The Mother Ship Takes a Mortal Blow

by A. Lacey Phillabaum, Sr.

A month ago, there were 11 Greenpeace (GP) offices across the country employing over 400 people. Today there is one permanent office, and the staff has been trimmed to 65

The repercussions will resonate for some time to come. Imagine if the Sierra Club were to go belly up, or if suddenly Earth First! disappeared. Surely, no one anticipated such a dramatic corporate downsizing within the environmental movement. Belly up? Downsizing? The words seem hyperbolic when the gargantuan budget of Greenpeace USA has only been reduced this year from $29 million to $21. But in a larger context, the membership decline has been astonishingly steep, from 1 million to 400,000 in a matter of years. If it weren't for the dramatic staff reductions and the voluntary support of Greenpeace International, to the tune of $4 million, GP USA wouldn't be able to keep its doors open through the year.

A Piece of the Rock

From the days of its founding in 1971 by Canadian activists opposed to US nuclear tests, the rise of Greenpeace has been that of the underdog done good. The nascent Greenpeace tapped into the environmental sentiment of the time with campaigns to save whales and baby seals and stepped aside to let the money roll in.

The name itself struck a fancy, and multiple groups across this continent and the world over started using it independently of one another. What the fledgling groups lacked in organizational skills and management philosophy was more than compensated for by enthusiasm and passion. The structure of the world's largest environmental organization grew without rhyme or reason.

In 1987, the disparate groups in the US joined to form Greenpeace USA, which has a central board, voting members and is part of Greenpeace International. The international organization is headquartered in Amsterdam and has offices in 32 countries, the total budges of which reach $149 million. Today, holdout groups like Greenpeace Hawaii and Greenpeace London who buck membership in the larger organization, are rare..

That Greenpeace USA accepts no money from governments or corporations, and has only recently accepted foundation grants, speaks to the strength of the corporation. Much of that strength arose from the national canvass, which stood as the grassroots foundation of Greenpeace USA for 20 years.

Restructuring

As Greenpeace spokesperson Andrew Davies points out, there would be something wrong with an organization of activists if such monumental changes were met with silence. If controversy is the standard of health, then Greenpeace is certainly alive and kicking. Every aspect of the "restructuring," from process to implementation and justification is being hotly debated.

In addition to closing the field offices and firing the vast majority of its employees, Greenpeace USA is realigning its campaign priorities to conform to the priorities of Greenpeace International and to recapture the interest of contributors. The focus on toxics and ocean issues will be shifted to forests and climate campaigns, the campaigns of Greenpeace International. Financial operations will be tightly monitored, and fundraising will focus on the monthly giving program, soliciting major donors and keeping current members. In the recent past, the canvass and direct mail were the primary means by which GP USA solicited funds and new members.

Though Greenpeace USA originally announced that every regional office would be closing and only the Washington DC office would remain open, campaigners are continuing their work across the country. Davies reports that the campaigners in San Francisco, Seattle, Anchorage, Chicago, Boston and possibly New Orleans will stay put for now, as 34 of the 44 members of the campaign staff are being retained. Even the future of the DC office may be up in the air, according to Greenpeace USA board member Andy Mahler, who recognizes that the realm of possible political change coming out of DC is wedded to the current political structure.

In addition to these observable changes, Greenpeace USA claims that the restructuring will return the organization to the original bold, theatrical and principled action group it once was. That rhetoric doesn't sit well with Bradley Angel, a Greenpeace campaigner in the former San Francisco office mounting a campaign to reverse the board decisions, who notes that for anyone who's being paying attention, the toxics campaign has been engaged in just such actions. He calls the restructuring a return to "the days of white boys in boats."

Process

For the disgruntled staff of Greenpeace, the problem starts with the way in which the decision to radically alter the organization was made. The staff answers to the senior management, the management answers to the board and the board, according to Angel, should answer to the voting members. Any employee of Greenpeace who has been with the organization for at least six years and who participates in board elections every year qualifies as a voting member. At present, there are 172 voting members.

Board member Mahler attributes the board's decision to downsize to the "relentless logic of the numbers." The financial decline of Greenpeace has been well known, but the gravity of the situation was seriously underappreciated by the management. Greenpeace International, however, was keeping its own set of books and knew the size and trajectory of the decline. They pushed for stronger cutbacks to stop the hemorrhaging. Executive Director Barbara Dudley, who had taken hard hits for two previous spasms of downsizing which took the organization from 30 field offices to 11, refused. Only when Dudley resigned was a competent, experienced and objective analysis finally attained. At that point, the situation was dire and the time was long since past to develop possible new models for the restructured organization. Mahler says that as recently as June, such drastic changes seemed beyond the realm of possibility or necessity. Indeed, board chair Joanne Kliejunas assured staff in June that, "the board has no dream of eliminating the canvass." Not long after, under threat of not meeting payroll, the board began evaluating the scenarios and models for immediate change. It quickly became apparent to the board that there was truly only one possible direction to take, or else the doors of Greenpeace USA would close. At that point, says Mahler, it would have been "disingenuous" to elicit the input of the staff, as the size and scope of the problem required immediate action and the inevitable had to be accepted. Nonetheless, Mahler calls it the hardest decision he's ever had to make. In fact, he resigned earlier this month, citing the pain of having to make a decision when every available option violated principles he holds dear.

Results

While the organization cites financial problems and pressures from Greenpeace International as the reasons for the reduction of the toxics campaign, Angel and others see different motives at work. In fact, Angel calls the financial reasoning a "bald faced lie."

Angel claims that those on the board who didn't like the toxics work, in particular Mike Roselle (who resigned from the board in August), used the crisis as an opportunity to cut it. Mike Matthews, an ex-staffer in California, agrees, saying that "clearly political decisions" were at work, as the budgets of the forest and climate campaigns have been increased, while "much of the work with toxics and radioactive waste has been deprioritized." There are, in fact, 12 new positions in the climate and forests campaigns that won't be affected by the cuts.

No one denies that cutting the toxics campaign is a severe blow. The environmental movement has been negligent at best in its lack of support for environmental justice issues. In the case of the struggle against the dump at Ward Valley, Angel says, the board, "broke a solid commitment to indigenous people that we would put our lives on the line with them." In fact, Angel says "over my dead body will Greenpeace pull out of that fight."

Along with its commitment to environmental justice issues, Greenpeace was also forced to back out of its implicit commitment to the canvassers-the unsung heroes of the environmental movement who worked morning, noon and night to spread the word, door to door across America. Most are activists and volunteers first, and paid environmentalists a very distant second. Not surprisingly, the two weeks notice was a painful shock to many.

It seems counterintuitive that Greenpeace would close the canvass in the midst of a financial crisis. Mahler explains that, though the value of the canvass clearly exceeded the money raised, according to the canvass director every canvass office was losing money. The canvass reached out to literally every home, inviting grassroots involvement in activist issues in a way that few other tactics can. Mahler frankly states that for the average young person looking to get involved in efforts to protect the earth, that opportunity "may not lie with Greenpeace anymore."

The cutbacks have also had a disproportionate effect on the people of color on Greenpeace's own staff, who were primarily working on toxics and native lands issues. That fact is glaring and painful for everyone involved, as Greenpeace was one of the first environmental organizations to diversify staff and program work.

Crisis from Opportunity

What good can come of Greenpeace USA facing near bankruptcy? The environmental movement as a whole will be challenged to carry on the work Greenpeace started. Greenpeace is one, large, international group spread out, trying to cover environmental issues across the world. It won't be Audobon or the Sierra Club or the Nature Conservancy that will step up to fill Greenpeace USA's shoes. The US branch of the international organization has turned away from the uniquely American style of organizing which the radical environmental movement pursues in this country. The best we can hope for, in Greenpeace's absence, is a cooperative network of smaller, community-based groups. And this, in Mahler's mind, is a healthier political model for us to adopt.