Industry Lawsuits Try to Paint Environmental Activism as Illegal Racket

On a bright afternoon in May 2016, two men in a silver SUV pulled into Kelly Martin's driveway. One of them, tall and beefy with a crew cut, walked up to her front door.

Amy Moas, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace, was named
as a defendant in the RICO lawsuit brought against the group
by Resolute Forest Products.

"The guy said, 'Is Joshua Martin home?' and I said, 'No, who are you?" recalled Kelly. "He said, 'I'm with a company that's talking to current and former employees of ForestEthics, and I'm wondering if he still works there’."

Joshua had left ForestEthics, renamed Stand last year, to run the Environmental Paper Network. Kelly asked to see the stranger's ID and to snap a picture on her phone. Instead, the man retreated to the SUV and "they literally peeled out of the driveway.”

Around the same time, Aaron Sanger, another former employee of Stand, also received a visit from two men asking similar questions. So did others, some of them former employees of Greenpeace.

Then, on the last day of that month, Greenpeace and Stand were hit with an unusual lawsuit brought by Resolute Forest Products, one of Canada's largest logging and paper companies, that could cost the groups hundreds of millions of dollars if Resolute wins.

Read the Inside Climate News story by Nicholas Kusnetz  - “Industry Lawsuits Try to Paint Environmental Activism as Illegal Racket.”