Why is the outdoor retailing giant REI being hammered? What bad thing could this friend of 'muscle-powered-recreation' possibly have done to cause Earth Firsters, Sierra Clubbers, sportsmen's groups, religious leaders, typical Joe's and even a retired National Park Supervisor to actively picket REI stores? And why are REI members all around the West tearing up their membership cards and returning them with letters of protest?
We're doing it because REI has sold out. Or more accurately, because they've bought in! Bought in to the vision that there are enormous profits to be garnered by allowing public lands to fall prey to Industrial Strength Recreation.
REI has joined the veritable stampede of corporate interests racing to stake their claims on the new wreckreation frontier. While the vast majority of these modern day forty-miners are resort developers, concessionaires and those who make, use or sell 'moto-thrill-craft,' there are a few exceptions. Most notable amongst these are REI and the Walt Disney Company.
While REI is by no means the worst villain amongst this unholy cabal, they are amongst the most vulnerable. The other companies with whom REI and Disney are in cahoots, companies such as Harley Davidson, Outdoor Marine Corporation and Marathon Coach care not when a bunch of environmentalists say: "We won't buy motorcycles, outboard motors, or RV's from you!" But things get more interesting when thousands of us tell REI, "We're going to buy backpacks and hiking boots elsewhere until you quit cavorting with our enemies!"
Since Oct. 10, 1998, seven REI stores have been picketed by locally organized protests in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. The most recent of these was held on October 31 in Seattle, where activists spent a rainy Saturday marching outside REI's flagship store, handing out literature and telling their story to the media.
REI's version of the story, as told in their news release was: "because REI supports the concept of user fees, we've been targeted for the protest."
REI's right, we targeted them, in part, because of the user fee issue. But, we did not target them because they support the "concept" of user fees. We targeted REI because they helped create the user fee program, because they helped sell it to reactionary Congressmen who eventually authorized the program, and because REI is actively marketing and promoting the program to the American public.
During one Boise, Idaho TV station's coverage of the October 10 protest, the local store manager spoke REI's "we support the user-fee concept" message while the following text scrolled across TV screens in thousands of homes:
"We are proud to say the American Recreation Coalition (ARC) and the Recreation Roundtable -a related group of recreation-industry CEO's - have invested heavily in staff and member time in helping the federal agencies covered by the fee demonstration program with project-level and national support and advice on sound fee programs. We have arranged for top marketing and communications executives from Disney, REI and other companies to work with the Enterprise Forest fee team in the design and implementation of that project; we have assisted more than a dozen additional Forest Service fee sites with specific communications efforts, enabling them to reach the general public and likely visitors with fee program information prior to arrival."
That was Congressional Testimony spoken by ARC's President on February 26, 1998. It would appear someone wasn't quite telling the truth.
If there remains any doubt that REI and Disney are the actual perpetrators of the Recreation Fee-Demo Program then consider the following quote taken from a recent letter to Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman from the Recreation Roundtable:
"We are very pleased that the National Recreation Fee Demonstration, which is the direct results of our efforts…"
That letter was signed by REI's Chairman of the Board, and by top executives from Disney, Harley Davidson, Outdoor Marine Corporation, Marathon Coach and the other recreation industry powerhouses who make up ARC's Recreation Roundtable.
REI is being hammered by environmentalists and non-motorized recreationists because it is selling the environment down the river while pursuing an agenda designed to facilitate maximal sales of recreation products and services. We have not called for a boycott of REI over the user-fees issue alone. We're doing so because REI is adversely meddling in a wide range of public land issues of critical importance to the preservation of wildlands and Wilderness values.
This summer REI worked with Senator Slade Gorton to sneak an anti-wilderness rider onto a "must pass" budget bill. REI is currently brokering highly controversial compromises with the motorized recreation community on the new Continental Divide Trail. REI and the other Recreation Roundtable members regularly meet with top level government officials to develop national policies and strategies that affect all Americans, but include not one representative of the public weal.
And finally, we are hammering REI to commemorate their being granted Vice President Al Gore's "Golden Hammer Award for taxpayer savings and government efficiency." As part of Gore's "Re-Inventing Government" program, in which federal agencies are taught to act like Multinational Corporate Thugs, the Seattle based Federal Outdoor Recreation Information Center was relocated from public facilities into REI's store. The new information center has been situated in the most inaccessible recesses of the second floor ensuring that anyone coming to purchase a user-fee permit must first traverse the entire store. For REI, the benefits of this private/public partnership are obvious. The user-fee program brings in thousands of new customers each month, customers who came to purchase a permit and picked up a fleece or tent along the way.
As the recreation gold rush begins, companies such as REI are cutting deals with corruptible politicians and avaricious bureaucrats. Everyone in these backroom meetings understands that there are enormous profits to be made through commercializing, privatizing and motorizing America's public lands.
The reason we are picketing REI, is to hurt them financially. If we can remove the profit motive from public land management, then we stand some small chance of protecting our public lands from the hostile takeover plans of corporate raiders and guileful carpetbaggers.
Phone: Michael Collins, REI Public Affairs (206)395-5956
Write: Wally Smith, Chief Operating Officer,
PO Box 1928,
Sumner, WA 98390-0800
Scott Silver, Executive Director,
248 NW Wilmington Avenue, Bend OR 97701
Phone (541) 385-5261 E-mail: ssilver@wildwilderness.org