Protest Dow Chemical

Challenge Dow’s Exploitation of Global Charity Event

Show up and speak out Wednesday, August 1, 2:30 pm, in San Francisco

Dow Chemical is spending $10 million to link its name to the Blue Planet Run – a worthy global awareness and fundraising project focused on providing clean and safe drinking water to people around the world. Dow is turning this well-intentioned “around-the-world relay run” into its own publicity stunt to convince the public that the corporation cares about clean water, the earth and human health.

Please join us to support the Blue Planet runners and tell them the truth about Dow when they pass through San Francisco on Wednesday, August 1, stopping for a public event at 3 pm, across from One Market Street. Public interest group members are joining Pesticide Action Network, Amnesty International, Dow Accountability Network, Association for India’s Development, Students for Bhopal and others.

Join a peaceful teach in: Laura Baldez laura [at] panna.org Sign up us as soon as possible to join us August 1. http://action.panna.org/event/index.jsp?event_KEY=29263&t=actionTemplate.dwt#signUp

The Blue Planet Run is an important cause: clean drinking water is a serious global problem, and we wish the project all success. Unfortunately Dow’s support of the run is linked to its massive “Human Element” advertising campaign, an aggressive attempt to re-brand Dow as a green and humane company. Dow’s ads stand in stark contrast to the real impacts of the world's largest chemical company, and tarnishes the Blue Planet Run.

Our message is simple: “Clean water YES! Dow NO!” We support the runners in their effort and the cause of clean water, but want Dow to make a 180-degree turn in its behavior:

Tell Dow:
• If you really care, clean up your own polluted water around your plants! Dioxin is deadly.
• Clean up the water in Bhopal and take care of the victims!
• Stop making chlorpyrifos and other pesticides that harm children and the rest of us!

Dow — we want green chemistry, not greenwashing!



Stand up to Dow in San Francisco: http://action.panna.org/event/index.jsp?event_KEY=29263&t=actionTemplate.dwt#signUp
Show them Californians aren’t fooled by slick public relations campaigns!

Bay Area activists will be meeting the 20 sponsored runners who started the 16-country run June in New York. They then headed to Boston and ran through Europe and Asia. August 1st the runners return to the U.S. from Asia, picking up in San Francisco. If you can’t make it to San Francisco, another key Bay Area stop is in Pittsburg, August 2, 9 am, — Dow Chemical Main Gate area, 901 Loveridge Rd (where Dow makes sufuryl fluoride [Vikane], a deadly fumigant pesticide)

Complete California Run schedule: blueplanetrun/node/457


Why Protest Dow’s Sponsorship of Blue Planet Run?

What the runners and many supporters of Blue Planet Run either don’t realize or refuse to acknowledge is Dow’s long history of destructive practices that continue to chemically contaminate just about every place on earth. But it isn’t just Dow’s history that is harmful, the corporation consistently refuses to be accountable for its actions, defends poisons for profit, and denies liabilities:

• Dow bought Union Carbide, the company whose factory in Bhopal killed thousands in the worst industrial catastrophe in history. Many of the same people responsible for the Bhopal disaster are still working for Dow. Yet Dow denies any responsibility for the well-being of the hundreds of thousands of survivors of the toxic gas release. The chemical waste that Carbide left behind at the factory site has contaminated the drinking supply for tens of thousands of men, women, and children, yet Dow is trying to hand off the cleanup to Indians and walk away.

• Dow continues to make dangerous chemicals including Bad Actor pesticides chlorpyrifos, atrazine and sulfuryl flouride, and poly vinyl chloride (pvc’s - which contaminate with dioxin), even though scientific study has shown clear links to cancer, neurological disease, developmental problems, endocrine disruption and other illness.

• Dow made Agent Orange, the herbicide now linked to neurological illness suffered by many U.S. Viet Nam veterans and Vietnamese survivors of the U.S. war. And Dow made napalm in increasingly deadly formulations.

• Dow continued to make the pesticide DBCP even after it was banned in the U.S. DBCP causes sterility, testicular atrophy, birth defects and five types of terminal cancer. Tens of thousands of banana workers in Central American and the Philippines have been made sterile and sick by their exposure to DBCP. In response to a Nicaraguan law requiring that Dow pay compensation to banana workers, Dow said that the law “offends every notion Americans have of fair play and substantial justice” and refuses to pay. Trial of Dow and Dole began in Los Angeles July 19, 2007. Is this Dow’s “Human Element”?



Don’t let Dow Chemical greenwash California and the world.



Join Pesticide Action Network North America, Environmental Health Fund, Amnesty International, Michigan’s Ecology Center, Beyond Pesticides, War Legacies Project, Students for Bhopal and many other groups on August 1st at 2:30 pm across from One Market Street in a peaceful standing protest to show them we don’t buy their expensive ad campaign -- tell Dow to spend its billions on cleanup and safer technologies, not public relations.



To get involved in demonstrations contact Laura Baldez,
415-981-1771, laura [at] panna.org
For media contact Stephenie Hendricks, 415 981-1771 stephenie [at] panna.org



For more information on action across the country and a media kit, contact:
Amy Lubitow, Dow Accountability Campaign, 860-299-6755, alubitow [at] yahoo.com

See thetruthaboutdow.org on Dow’s public relations