Earth First! Roadshow folks arrested at Home Depot for action against dams in Patagonia

For Immediate Release: May, 27, 2009

Home Depot has Earth First! activists arrested for action against dams
in Patagonia


Denver, CO-- Two Earth First! activists were arrested at a Home Depot
this morning in Glendale. The arrests followed a banner being hung off
the roof of a Home Depot store reading "Dam Home Depot, NOT
Patagonia!" Supporters of the arrested activists demand that Home
Depot cut all ties and
voice their opposition to this project at
tomorrows corporate shareholders meeting tomorrow in Atlanta, Georgia.

The banner-drop action was intended to remind both the public and the
company: "We've fought The Home Depot before and won." Almost ten
years ago, Earth First! groups around the country joined with
Rainforest Action Network and others forced Home Depot to adopt wood
product policies that removed old growth from their shelves. But their
ongoing economic involvement with the Chilean interests that are
proposing to dam wild rivers with the HidroAysen project in Patagonia
shows their commitments to 'green business' practices to be merely
empty Public Relations maneuvering.

International Rivers, an organization working to protect rivers and
defend the rights of communities that depend on them, explains that:

"The HidroAysen project involves 3 dams on the Pascua River and 2 dams
on the Baker
River that would flood globally rare forest ecosystems
and some of the most productive agricultural land in the Aysen region.
Electricity from these dams would be sent thousands of kilometers
north to serve Chile’s biggest cities and its mammoth copper industry.
More than 1,500 miles of transmission lines would require one of the
world's longest clearcuts--much of it through untouched temperate
rainforests found nowhere else on the planet. US retailer The Home
Depot is the largest buyer of timber products from the main Chilean
interest promoting the dams. The Home Depot has been asked by
thousands of people, including socially responsible investors, to stop
buying timber from suppliers that plan to destroy the rivers and
forests of Patagonia."

According to Ron DeFeo of Home Depot (from a blog post this morning):
"we don’t think it’s our place to weigh in on an issue that we have no
expertise or
influence over." While DeFeo denies the company's
involvement and refuses to accept the research of International
Rivers, his blog post admits that "the president of our supplier’s
parent company owns shares, along with his family, in one of the
companies that would work on the project."

Earth First!, which is more of a movement than an organization, has
autonomous groups around the world who target corporations that are
responsible for devastating the planet. The movement currently has a
national Roadshow crossing the country to mobilize people to take
action against companies like Home Depot, which is currently featured
on their website http://www.earthfirstroadshow.wordpress.com


More
information about this campaign at:
http://internationalrivers.org/patagonia