The Best in a Sea of Phonies

Here's this year's list of ten groups that deserve your support. As always,

we encourage you to pass up the outfits with big staffs and excessive overhead in favor of these lean and hardy battlers for the public good. With one exception, the Mintwood Media Collective, all have 501(c)(3) tax exempt status. In the case of Save Our Forests, donors should contact McFetridge on the question of tax status. Buffalo Field Campaign, PO Box 957, West Yellowstone MT 59758; 406-646-0070; www.wildrockies.org/buffalo/. The conquest of the American West started with the extermination of the buffalo. That slaughter continues, as the Department of Interior and Montana Department of Livestock pursue its policy of capturing and killing all buffalo that leave the boundary of Yellowstone National Park, supposedly to keep the animals from spreading brucellosis to cattle. During

winter the buffalo often migrate down out of the deep snows of Yellowstone onto national forest lands in search of forage. When they do, they enter a free-fire zone. The science is fuzzy, but that hasn't slowed the slaughter.

But the Buffalo Field Campaign has. This courageous group sets up camp in a cabin in West Yellowstone. Each morning during the winter months, they strap on cross country skis and enter Yellowstone Park in search of buffalo. Their objective, often at risk

of arrest or injury, is to guide the herds away from the capture pens and the killing zones. Over the past three years, the hardy souls at the Buffalo Field Campaign have saved the lives of hundreds of buffalo. [Ed. note: ETS! co-founder John Reese has volunteered in the field with these folks.]

Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, PMB 297, 177 U.S. Hwy #1, Tequesta FL 33469; 800-973-6548; www.cuadp.org/. Headquartered in the state of Florida, Citizens is run by Abe Bonowitz, who

has been working to educate the public about human rights problems, in particular the death penalty, for over 12 years. Bonowitz gained first hand

knowledge of the issue by working in the death penalty section of the Ohio Public Defender Commission, with murder victims' family members, and with death row inmates in Alabama, California, Florida, Ohio, Texas, and other states as well. Glen Canyon Action Network, PO Box 466, Moab UT 84532; 435-259-1063, fax 435-259-7612, www.drainit.org. Before David Brower died, he passed the torch to two of his feistiest followers, David Orr and Owen Lammers, who have made it their mission to complete the task Brower had assigned for himself: draining Lake Powell and

restoring one of the world's great rivers, the Colorado. Orr and Lammers are militant, creative, and have an impressive track record of victories. In little over a year, GCAN has already begun to work on a number of fronts, promoting river restoration throughout the Colorado River basin. Homes Not Jails, PO Box 390351, Cambridge MA 02139; 617-287-9494; red@iww.org. Homes Not Jails was formed in 1992 to advocate for the use of vacant and abandoned housing for people who are homeless. To demonstrate the availability of vacant housing and to promote proposals to utilize the housing, HNJ publicly occupies vacant buildings. These are civil disobedience actions. Over the years, there have been many such occupations. HNJ simultaneously opens up vacant buildings and helps people who are homeless move in. Since 1992, hundreds of these "squats" have been opened. Many have lasted for years, and recently Homes Not Jails filed for legal ownership (after paying the property taxes) of a squat opened in 1993--a process known as adverse possession. HNJ has branches in San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, DC. Kensington Welfare Rights Union, PO Box 50678, Philadelphia PA 19132; www.libertynet.org/kwru; 215-203-1945, fax 215-203-1950. One of the best and most deserving grassroots organizations in the county, KWRU is a multi-racial organization of, by, and for poor and homeless people. KWRU is dedicated to organizing welfare recipients, the homeless, the working poor, and all people concerned with economic justice. KWRU is mainly based in Kensington, a neighborhood in North Philadelphia. Once a center for manufacturing, Kensington is now the poorest district in the state of Pennsylvania. Tent cities, housing takeovers, and free food distribution are just a few of the facets of this fight. Save Our Forests and Ranchlands, PO Box 475, Descanso CA 91916; 619-445-9638; www.sofar.org. This indomitable little outfit, run by Duncan McFetridge, a carpenter in the Cuyamaca mountain town of Descanso, in eastern San Diego county, has single-handedly beaten back the real estate industry and the Farm Bureau's plans to destroy the back country that is one of the natural glories of southern California. Across nearly a decade, SOFAR has achieved victories wealthier groups would never have dared reach for. Mintwood Media Collective, 1858 Mintwood Place NW #4, Washington DC 20009; 202-232-8997; fax 202-232-8340; info@mintwood.com. Adam Eidinger had a cushy job working for a DC PR firm that handled accounts with Democratic Party bigwigs. Then Eidinger decided to lend his hand to the protests against the IMF. He was later one of those arrested during the raid on the puppet factory in Philadelphia. So Eidinger lost his

job. But he came up with a great idea: start a PR firm to handle media relations for progressive groups and direct action protests. Through the A16 media working group, Mintwood members developed a comprehensive media strategy that succeeded in placing stories on the front pages of major newspapers, on local and national television and radio, and Internet information sites worldwide, as well as writing articles for publication. Nonprofit Watch, PO Box 53238, Washington DC 20009; 202-318-1106; www.nonprofitwatch.org. Why do nonprofits beholden to corporate interests get away with sell-out activities while beguiling some folks to fork over charitable dollars? Because they're not watched closely enough. But things are changing. Nonprofit Watch is a tenacious raker of muck led by Bernardo Issel. Even in

its formative stage, this gutsy outfit has done a lot, generating in-depth reports on how certain major nonprofits are structurally strait-jacketed by

Wall Street lawyers, corporate executives, and wealthy elites. Nonprofit Watch is too threatening to gain non-profit support. It has exposed the self-serving nature of the Environmental Defense Fund's global warming policy. It has also revealed how student anti-sweatshop groups were

being undercut by sweatshop-funded human rights outfits, such as the Robert

F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. Nonprofit Watch especially needs help from outside the charmed circle of the privileged and from progressives willing to tithe but not bind. Voices In The Wilderness, 1460 West Carmen Avenue, Chicago IL 60640; 773-784-8065; fax 773-784-8837; www.nonviolence.org/vitw/. Every third day since the so-called ceasefire, US and British planes have bombed Iraq, targeting water treatment facilities, power plants, and dams. These attacks rarely rate even a mention in the corporate press. And the crippling sanctions on the nation have begun to resemble a kind of genocide, with thousands of Iraqi children, the infirm, and the elderly dying every month. One of the few groups in the US that has spoken out against this barbaric policy is the Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness.

In 1996 Voices sent a letter to Janet Reno, expressing its intention to travel to Iraq in violation of US laws. They announce every delegation by having a press conference or through press releases. Upon return, delegation members have also notified customs officers that they have traveled to Iraq illegally. In December 1998, the Department of the Treasury sent a pre-penalty notice to four Pacific Northwest members and to the campaign, in which they proposed a fine of $163,000 for delivering "medicine and toys." One member had her passport seized, and others their videotapes and films confiscated. Western Land Exchange Project, PO Box 95545, Seattle WA 98145-2545; 206-325-3503; fax 206-325-3515; www.westlx.org/. Over the past eight years, hundreds of thousands of acres of Forest Service

and BLM lands have been turned over to industry in a little-known program of land swaps. Although this should have prompted widespread outrage from the DC environmental community, all too often mainstream environmentalists,

from the Nature Conservancy to the Sierra Club, have sidled forth to defend

these deals. But there is at least one group with principle. Western Land Exchange Project was founded by former Earth First!er Janine Blaeloch, who serves as

the project's director. Large-scale land exchanges are a growing phenomenon

around the West, many involving huge timber, mining, and development interests. Blaeloch's interest in federal land exchanges began in August 1996, when she was asked by citizens of Greenwater, WA to evaluate the noisome Huckleberry Land Exchange between the US Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser. Public lands to be traded consisted of mature native forest and some old growth, while about 90% of the corporate lands had been clearcut or consisted of "rock and ice" and non-forested, high elevation areas. Blaeloch filed an administrative appeal of the swap and later, along with the Pilchuck Audubon Society, a suit against the Forest Service to stop the exchange. They were unsuccessful in federal district court, and the Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser exchanged deeds to the land in the spring of 1998. In May 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the federal court's ruling and remanded the exchange decision back to the Forest Service.