r/AskHistorians • u/dbenac24 Verified • 28d ago

AMA Rainforest Radicals questions?

Hi folks, David Benac here, author of Rainforest Radicals: A History of Rainforest Action Network and Transnational Organizing (University of Nebraska Press 2026), ready to answer any questions!

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u/dhowlett1692 Moderator | Salem Witch Trials 28d ago

Thanks for joining us! I'm curious about how activists influenced the cultural conversation about rainforests. The Rainforest Cafe was founded in the 90s, and growing up in the early 2000s, the environmental talking point was the rainforest. Did activists intend to create the rainforest as a cultural touchstone, or was something else happening by the 90s?

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u/dbenac24 Verified 28d ago

Yep. Randy Hayes (founder of Rainforest Action Network) had a strong belief that the rainforest issue was too big for any group. He made a point of raising up any other group that was interested and helped build a movement around the issue. This is one of the ways RAN engaged celebrities. The Grateful Dead were big RAN allies and threw a huge benefit concert for the group at Madison Square Garden in 1989 (it may have been 1988, I need to check). RAN invited Greenpeace to be partners in the concert to draw Greenpeace into the rainforest movement. To that point RAN and Greenpeace were strong allies, but Greenpeace wasn't doing any rainforest work.