Rainforest Action Network

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Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is an environmental organization based in San Francisco, California, USA.

The organization was founded by Randy "Hurricane" Hayes in 1985.

RAN campaigns for the forests, their inhabitants and the natural systems that sustain life by transforming the global marketplace through grassroots organizing, education and non-violent direct action. RAN helped pioneer market campaigns against large multinational corporations in the 1990's, using grassroots activism and savvy media work to advocate for changes in environmental policies. Since then, RAN has had numerous successes in its Old Growth, Global Finance, and Zero Emissions campaigns against logging companies, banks, and vehicle manufacturers.

RAN relies on grassroots organizing, media stunts, and the occasional use of non-violent civil disobedience to pressure corporations into publicly adopting environmental policies that address issues ranging from deforestation to global warming. The organization has secured first-ever environmental policies from many of the world's leading banks and lumber retailers. Critics from the far left argue that the policies are unenforceable corporate window dressing while mainstream supporters see them as breakthroughs that have opened the floodgates for the greening of Wall Street and Corporate America. Radical right-wing front groups and think tanks accuse RAN of unduly coercing companies into capitulating.

RAN works in close alliance with an increasingly well-coordinated movement of NGOs (non-governmental organizations). Along with Global Exchange and the Ruckus Society, RAN played a central role in organizing the mass actions against the WTO (World Trade Organization) summit in Seattle in 1999. Although the organization once had RAGS (Rainforest Action Groups) around the country, today its operations are centralized in San Francisco, and contract activists are dispatched from there to crisis situations around the world.

The organization's board of directors is a who's who of the progressive movement's best and brightest, from James Gollin, a founding member of the Social Venture Network, to Jodi Evans, a founder of CodePink Women for Peace.

Since 2003, the organization has been the subject of a Republican-led Congressional investigation as to whether it should be allowed to keep its tax-emempt non-profit 501(c)(3) status. [1] RAN has been subpoenaed by the House Ways and Means Committee to hand over every document and piece of footage relating to all protests the organization has done since 1993 in order to investigate whether they should be entitled to the tax-exempt status. RAN to date has handed over hundreds of documents and video footage and are waiting to see if they will be called to testify.

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