Category: Corporate Social Responsibility

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Diversity, General Commentary, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

Starbucks has been getting a lot of flack since announcing its “Race Together” initiative. People are mostly either calling the company self-serving or questioning why a cafe chain would want to take on an agenda that seems so unrelated to its core business.

Now, I’ve certainly criticized companies for cause marketing that seems to have nothing to do with its purpose. For example, I’ve publicly questioned why Ford has chosen to support a breast cancer charity rather than something related to, say, transportation access.

And I’ve given space to Starbucks critics like Dean Cycon of Dean’s Beans, who says the coffee giant could be doing a lot more on sustainability, fair trade, and organic.

But I actually think this time Starbucks did something sensible and good, and I was really pretty shocked at the negative media firestorm.

Consider this:

  • In the post-Ferguson climate, where black communities are showing righteous anger about police violence, race is back on the agenda
  • Many legislative bodies are imposing onerous barriers to registering and voting, ostensibly to stop “voter fraud” (which is close to zero)—but whose deeper agenda seems to be denying the vote to people of color and those with low incomes
  • As a culture, when we want to talk things over, we do so over coffee—so what better place to start a national conversation?
  • Starbucks has thousands of locations in cities—Ground Zero for the recent race incidents; thus, the company has a vested interest in de-escalating tensions and opening dialog so those stores continue to thrive, in addition to the moral grounds it cites

While writing the message “Race together” on cups ends today, Starbucks continues to see fostering dialog on race as a priority. In a public letter yesterday to the company’s employees, CEO Howard Schultz wrote,

We have a number of planned Race Together activities in the weeks and months to come: more partner open forums, three more special sections co-produced with USA TODAY over the course of the next year, more open dialogue with police and community leaders in cities across our country, a continued focus on jobs and education for our nation’s young people plus our commitment to hire 10,000 opportunity youth over the next three years, expanding our store footprint in urban communities across the country, and new partnerships to foster dialogue and empathy and help bridge the racial and ethnic divides within our society that have existed for so many years…The heart of Race Together has always been about humanity: the promise of the American Dream should be available to every person in this country, not just a select few.  We leaned in because we believed that starting this dialogue is what matters most.  We are learning a lot. And will always aim high in our efforts to make a difference on the issues that matter most.

If this is self-serving, I say we need more of that kind of self-serving.

 

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Business Ethics, Business-general, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , , ,

This is big: The Guardian reports from Davos that Unilever is actively considering going for B Corp certification.

If you’re not familiar, B Corp is a legal definition of a profit-making corporation set up to promote environmental and social responsibility rather than a primary goal of maximizing short-term shareholder value and damn the torpedoes. In other words, it is legally allowed to pursue the greater good, even as most corporations are restricted by law and their charters. Maryland became the first of 28 US states to pass B Corp enabling legislation, in 2010.

It’s still a new movement. Only 1203 certified B Corps exist in the world, as of late January, 2015. Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s unit was one of the first B Corps, back in 2012—and Ben & Jerry’s CEO Jostein Solheim is leading the effort, apparently with strong support from Unilever’s sustainability-minded CEO, Paul Polman.

The B Corp certification process is long and arduous for an entity as complex as Unilever, one of the largest consumer products corporations in the world; it’s likely to take years. But just the act of engaging in the conversation is a game changer:

  • Unilever’s tacit endorsement of the B Corp movement confers legitimacy; if one of the largest and most successful business organizations in the world can embrace it , other companies will say, “perhaps we should look into this.”
  • The B Corp movement is still not very well known, compared to similar movements such as Fair Trade. With Unilever coming onboard, a lot more people in the business world will hear about it—and take it seriously.
  • It will provide Unilever with substantial marketing advantages for several years. If the company is able to harness them properly, it can expect to sway many now-neutral customers to Unilever’s vast portfolio of brands. (As a marketing and profitability consultant to green/socially conscious businesses and the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I can speak with some authority on this :-). )
  • Most importantly, it will show the entire business world that corporations don’t have to be rapacious; they don’t have to put short-term gain above the earth and its citizens (human and otherwise). It could even provide major leverage to overturn the body of corporation law that says corporations are legally required to put short-term profit ahead of all other considerations. And since most business people actually do want to do good in the world and many have felt burdened by this charter, this could create a seismic shift throughout the entire business community. (Some on the hard left will disagree that most business people actually want to do the right thing. Go ahead; the comments field is waiting for you.) Of course, there are a myriad of profit-making opportunities out there for activist companies willing to create and market goods and services that meaningfully reduce hunger, poverty, war, catastrophic climate change, and other suffering—you don’t need to be a B Corp for that. But as B Corp certification slowly becomes the default, it will speed that change.

In short, I’m heartened and excited by this news, and wish them success.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, General Commentary, language, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, propaganda, Psychology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , ,

This may be a new level of stupidity. Murdoch-owned publishing behomoth HarperCollins actually prepared and started to sell an atlas that does not show Israel. At all. Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank are there.

No big surprise, there was lots of pushback when word got out, and HC removed the atlas from circulation and said it would pulp any remaining copies. Even the UK Bishops’ Conference Department of International Affairs condemned the publication as a blow against peace in the region.

The company sheepishly withdrew, saying,

HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused.

But the company is talking out of two sides of its mouth. Earlier, as reported in the Washington Post, it tried to justify the omission:

Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, told the Tablet that it would have been “unacceptable” to include Israel in atlases intended for the Middle East. They had deleted Israel to satisfy “local preferences.”

HarperCollins has quickly found out that it’s also unacceptable to abandon truth in a volume that claims to offer

“in-depth coverage of the region and its issues.” Its stated goals include helping kids understand the “relationship between the social and physical environment, the region’s challenges [and] its socio-economic development.”

Ummm, hello, and just how do you intend to put the region in context if you ignore the most conflicted issue it faces? Do you really think students in Arab countries haven’t heard of it? Did you really think this would stay a safe little conspiratorial secret just for the cognoscenti?

HarperCollins would have been totally justified in marking the West Bank and Gaza as disputed territory held by Israel, following conquest. But there’s no dispute about Israel being a nation.

This is a time when we all have social media at our disposal. That means it not only should have been totally obvious that this would backfire, but HarperCollins had the tools at its disposal to make the governments demanding this absurdity to be the ones looking ridiculous. If any governments insisted on refusing entry to accurate atlases, the company could have had a skilled social media manager explain why HC would no longer sell atlases into these countries, and create a pressure movement both from outside the country and from those inside who recognize that not knowing geography is a handicap in the global economic arena, and the Gulf states would have lifted the restriction.

Instead, what HarperCollins has done is to eliminate its own credibility. It’s hard to imagine anyone in the future trusting any reference materials from this publisher. Blatant and deliberate repudiation of truth is not a recipe for success in the world of reference books—especially reference books about the world.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Peace and War, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On a LinkedIn discussion board, someone asked, “So, why has bettering the world become a mantra for a new generation of entrepreneurs?”

This sparked a very lively discussion, mixing the cynics and the optimists.

You can view this discussion here (you might have to join the group first).

My first comment was quick and straightforward, discussing my new work at Business For a Better World:

I’m 57 years old, been in business since 1981, and my business has *always* been about fostering a better world. This year, I took it further, beginning a campaign to show business how solving hunger, poverty, war, climate catastrophe, etc. is not only the right thing to do, but can be highly profitable (and we actually already have a lot of the technology to make it possible).

But as others responded, I felt a need to go deeper, and I want to share my responses to two of them with you:

Tim asked, “…If these entrepreneurs are so hot on giving to humanity, why not put their technologies in the public domain? There’s a topic for debate: Which is the better outcome, the Gates Foundation or Wikipedia?…”

Tim  – great question! The Gates example has always interested me, in that it follows the pattern of 100-150 years ago, when predatory ubercapitalists like Carnegie and Rockefeller began to seek out a higher purpose later in life and became uberphilanthropists–yes, some of Microsoft’s practices were quite predatory under Gates’ leadership. I can’t think of an equally prominent example in the years between the “Robber Barons” and Gates. (I also think Melinda may have had a lot to do with Gates finding HIS higher purpose–but he has fully embraced it and discovered it provides meaning in his life.) Most towns in my area of New England are still using little public libraries built with Carnegie money.

Warren Buffett is another very interesting example, but his choices and motivations, I suspect, were very different. Buffett never seemed to care personally about accumulating wealth to “better” his own life. He still lives in the simple ranch house he bought in the 1950s. And as far as I know, Berkshire Hathaway under his leadership was not a predatory company. It didn’t shock me when he gave away most of is fortune–to the Gates Foundation (which kind of brings this discussion full-circle).

But I propose that it is possible to be socially conscious from the get-go AND do quite well financially, and that getting wealthy is not a sin. Prominent examples include ice cream superstars Ben Cohen and Jerry Silverman, Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, Anita Roddick of The Body Shop, and many others. I suspect the Chicken Soup guys (Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen) are in this category; they do not shy away from the trappings of wealth–but they also find many ways to use their wealth to better the world. Jack I know for sure started from very humble beginnings; I have no clue about Mark’s early years, nor can I quickly find anything in public sources.

Jennifer commented, “…The world is in crisis – how do we milk it for all it has now people are focusing on the bad guys that have put the world in crisis. ‘We make the world seem like we care’ – new market. But hang on – ‘we kind of do care – well some of us anyway’ – but hang on ‘the global village concept doesn’t seem to be working’ – Ok; so now what?

Let’s make the world betterment program a thing for entrepreneurs – get rich while you increase people hopes even though those hopes are false…”

Jennifer  – Yours is one of several cynical posts in this discussion, but yours is ambivalent while the others are pretty much set in stone. So I choose to engage with you. I think we need to harness the cynicism and skepticism about business’ ulterior motives to create the action we want, despite our suspicion of their motives. For me, seeking personal wealth has never been as important as making the world better. My millionaire colleagues would laugh at my income. Let them laugh! As long as I can motivate them to make a difference.

I am personally very cynical about the ability to solve our biggest problems–hunger and poverty, war and violence, catastrophic climate change–based on the ways we’ve always done it. Too often, we’ve tried to motivate on guilt, fear, and shame–and it doesn’t work.

So I’m taking a leaf from the libertarians and ubercapitalists and attempting to motivate based on self-interest. If your goal is personal material wealth and I can show you how to realize that goal by seizing the opportunity to make money, and the work that governments and NGOs have failed to do gets done, then fine, take your fortune and go live in your big house. Think about a super-profit-driven company like Walmart: not exactly a tree-hugger hangout. But Walmart realized years ago that there was a lot of money to be made selling organic foods, low-watt lightbulbs and other green products–and a lot of money to be saved implementing green into its own operations, deeply. I have many issues with Walmart in other areas, but on the environment, I give them BIG props. Working from the profit motive, they have done more to spread green consciousness *and* green *practices* through society than I have in a lifetime of speaking and writing and consulting.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Business-general, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, language, media-general, Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

A libertarian participant on a LinkedIn discussion group posted,

how does business do anything to make you miserable ??

dont like their products then dont buy them

without biz making those things you would [be] naked growing your own vegetables in the wilderness

My response:

William: I know you espouse libertarianism but I don’t think of you as naive. I was once a member of the Libertarian Party, and still see a great deal of merit in libertarian approach to foreign policy as well as civil liberties; I would love to see Ron Paul as US Secretary of Defense, because if HE were willing to go to war, the situation must be dire indeed. But when you write,

You come across as VERY naive. Or are you pulling our collective (yes, a loaded word in libertarian circles) chain?

Consider…there are many corporations that do great things, create reasonably enjoyable workplaces, and work to heal the planet. BUT, worldwide, there are others that 1) create utter misery for their employees (think about the sweatshop workers in the factory that burned in Bangladesh a year or two ago); 2) pollute and destroy the neighborhoods they’re located in, causing severe adverse health effects for their neighbors and others; 3) rape the earth for their raw materials and then dump the toxic leftovers back on the poor, beleaguered planet, taking no responsibility for their actions.

You will say to #1 that no one forces people to work in slave conditions; they could just go off and start their own business if they don’t want to work for “The Man.” I did that, and from your ID line, it looks like you did, too. But that’s disingenuous. Not everybody can think through that alternative, not everybody has access to even a sliver of capital. If you’re making barely enough to keep your family from starving and from being thrown out of your one-room shack, even a few bucks will be too much.

I started my own business with $200. I was pretty poor at the time, but I did have the $200 (and even a bit more) in the bank. And I had to survive during the very lean start-up phase. At the time (1981), I knew almost nothing about marketing and was in a community that had little use for the service I was offering. I made $300 the first 6 months—before we moved to a more supportive community—and lived on a mix of rapidly depleting savings, odd-job income, and what my wife-to-be brought in from her meager job at a restaurant. But I had that luxury! I had a couple of thousand in the bank that I could draw from. Many people in developing countries, or even in our own inner cities and poor rural areas, do not. If they have no job and they start a business that isn’t immediately viable, how do they eat?

I would have more respect for the libertarian position if it accepted responsibility for #s 2 and 3. But libertarians discredit themselves with me when they claim that it’s their right to plunder the earth because they got there first, and that it’s perfectly OK to extract the resources, pollute and dump wastes just because of that arbitrary fact.I don’t object to profit; I make a chunk of my living writing and speaking about how to be a better capitalist, after all. But I have no respect for businesses that claim they have every right to privatize their profit while externalizing—dare I say socializing—the harm. A true libertarian would see overharvesting and pollution/dumping as theft from others, forcing them to incur economic costs to clean up someone else’s mess. But somehow, the libertarians I know sound a theme more like “we got here first, too bad for the rest of you, and the mess is not our problem.”

Libertarians often cite economist Milton Friedman on the social responsibility of business to maximize profits. However, even Friedman saw a need to limit business. I went back to the source: his New York Times Magazine essay of September 13, 1970. And to my amazement, I found that Friedman added some major conditions to his remarks. Here’s what he actually said:

In a free-enterprise, private-property sys­tem, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct re­sponsibility to his employers. That responsi­bility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while con­forming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. (emphasis added)

At the very end of the essay, he quotes from his own textbook and repeats the qualifier, phrased a bit differently:

“there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use [its] resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” (emphasis added once more)

To put it another way, in this essay, Friedman was totally willing to concede that self-rule doesn’t always work in the business world. Government is needed to keep business from exercising its self-interest at the expense of others’ self-interest and the wide society’s interest. Whether it’s a retailer avoiding the cost of health insurance by paying its workers so little that they qualify for government assistance or a manufacturer spewing poisons into the air and water and land, expecting that the government—in other words, the taxpayers: we the people—to clean it up,  I would definitely count as “deception or fraud”: the externalizing of responsibility for the mess.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Green Marketing, Marketing Trends/News, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , ,

A new report confirms (yet again) what I’ve been saying for years: consumers flock to companies that actively support companies with a clear environmental agenda. A survey of 31,000 consumers around the world reported:

• 21 percent of American consumers often or always bought a brand they perceived as more responsible over another in the past year.
• Factoring in respondents from other countries, that figure rises to 34 percent—that’s more than one in three
• 67 percent would like to make purchasing decisions based on social responsibility in the future.

And it’s not just consumers; it’s employees, too. Another study notes that an astonishing 71 percent of Americans would choose employment by “a company whose CEO is actively involved in corporate responsibility and/or environmental issues.”

Thanks to envirojournalist Debra Atlas for pointing me toward both these studies.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, localism/locavore, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

A front-page story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that a court ordered a utility company to buy the organic grass-fed cattle farm it ruined by driving a powerline through it. Nice to see David beat Goliath every once in a while.

Hmmm. Maybe this strategy can be applied (at least in Minnesota) by organic farmers suffering the double indignity of losing their organic status because of contamination by GMO plants from nearby farms, and then getting sued by Monsanto for illegally using the seed they didn’t want in the first place.

But a far better solution, of course, is to develop projects in ways that don’t threaten organic farms. We need more of those, not less.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language, Marketing Trends/News, poverty, privacy, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

Very interesting post on Business Week: “Can Small Businesses Start a Gay Rights Movement in Mississippi?”

I totally support nondiscrimination in any public accommodation or retail setting—and I’m delighted to see the “We don’t discriminate. If you’re buying, we’re selling” campaign in Mississippi. But at the risk of alienating some of my friends, l think service businesses–especially values-based ones—are a different case. Before you jump all over me—read the language I send to new prospects for my marketing and consulting services:

Please note that I reserve the right to reject a project if I feel I’m not the right person for it. This would include projects that in my opinion promote racism, homophobia, bigotry or violence–or that promote the tobacco, nuclear power, or weapons industries–or if I do not feel the product is of high enough quality that I can get enthusiastic about it.

Notice that this language doesn’t discriminate against a person or class of people–but it certainly does discriminate against a set of beliefs.

Now, if I reserve that privilege for myself, how can I possibly justify withholding it from someone else who runs a service business and has different values than mine?

Also, there’s a provider quality issue. If I were forced to write a piece of marketing copy for a product whose values I despised, I would do a terrible job. Even if I consciously tried to do my best, it would come out shoddy and insincere, because I wouldn’t believe in what I was promoting. By the same token, I can’t imagine why a same-sex couple would WANT to hire a homophobic wedding photographer (one of the examples cited in the article); the pictures will be terrible.

If you’re renting a room, buying a sandwich, riding a bus, patronizing a theme park…yes, you should have the right to be served. But if a service provider is being asked to use specialized skills to support a cause that service provider finds morally repugnant, I’m not at all sure we should coerce that behavior.

Please comment below. I’d love to get some good dialog going on this.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environmenl, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles Tagged with , , , , ,

In light of Michelle Obama’s new initiative on drinking more water, a reporter wanted to know the best bottled waters.

I immediately wondered why the reporter saw bottled water as the only choice to drink more water, and this is what I wrote:

I do hope your article offers the non-bottled alternative of filtered tapwater. It is far superior–at least for those of us who live somewhere the water is drinkable–in environmental and social impact and cost.

Enviro

Water bottling not only wastes the oil used to make the plastic, as well as the energy to power the bottling plant, it also contaminates and renders unusable two to three times as much water as is in the bottle. And quite frankly, I don’t think we have that water to squander. Our grandchildren might forgive us for squandering the oil, but they won’t forgive us for leaving them without enough usable water.

Economic

I’ve seen estimates that people can save $1400 a year per person drinking tap instead of bottled.

Social Justice

In far too many locations, water (and soda) bottlers draw down an area’s water reserves with little or no compensation to the locals–who are often economically disadvantaged. Sometimes they are left withinadequate supplies for their own farming, etc.

And did you know that a number of prominent bottled water brands are nothing more than filtered tap anyway? Both Green American and Corporate Accountability International have long-running campaigns in favor of nonbottled water. You can find lots of information on their websites.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My friend Tad Hargrave wrote a great post about magnetic marketing, in which he claimed:

There are only three types of potential clients you will ever experience: responsive, neutral and unresponsive.

  • Responsive people will come across your work and light up. They’ll get excited and want to sign up and hire you after learning a little bit about you. They’ll be curious, want to know more and ask you a lot of questions. These people are a ‘yes’ to what you’re up to in your business.
  • Neutral people will listen to what you have to say but they won’t react much. They’ll sit there in your workshop politely and take it in. But they won’t sign up for much. They may be cordial and listen respectfully but they for sure won’t seem ‘into it’ like the responsive people do. These people are a ‘maybe’ to what you’re up to in your business.

  • Unresponsive people will actively pull away, show disinterest, might even be rude. These people are a ‘no’ to what you’re up to in your business.

I think there’s a big difference between those who are unresponsive and those who respond with hostility. So I posted this comment:

Let me “bend the magnet” a bit more and take your analogy to its logical fourth category: those who are actively opposed to what you’re doing. You and I as marketers in the green/socially conscious/cool and groovy/progressive activist space will not only attract the cool and groovy people–we’ll repel the Hummer-driving, cigar-smoking, GMO-loving executive at Monsanto or the local nuclear power plant to the point where they might actually speak out against us–just as WE have spoken out against THEIR actions.

And I’m fine with that. Quite frankly, they are a way to gain the attention of those people in in the uninvolved category, who may be within their orbit but have never thought about these issues. They’re a doorway into media coverage, and give us legitimacy in the eyes of reporters (and their readers) because these big important corporations are actually acknowledging and discussing out issues. And every once in a while, lightning actually strikes and some of them start examining the issues and taking action on our side of the fence (as Walmart has—for its own profit-driven reasons—on sustainability, for instance).

I think of my experience as one of 1414 Clamshell Alliance members arrested on the construction site of the Seabrook, NH nuclear power plant, trying to keep the plant from being built, back in 1977. New Hampshire’s governor at the time, Meldrim Thomson, and William Loeb, publisher of the largest newspaper in the state, the Manchester Union-Leader, called us “the Clamshell terrorists.”

Yet not only had we all pledged nonviolence, we had all actually undergone training in nonviolent protest and joined small, accountable, affinity groups (which continued to function after our arrest); it was a precondition for participation.

Governor Thomson kept the Clamshell prisoners incarcerated in National Guard armories around the state for about two weeks. When we emerged, we found we’d:

  • Birthed a national safe-energy movement based in nonviolent civil disobedience
  • Rapidly and throughly raised consciousness about nuclear power plant safety (and the lack thereof)
  • Created a climate where, unlike previous accidents that had gotten little or no coverage, the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979 (and later catastrophic failures at Chernobyl and Fukushima) became front-page news.

Seabrook did go online, so we failed in our immediate goal. BUT in an era where former President Richard Nixon had called for 1000 nuclear power plants in the US, Seabrook was the last nuclear power plant to go on line in the US other than Shoreham, NY, which was shut down after preliminary low-power testing and never supplied the electrical grid. I believe the opposition of Thomson and Loeb to our movement helped make it a mass movement, just as the overreaction against civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protestors helped those movements gain strength.

What do you think—do we need our enemies as much as our friends? Can we “ju-jitsu” their hostility into a benefit for our cause? Do you have a great example, either form your own work or something you’ve heard about somewhere? Please leave your comment below.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail