Save The Redwoods/Boycott The Gap: Los Angeles Boycott Kickoff

Los Angeles Boycott Kickoff

Feb 5, 2000, Santa Monica. L.A. Campaign launch: SRBG joined 300 So. Cal. Fair Trade Network and Labor Union activists in front of the Gap on the 3rd St. Promenade, Santa Monica, to protest Gap sweatshops and Fisher deforestation. We delighted onlookers with our Cube Dance, spelling out "Save Redwoods," "No Sweatshops," "Boycott Gap!" and "Gapsucks.org" to the popular Gap TV ad tune "I just can't get enough of you" with modified lyrics: "Gap just can't get enough money!"

Feb 6, 2000, Los Angeles: SRBG staged two more demos in Westwood and Venice the following day that included our "We'd Rather Wear Nothing Than Wear Gap!" strip for the redwoods and workers rights. Though we were competing with a jet crash for media coverage, we still garnered a KFWB radio interview, CBS radio coverage, front page of the UCLA Bruin, an article in the L.A. Free Press, and the applause of hundreds of receptive Angelinos.

PRESS RELEASE

From: Save the Redwoods/Boycott the Gap Campaign
Contact persons:
Mary Bull - National Coordinator
(415) 731-7924 - chalicenew@earthlink.net
Mary Pjerrou - Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance - (707) 877-3405 - pirohuck@mcn.org
For further information: www.elksoft.com/gwa

To: All media

Date: February 4, 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CUBES TO DANCE FOR THE REDWOODS
AND WORKERS' RIGHTS AT GAP PROTEST
Sat., Feb. 5, 1:00 pm - the Gap at Santa Monica Promenade
(3th Street/Santa Monica Blvd, Santa Monica)

Fisher family of Gap, Inc., adding to their billions by clearcutting redwood forests
Cubes mock Gap song "Can't get enough...can't get enough..."
Gap sweatshops shock the world!

As the destruction of California's redwood forest continues to profit the billionaire Fisher family of Gap, Inc., and as the Gap persists in using sweatshop labor, activists with a sense of humor will stage their Dance of the Cubes, to the Gap's popular TV commercial, "I Can't Get Enough of You," at the Santa Monica Promenade, Sat., Feb. 5, at 1:00, in solidarity with the Southern California Fair Trade Network, Global Exchange, UNITE and other anti-sweatshop groups. 13 people dressed in Cube costumes and holding wads of money in their cuby fists, sing: "Gap can't get enough...Gap can't get enough...Gap can't get enough...MONEY!!!"‹while their Cubes spell out "Save the Redwoods/Boycott the Gap!"

"The Fishers have a fortune of eight to eleven billion dollars," said Mary Bull, national coordinator of the Save the Redwoods/Boycott the Gap Campaign. "They don't need to clearcut redwoods in order to put food on the table!"

Bull, who will be speaking at the Santa Monica protest, also criticized the Gap for using sweatshop labor. "Gap executives make up to $24,000 an hour. The Gap can afford to pay more than three dollars an hour to their workers in Saipan!" Bull said.

The Save the Redwoods/Boycott the Gap Campaign is part of a coalition of groups that have come together for the Santa Monica protest, which was organized by the Southern California Fair Trade Network, a Los Angeles-based human rights organization. The Fair Trade Network will be voicing their concern about the sweatshop abuses in Gap factories in the Mariana Islands and elsewhere, where workers live in prison-like conditions sewing Gap clothes for slave wages.

Besides reaping the profits of sweatshop labor, the Fishers are also enriching themselves by logging the very last old growth trees, clearcutting redwoods, using toxic pesticides, and harming endangered species in Mendocino and Sonoma Counties, on 235,000 acres of cutover Louisiana Pacific forest lands that they purchased in 1998, according to Bull.

Bull is a member of the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance, an environmental group in Mendocino, which just won a major lawsuit against the Fishers' logging company and the California Department of Forestry on four logging plans that were illegally approved.

"The Fishers were recently denied private Śgreen label' certification for a good reason," Bull said. "They are not green!"

Bull said that a lot of southern Californians don't know about the Fishers' redwood logging. "We cubes are trying to change that, with our song and our message: S-A-V-E T-H-E R-E-D-W-O-O-D-S - B-O-Y-C-O-T-T T-H-E G-A-P!"

Feb 6, 2000, Los Angeles: SRBG staged two more demos in Westwood and Venice the following day that included our "We'd Rather Wear Nothing Than Wear Gap!" strip for the redwoods and workers rights. Though we were competing with a jet crash for media coverage, we still garnered a KFWB radio interview, CBS radio coverage, front page of the UCLA Bruin, an article in the L.A. Free Press, and the applause of hundreds of receptive Angelinos.

DAILY BRUIN
Monday, February 7, 2000 - www.dailybruin.ucla.edu

Group strips in protest of Gap's alleged practices
WESTWOOD: Spokesman says claims of sweatshop practices, ties to deforestation aren't true

Photo by Jared Dever
People removed their shirts at the Gap in
Westwood on Sunday to protest the company's
alleged practices.

By Timothy Kudo
Daily Bruin Staff

About 25 people exposed their halfnaked bodies Sunday to the intersection of Westwood Boulevard and Weyburn Avenue because they would rather "wear nothing, than wear Gap."

They stripped in protest of the alleged deforestation done by the Fisher Family, one of the Gap's largest investors, as well as the alleged sweatshop labor practices used by the company.

"We're protesting the Fishers because they're claiming to be good stewards of the land," said Mary Bull, the national coordinator of "Save The Redwoods/Boycott the Gap Campaign". "They're hypocrites."

But Alan Marks, a spokesman for Gap, Inc. said the clothing company does not privately own any manufacturing plants and has strict measures to make sure child labor or sweatshop practices do not occur.

He said there are 60 employees who monitor such factories worldwide. If factories are found to be in violation of the Gap's policies, they may be reprimanded depending on the seriousness of the violation or the Gap may take their business elsewhere.

"We're constantly monitoring factories to make sure they follow all our guidelines," Marks said. "We're in the factories on a constant basis."

Marks also noted that the company is not affiliated in any legal way with the Mendocino Redwood company, the group protesters said is clearing forest land for the Fisher family.

The protesters led a similar protest Saturday at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica marching from the Gap to the Banana Republic, which along with Old Navy is owned by the Gap.

Though one of the main focuses of the protest was to stop deforestation, some were there more in support of ending the alleged unfair labor practices of the Gap.

"We're against all kinds of slave labor, and Gap kind of represents that," said Mark Flowers, a first year undeclared student.

In Westwood, the protesters arrived around 11:30 a.m. shouting chants of "For Redwoods, For Workers, Boycott Gap." Some were wearing T-shirts with a blue on white Gap logo that said "Crap" instead of "Gap."

After a speech explaining their cause, about 13 protesters wearing boxes spelling out such slogans as "Save the Redwoods" or "Boycott the Gap" began a parody of the Gap commercial that uses the song "Just Can't Get Enough."

After dancing to the song and singing the word "money" at the end of the chorus, the protesters dislodged from their boxes and stripped to their underwear.

Though the protesters originally planned on stripping completely - after the police said they would be arrested for indecent exposure if they did - the protesters felt that the media coverage was not enough for them to undergo arrest.

Bull said her group had stripped completely in other cities such as San Francisco, Amsterdam and New York.

"We didn't know that L.A. was so straight-laced," she said.

Though the protest attracted viewers, some of the observers said they did not really understand what was being protested.

"So far I haven't been able to figure out what is happening," said Bob Patterson, who works at the School of Public Policy and Social Research.

"It happened so fast," he added.

After it was over, the protesters began searching for another location to protest. But Bull said that this was just the beginning of a campaign to end Redwood deforestation and unfair labor practices.

"We will be back again and again and again," Bull said.

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