Please post and forward this action alert and letter regarding the Verizon Wireless Corporation’s sponsorship of an upcoming pro-mountaintop removal, anti-union rally.
Here is a link to the action alert, where you can send an email to the Verizon’s Wireless Corporation’s management demanding they drop their sponsorship of the event.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2167/t/5243/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27824
Here’s the letter sent to Verizon Wireless President and CEO Lowell McAdam.
Dear Mr. McAdam:
I’ve checked out the Friends of America website which lists Verizon as a sponsor of its upcoming rally. The main page has a video attacking “environmental extremists” for trying to stop coal mining by mountaintop removal. The advertised speakers include a prominent global warming denier and an opponent of endangered species protection. The Center for Biological Diversity and virtually all environmental activists oppose mountaintop removal because 1) coal-fired power plants are the largest single source of U.S. and global greenhouse gas emissions, and 2) mountaintop removal lays waste to entire mountains and the streams below them which are literally buried in mining residue. Thousands of fish and other aquatic species are harmed in the process, many of them being endangered species. The rally organizers are also aggressively anti-union.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a significant Verizon wireless customer. If Verizon does not revoke its support of this rally, the Center will be forced to explain to our email list of 250,000 supporters why we are switching our service to a carrier that does not promote global warming and attack environmentalists, endangered species, and unions.
Please let me know if Verizon intends to continue supporting Massey Energy and sponsoring this rally. As I’m sure you are aware, time is of the essence.
Sincerely,
Kieran Suckling
Executive Director
Center for Biological Diversity
POB 710, Tucson , AZ 85702
(520) 275-5960
www.biologicaldiversity.org
Tell Verizon: Don’t Sponsor Pro-Mountaintop Removal, Anti-Union Rally
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What are you doing for Labor Day? Having a rally to cheer for blowing off the tops of mountains and destroying one of the world’s most important biologically diverse areas? If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer, you may not know it, but you are.
Verizon Wireless is cosponsoring a Labor Day rally dubbed “Friends of America,” being put on by the fourth largest producer of coal in the United States : Massey Energy. The rally supports the dangerous mining practice called mountaintop removal, denies global warming is happening, and is aggressively anti-union.
Mountaintop removal has already destroyed more than 1.5 million acres of hardwood forest and 1,200 miles of streams in the Appalachian region that boasts the world’s highest diversity of salamanders, crayfishes, and freshwater mussels.
Verizon Wireless should not support this destructive mining practice or continue to deny the terrible greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants that are the largest single contributor to our current climate crisis.
Send an email right now to Lowell McAdam, President and CEO of Verizon Wireless, and demand Verizon withdraw sponsorship immediately of next week’s “Friends of America ” climate change-denying, anti-union rally. Demand the company explain its support for the environmentally destructive practice of mountaintop removal.
If you want to do even more, make a phone call now to Verizon headquarters in New Jersey and speak to Verizon Wireless President and CEO Lowell McAdams at (908) 559-2000. Make sure to mention if you are a current Verizon Wireless customer.
Verizon’s 87 million customers – and all of us sharing planet earth – deserve better. Urgent action is needed before the Labor Day rally on September 7. Email and call today.
(If you have a cell phone plan with Verizon, please edit the letter to include this at the top. “As a Verizon Wireless customer…” As a current customer, you have extra power to demand Verizon withdraw support for the rally.)