March 10, 2003
There is no doubt that Gary Connolly, union steward of OPIEU Local 343, (Toronto Greenpeace Door Canvass) is up against it.
Sub-zero temperatures and biting winds on Dundas Street West continue to bedevil his down but not out picket of 13. Communication between the local and bossman Peter Tabuns is frostier than the outside winter winds, and although the little group has been locked out by Greenpeace for going on well nigh six months, only three newspapers have bothered to report on it.
Peculiar how only three media outlets, including the proudly anti-Greenpeace CanadaFreePress.com, have written about the canvass lockout.
In its 14-year history with the environmental giant, the door canvass has raised millions of dollars for GP, signing up countless thousands of new members, and went on to volunteer their time in hundreds of GP activities.
To me, the Greenpeace canvassers are something like the children of an ugly divorce. Everything was going along well when Mom and her six children were working like slaves for the family business of which Dad was the CEO. When Dad replaced Mom with a younger, high maintenance bedmate, the hard work of the kids that made him financially able to take on the new bedmate in the first place, is wiped out in a heartbeat.
The unchecked callousness of Greenpeace’s treatment of the canvassers, who make GP’s brass comfy life even possible, is stunning.
While the tiny 13-member local pickets in buffeting winter wind, Canadian Greenpeace bossman Peter Tabuns travels to an army base with NDP MP Libby Davies in Maryland, and contemplates, in quiet warm places, the possibility of reclaiming an east-end Toronto council seat in upcoming municipal elections. Possibilities of returning to politics escalated for Tabuns when his close comrade Jack Layton was elected new New Democratic Party Leader.
In the words of Toronto-based freelance journalist, Bruce Livesay, community legal worker and a member of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, "The nucleus of Greenpeace’s founders represented a stew pot of conflicting lifestyles--Quakers, former Sierra Clubbers, hippies, draft dodgers and socialists."
"An element of mysticism imbued the group, with the I Ching favoured reading material."
Livesay writes about "Herb Gunther, resident boy-genius of The Public Media Centre, a San Francisco-based advertising think tank."
"It was Gunther who helped design the advertising campaign that put Greenpeace on the map: the one featuring cute baby harp seals with the heading ’Kiss this baby good-bye’ that brought public attention to Canada’s seal hunt in the late ‘70s.
"Gunther argues that political movements go through phases: In phase one, the movement consists of a tiny group of creative activists; in phase two, it attracts public and media attention; by phase three the movement has become romanticized; in the final phase the honeymoon ends, where illusions have evaporated and the emperor is discovered to have no clothes."
Sarita Srivastva, hired by Greenpeace in 1991 as an ozone layer campaigner, quit in disgust.
"Men dominate Greenpeace. Things are geared towards a traditionally masculine way,"
she said on the way out. Wrong, Ms. Srivastva. It is not men but boys, the Peter Pans of the world’s oceans that dominate Greenpeace.
Tabuns and others may wonder why CFP finds itself on the side of Gary Connolly and his band of 13, who are afterall employees of an environmental group we have long perceived to be hypocritical.
CFP stands behind Connolly and Company because they are the underdog. We thought Greenpeace was for the underdog, and so did they.
Memo to the editors of daily newspapers and the electronic media who have abandoned Local 343: Your Greenpeace heroes are out there union bashing.
Only the Ontario Federation of Labour and other union locals can force Greenpeace to live up to its duly signed union contract with Local 343.
Sid Ryan and Buzz Hargrove: Now that union justice is calling, where are you?
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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