preferences. Depending on the service, these kits cost from $8 to $12 per serving, which is cheaper than a typical meal of takeout or at a restaurant.

The meal-kit industry is growing fast: At the beginning of 2016, a market-research study by Technomic estimated that Americans alone, who then made up 40 percent of the $1 billion industry globally, would grow to become a multi-billion-dollar market share.

In the past year, Martha Stewart has come out with her branded box with Marley Spoon. Amazon has partnered with Tyson to create Tyson Taste Makers. The New York Times has its box, Chef’d, and in August, Whole Foods announced it would be entering the ring as well.

The perks are there — you don’t need to shop or plan, you don’t need to buy ingredients you’ll never use again, and there often isn’t much food waste at meal-time, since everything is perfectly portioned. Companies also claim these boxes cut down on overeating.

But does this model cut back on overall waste?

There haven’t been outside studies done yet, but a report Blue Apron released in August, comparing its food waste to that of grocery stores. Grocery stores waste 10.5 percent of food at the retail level, meaning the amount of food on the shelves that never makes it to a customer. In contrast, Blue Apron says it wastes 5.5 percent. Grocery store shoppers toss almost 24 percent of their food after buying it, while customers waste 7.6 percent of Blue Apron-sent ingredients.

The report doesn’t paint the entire picture when it comes to meal kits’ environmental impacts. Across the board, meal-kit customers have to deal with a lot of packaging. Each ingredient generally comes in a separate bag, plus the box, with its liners and plastic-wrapped ice packs. Some of the materials may be recyclable, and with some services, made of post-consumer waste.

It just depends on how much work you want to do to recycle them. Some items, like cardboard boxes, can be recycled in most residential areas, while others, like plastic baggies and insulating ice packs, need to be broken into composite parts or routed into a specialty recycling program.

Nick Taranto, the CEO of one mealkit company, Plated, told Fast Company that his goal is to make his company completely carbon-neutral, and it has already switched some packaging to recycled and renewable plant-based products. But it’s not easy.

“The challenge is that customers want perfect-looking ingredients with no packaging,” Taranto told the magazine. “This is, unfortunately, not realistic.”

Tristram Stuart thinks that food-box delivery has a lot of potential. He’s a British food waste expert, author, and activist. What he likes about the model is that a company can be certain of its demand on any given day or week, and need not waste food on displays. (For example, grocery stores usually carry much more produce than they can sell in order to make an inviting display.)

Stuart also likes that Blue Apron has measured its waste and reported on it, an action he sees few other companies taking.

Although he is “dissatisfied” with the amount of single-use plastic packaging meal kits use, Stuart does think the model may become more streamlined in the future, because of how specifically meal-kit companies can know their customers’ needs each week.

“Maybe it’s redundant for us to use our cars and our legs to go into supermarkets when delivery vans can come to our dwellings,” he says. “I personally am very excited for the potential for that different retail interface, and one of the reasons why … is that you can tackle food waste in that way.”

Whichever way you slice it, meal delivery kits have pros and cons.

Overall: Watch for Labor Issues

Since the meal-kit industry is growing rapidly, things are changing fast — and workers may suffer as a result. Be on the lookout for notices about workplace exploitation with your favored provider.

For example, Buzzfeed released an investigative report in October about the conditions inside Blue Apron’s largest warehouse, in Richmond, CA. The company has boomed in the past two years, going from 50 to 1,000 employees sorting ingredients and packing boxes for shipment at this refrigerated warehouse. In that time, it has been cited by OSHA for workplace safety violations like bad electrical wiring and icy freezer floors. Workers described the warehouse environment as “aggressive” and “cold as hell.” Police have been called for multiple bomb threats and reports of assault on premises. Blue Apron told Buzzfeed it has been working to address all of the violations and safety concerns.

Good Options

• Use whatever service you already have, and pressure them to reuse and recycle everything possible. Most sites we looked at (11 services) had at least some information about how to recycle each shipping or storage material.

• Find a local meal-kit provider,so your food doesn’t have to travel so far. Just Add Cooking sources from New England producers and delivers to the Boston area. Happy Food Company sources primarily from Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota, and sells in grocery stores around Kansas City, KS. Peach Dish sources from Georgia and the Southeast, delivers nationally.

• Choose one that donates meals to food-insecure families. One Potato donates a meal for every box ordered. It has provided job training to the unemployed in Los Angeles.

Better Choices

• Look for companies offering organic options. If you’re not buying organic, you may be getting a delivery of genetically modified organisms and pesticides packed up in your dinner.

Green Chef, for example, is a certified organic business, and 95 percent of the ingredients that it ships are certified organic, as well. Sun Basket, Terra’s Kitchen, and One Potato base their meal kits on organic products.

• Vegetarian and vegan meal kits contribute to animal welfare and generate fewer carbon emissions associated with meat. Purple Carrot offers vegan-only food to entice non-vegans into learning how to cook more healthy and sustainably. Green Chef also has vegan boxes. And Green Chef, Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, Sun Basket, One Potato, Terra’s Kitchen, and Peach Dish all have vegetarianboxes.

• Top of the heap: Green Chef, Sun Basket, One Potato, Purple Carrot, and Terra’s Kitchen use recycled packaging and offer organic and vegan/vegetarian meal-kit options.

Best Bets

• Subscribe to a CSA (community supported agriculture) produce delivery to support local farmers and cut down on packaging and price. Some CSA providers offer recipes as well. Find one at localharvest.org.

• Sign up for weekly recipes, available from many cooking sites. Whole Foods is one grocery store offering free meal plans. Select your food preferences and local grocery store at TheDinnerDaily.com, and it will send you a shopping list and menu for dinners for the week, including coupons for your store. The service costs $4-$6/month, depending on for how long you sign up.

• Buy things that won’t spoil in bulk, like dry and canned goods.

• Start a dinner co-op in your neighborhood, where a group of households take turns cooking for each other. You’ll get to taste different types of foods, save money, and build community. Get tips on how to start one in Green America’s article, “Cook One Meal, Eat for a Week.”

Forty percent of the food we grow in the US never gets eaten, it gets tossed out somewhere on the path from farm to table. That's billions of pounds of food that uses up land, water, fertilizer and pesticides, packaging, transportation, fuel, and more. For nothing.

During the presidential primaries, Matthew Bucher didn’t like what some candidates were saying about immigrants, refugees, and people of color. It frustrated him that people might take divisive language to heart. So he took his frustration and turned it into action.

Bucher is the pastor at Immanuel Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, VA, a small city about 20 miles from the West Virginia border. The town has been growing increasingly diverse in recent years, so Bucher felt a strong need for his church to reach out to new arrivals and to people who might feel targeted by unkind rhetoric against immigrants and people of color.

“It’s important [to take a stand against hate speech], because there has been so much verbal and sometimes visual hatred and distrust of folks who are perceived to be different or perceived to be not valuable enough to be in the neighborhood or to be in the country,” he says.

He proposed the idea to make an inclusivity sign for the church lawn to his congregation, and they readily agreed.

Congregation member and artist Melissa Howard hand-painted the sign, which reads “No matter who you are, we’re glad you are our neighbor” in English, Spanish, and Arabic, the languages most commonly spoken in Harrisonburg. Bucher enlisted translation help from Spanish-speaking church members and from Egyptian friends he’d made during a previous job in Egypt with the Mennonite Central Committee.

When a group of nearby Mennonite pastors wanted to take similar action in their communities, one had a friend turn the hand-painted sign into a colorful, reproducible one (pictured below, courtesy o Cate Matthews, Aplus.com). Immanuel Mennonite printed 200, then another 300, then a thousand. The church posted a PDF for free on its website, ready to print as a 24” x 18” sign. The signs spread through the town, spilling into other towns and then into other states.

Nobody expected what happened next—with no national campaign, the signs began popping up in neighborhoods across the country and even in Canada. People started requesting translations into languages to suit their own communities, so the website now boasts 11 more versions of the sign, including Somali, Hindi, German, Chinese, Swahili, Hebrew, and more.

Bucher says the sign on his church’s lawn reminds the congregation to live the inclusive values of Christianity.

“It creates an awareness that convictions that might start in the heart or in the brain need to be, to use a Christian term, ‘incarnated,’” he says. “They need to be lived into, with our feet, with our hands, with our voices, to make it very clear that we may hold a conviction or hold a belief, but how does that shape our action? How do we walk, each day, each week, with our neighbors and those who are strangers?”

Learn more about Immanuel Mennonite Church and download the high-resolution PDF of the tricolor welcome sign at immanuelmennonite.wordpress.com.

In November 2017, Pramila Jayapal won her Congressional election bid and became the first Indian-American woman in the House of Representatives.

Jayapal (D-WA) is also an immigrant: Her parents sent her from her home in India to the US to attend college when she was 16 years old. She stayed, got an MBA from Northwestern University, and launched a more than 20-year career in community organizing, working for fair treatment for immigrants and for humane immigration reform. In 2013, President Obama named her a White House Champion of Change.

Prior to entering the House of Representatives, Jayapal served in the Washington State Senate from 2015 to January 2017. Before that, she founded the Hate-Free Zone Campaign of Washington to counteract the rise in hate crimes against Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians in the aftermath of 9/11. Under her leadership, the campaign developed into OneAmerica, a national immigrant-advocacy organization.

Green America editor-in-chief Tracy Fernandez Rysavy talked with Rep. Jayapal about her history-making election win, the powerful positive impact immigrants have on America’s economy, and her recent actions fighting President Trump’s anti-immigrant executive actions, as well as her plans for moving forward.

Green America/Tracy Fernandez Rysavy: Thank you for your work on President Trump’s recent anti-Muslim and anti-refugee executive orders. You’ve called them “inhumane and barbaric.” Would you mind elaborating on your powerful statement?

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: Those are very strong words, and I want people to understand the degree to which these executive orders are not just a piece of legal paper but are tearing at people’s humanity. When you say “inhumane and barbaric,” they hopefully pay attention and recognize and think about what’s inhumane and barbaric.

We’re leaving kids with their faces pressed against the glass, waiting for their parents to come home and not sure they will. We’re leaving family members sobbing in airports, because the person they thought they were going to hug after three years apart is on a plane being deported somewhere else. It signals intentionality from the president. You can do unfair and unjust things, but if you do inhumane and barbaric things, it signals intentionality.

In 2013, as a WA State Senator, Pramila Jayapal spoke at a OneAmerica rally to protest Congressional inaction on fair immigration reform. Photo courtesy of OneAmerica.

Green American/Tracy: After Homeland Security started enforcing Trump’s executive orders banning refugees and Muslims from seven countries, refugees who had just arrived in the US thinking they’d been granted asylum were sent back to their home countries, some perhaps to dangerous situations. Before a federal court blocked the executive orders from further enforcement, you were at the forefront of stopping at least one plane about to deport refugees from taking off at SeaTac Airport. Can you tell us what happened?

Rep. Jayapal: I want to give credit to Courtney Gregoire at the Seattle Port Authority, Rep. Suzan DelBene [D-WA], Jorge Barón and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the ACLU.

The ACLU filed a temporary restraining order [on behalf of two individuals who were on a plane and about to be deported under the executive order]. I’ve been in this situation before [as an immigrant advocate]. They asked me to sign a brief on it, and I signed.

Within four or five hours, we got the judge to grant a TRO [temporary restraining order]. We had to get to the plane, which was ready to take off, to get the two people on it. We literally had to get it to come back to the gateway. Jorge Barón was holding the phone [at the end of the jetway] saying, “This plane cannot depart,” while we were showing [gate agents] the TRO to get the plane to come back. They had to re-attach the bridgeway, so the plane would not leave.

Suzan DelBene and I were trying to push this to Customs and Border Protection. They would not talk to us. So I said, “Either they come here, or I will go to them.”

They were in a secured area, so [the gate agents] said, “You can’t go to them.” But I said I was going to go through, and if that shut down the airport, that wasn’t my intent, but that’s what I would do.

So they got a bus and took us through the back recesses of the airport to the CBP area. We started banging on their door, because it was locked, until the director of the CBP came. We also got the governor [Jay Inslee] and [Senator] Patty Murray [D-WA] on the phone and demanded that these people be allowed to get attorneys. CBP was telling us they weren’t going to have attorneys. We did finally get the two off the plane, got them attorneys, and got them released.

We are still hearing so many troubling stories. Not only Muslims from those seven countries are being barred from entering the US, but a Kashmiri Muslim Olympian in India who was coming to the US to compete was told he couldn’t have a visa because of Trump’s immigration order.

There’s so much fear and so much in limbo. Legal permanent residents still being stopped, even though Secretary Kelly [of Homeland Security] said it’s in the interest of national security that they be allowed in the country. But there are reports of them being stripsearched or subjected to additional searching sometimes for hours. It’s demeaning and totally outrageous.

[Editor’s note: Rep. Jayapal and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) have introduced legislation that would guarantee access to legal counsel for anyone detained while attempting to enter the US. Hundreds were detained by Homeland Security at US airports immediately following Trump’s order. Many were held for more than ten hours without access to phones or the flood of lawyers who joined protesters at airports attempting to help them, according to the Los Angeles Times.]

Green American/Tracy: You’ve also co-sponsored legislation that would protect the DREAM Act, [keeping children who were brought into the US through no fault of their own from being deported]. This gets at my heart, as a mother. How hopeful are you that this legislation will get passed?

Rep. Jayapal: I really think there are a lot of representatives who believe we have to welcome these young people into the country. There’s bipartisan sponsorship for this bill in the House and in the Senate.

I wasn’t an original sponsor of the bill. A Democrat now has to bring a Republican to co-sponsor with you if you want to be on the bill. I was able to work with Dave Reichert [R] in Bellevue, and we signed on together. Congressman Newhouse [R] from Yakima also signed on.

I think the bill does have a real shot. There are the optics [to consider] for Republicans in deporting a bunch of kids who have never been to the country they may be sent to, many who are valedictorians.

The thing is, the bill is only temporary, only for three years—a first step. What we need to do is to fight for comprehensive immigration that keeps parents here, reform that keeps families together.

Green American/Tracy: There’s also these arguments that allowing Muslims and refugees into the US makes the country less safe, or that they’re taking away jobs. How do we respond to that, in a way that opens minds and hearts?

Rep. Jayapal All research shows that immigrants don’t take American jobs. They fill voids that American workers don’t want to fill, particularly in low-wage jobs. If we were to raise wages, we would find more people wanting those jobs. We need to level the playing field so no one is being exploited, and everyone has a fair shot.

As for security, this has been a red herring for a long time. The current ban doesn’t make us safer; it makes us less safe. I was talking to some very high people in the Iraqi government, and there’s tremendous fear that we are playing right into the hands of people wishing to do us harm, who one official said were “clapping and gleeful” because [Trump’s executive order] helps to drive a wedge between the people they are trying to recruit and the US.

"All research shows that immigrants don’t take American jobs. They fill voids that American workers don’t want to fill, particularly in low-wage jobs. If we were to raise wages, we would find more people wanting those jobs. We need to level the playing field so no one is being exploited, and everyone has a fair shot."

We’re locking out Iraqi translators who worked with American forces. We need them!

Here’s a more general comment: It has never been right—including during WWII, with the Japanese internment— to pit security against liberty. Benjamin Franklin said you can’t sacrifice temporary security for liberty; otherwise you’ll have neither.

Green American/Tracy: You’ve had quite a history of working on behalf of immigrants in the nonprofit sector. Why leave that and get into politics?

Rep. Jayapal: [laughs] I never thought I’d go into politics, but after 15 years of working to get the things done we need to do, I realized it’s important to have people from the movement, people who can help organize in politics, and to get immigrants, women, and people of color in politics—people whom you don’t have to explain everything to. It’s just another platform for organizing. And it’s important to have organizers in these platforms.

Green American/Tracy: What is empowering and what is challenging about being the first Indian-American woman in the House of Representatives?

Rep. Jayapal: It’s amazing to be the first, always. It’s empowering and challenging. A big challenge is, why are we only having it now? But it’s great to be one of only 11,000 who have served, to be the first, and to bring the perspective that we bring. It’s not just about what we look like and checking a box. But how do we share hearings, how do we look at legislation, how do we interact with our constituents?

It’s great to see people around the country, young and old, who are inspired to see someone they feel understands their perspective. It energizes them to see someone they can relate to. I get so much love from Indian-American women—and their husbands and fathers, too—who just see a different path for themselves. I take that really seriously. Every step I move forward, I want to make sure I bring people with me. What’s challenging: I wish there were more of us. We need more of us. I also think that it’s challenging because it’s very, very personal.

Green American/Tracy: I know you’ve gotten death threats for your proimmigrant activism in the past. Does that kind of thing still happen?

Rep. Jayapal: Not death threats, but I get nasty hate stuff. I try not to read comments at the end of articles; they’re just so horrible. You have to be strong. You have to pull yourself together because so many people are depending on you.

Green American/Tracy: You founded the nonprofit OneAmerica after 9/11 in response to a wave of hate crimes against the US Sikh and Muslim population. Do you feel we’ve gone backwards as a country in terms of prejudice since then?

Rep. Jayapal: In some ways we’ve gone backwards, in that the legislation and EOs are horrific and in some ways worse than what happened after 9/11. Maybe not as bad as 1942—it’s hard to know. 9/11 was a massive wedge in this country’s history, and in the name of security, we’ve allowed a lot of things to happen.

However, I was just saying in a speech this morning that after 9/11, we didn’t have a lot of people standing up for Muslims. It’s interesting to me now that the Muslim ban, more so than the orders on immigration, has been so resoundingly rejected by so many people— at protests, thousands of people at airports, on Twitter and social media. Trump has his base. Our base never showed up in the streets after 9/11 the way they are now. Communities do understand what the stakes are in a way that I haven’t seen for a long time.

Green American/Tracy: OneAmerica was originally called Hate-Free Zone, and you helped cities and towns declare themselves Hate-Free Zones after 9/11. That particular campaign seemed to taper off as, perhaps, post- 9/11 hate crimes died down. Is it time to bring that back?

Rep. Jayapal: That’s one of the things I want to do. We did a Hate-Free Zone press conference in December [declaring Washington a Hate-Free State]. We had some amazing signs we’d love to have people all across the country adopt.

Councils across the country have been passing legislation declaring themselves sanctuary cities or hatefree zones. It is coming back again.

We’re better, in part, because we’ve gone through it already, and we have this example of how we can win. We sued the Bush administration, and we stopped registration of Muslims and Arabs.

[Editor’s note: The Bush-era the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, or NSEERS, required men from 25 so-called “higher-risk” countries—all predominantly Muslim countries except North Korea—to undergo interrogation and fingerprinting before they could enter the US. In addition, up until 2003, they had to report to government offices after 30 days in the US and on a regular basis for additional screening. NSEERS was suspended in 2011 largely due to the controversy surrounding it, and the Obama administration shut down the database at the end of 2016. Not a single person was ever charged with terrorism under NSEERS.]

Green American/Tracy: You were one of the first in Congress to boycott Trump’s inauguration. Why did you feel that was important to do?

Rep. Jayapal: We were getting so many calls from people who were terrified about what their place was in the country, whether they’d even have a place. I felt it was critical that I was with them physically on that day that was bringing so much despair to many of my constituents.

I did a round table, and it was emotional. It was difficult but also uplifting. I just felt I could not stand there with a man who has been so divisive. We kept waiting for him to go from being the divisive candidate to being the unifying president, but he didn’t—which was incredibly disappointing. Maybe not surprising on some level.

I wasn’t going to stand on a stage with someone who has put a Breitbart News editor in his cabinet, along with putting in someone who has joked about the KKK and used the N-word as Attorney General. I couldn’t see standing there and allowing my presence to be taken as condoning that president. It wasn’t meant to be a boycott, just my decision, but Trump turned it into a boycott when he Tweeted insults at [Congressman and Civil Rights activist] John Lewis.

Green American/Tracy: What else can people do to combat hate?

Rep. Jayapal: First of all, we can’t have people getting tired or thinking their voice doesn’t matter. Stay engaged. Do what you need to do to sustain yourself, but stay engaged.

There are a lot of us who have friends or family members—I have them—who voted for Trump and live in battleground states that are important. We have to have conversations with people we know and love. Many of us don’t want to bring that to the dining-room table with family. We don’t want to drive a wedge. But this is personal and political. Talk about how you get beyond this hate.

Engage with people: “I love you, I know you love me, but what you’re doing and saying and the person you voted for is so deeply hurtful to me. If we love each other, we have to have that conversation. I’m asking that you please open your ears, and I will do the same.”

Also, we don’t want to be like the other side, who hates government and wants to dismantle it. Government works. We need to build our government properly. We need to have people who care in government. We need to support and amplify each other.