NAWLA’s members include over 650 U.S. and Canadian lumber and building material companies, including the timber beasts Weyerhauser, Simpson, Canfor, Cedar Creek Lumber, and International Paper. Most of the members will be present and we will hold them accountable at their trade show in downtown Chicago, October 21-23, 2004 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel located at 151 East Wacker Drive. For 112 years , NAWLA has promoted and its members have distributed wood products that threaten our last remaining pristine, rare, and endangered forests. Distributors are companies that buy products directly from logging companies and mills for resale to remanufacturers and retailers. Distributors play a ‘hinge’ role by telling the logging companies and mills what to produce and by telling retailers what to sell. In short, NAWLA helps distributors finance the sale of and find buyers for our forests to make more money selling more forest destruction (30 billion dollars annually). NAWLA members do not inform their customers that these products endanger forests; they do not even make inquiries of their suppliers concerning the environmental impacts of these wood products. NAWLA’s role is to aid their members in addressing and solving common industry challenges such as trade and environmental regulations, tax law, transportation, e-commerce and technology, and educational programs. Their biggest aid comes in the form of political contributions to Republicans that directly influences federal forest policy. These contributions have shaped a U.S. forest policy resulting in total net lossess to taxpayers from national forest logging of a billion dollars annually since 1997 and the elimination of more than 95% of native forests that were standing as of 1800 in this country. When asked about sustainability, NAWLA stays true to the greenwashing line: “Our information IS complete. We ARE sustainable!” If you believe that tree farms are the air-scrubbing saviors of this planet, that native people who are tricked into signing away their land deserve to be evicted from ancestral homes by violence, or that folks who want unions are shiftless whiners with nothing better to do, then NAWLA IS telling the truth. If, on the other hand, the sound of a tree being ripped out of our planet’s living flesh, or the cries of already oppressed peoples being bled to increase corporate power, makes you sick and enraged, you are not alone. We will converge at NAWLA’s trade show to expose the role of NAWLA in the global destruction of endangered forests and indigenous communities. We demand that NAWLA stop buying, selling, and logging endangered forests worldwide. This includes no longer logging in the boreal forest in Canada, U.S Public lands, and spotted owl and mountain caribou habitat in British Columbia. We demand that NAWLA stop their unsustainable and unfair labor practices. NAWLA boasts that it has helped to create the world’s “most efficient distribution system” for the building and construction materials market. Measured by market share, the power of NAWLA’s members is huge and they can turn the distribution “channel” away from endangered forests towards ecologically sound building and construction materials. We demand that they do just that. Public outcry has already prompted eight of the top U.S. Do-It-Yourself retailers to commit to phase out wood from endangered forests. Golden State Lumber, the 7th largest wood distriubtor in the West, is the first to make the same committment. Why not NAWLA and their members too?
Learn how to get plugged in by calling or emailing karen at (360)223-1794 or bhamrage (at) riseup.net
(360) 223-1794. a