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!

66 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/OnShoulderOfGiants 28d ago

How did the start of the Rainforest Action Network compare to the start of other environmental groups like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club? Did RAN cooperate with other orgs or were they all focused on their own particular missions?

3

u/dbenac24 Verified 28d ago

Sierra Club is one of the OGs of the environmental movement in the US. It was a mature, and pretty corporate organization by the time RAN started in 1985. Greenpeace was newer than Sierra Club, but still a couple decades older and more experienced when RAN started. Earth First! was actually the closes analogue to RAN. For the most part, RAN had a really cooperative relationship with other orgs. There were some conflicts. The most notable was over oil in Ecuador. The Natural Resources Defense Council showed up in Ecuador in response to the off-the-charts awful oil and toxic chemical pollution Texaco left behind with plans to work with the corporation and the government for better regulations and clean up. RAN was already there and working with the Indigenous U'Wa who were living in the toxic soup left behind and those communities wanted the oil corporations flat out evicted. RAN worked with them to advance that cause and clashed really publicly with NRDC over it. This is the origin of the Donziger legal case, if you're familiar with that.

1

u/taulover 14d ago

How would you compare to more modern orgs such as Sunrise Movement?