EF! Roadshow folks arrested at Home Depot action in Denver!

Hey, all you 'angry Home Depot customers', call 1-800-553-3199 (press

extension # 5)

Tell 'em to drop the charges against our friends in Arapahoe County

Jail, Colorado, and to get the hell out of wild Patagonia!

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For Immediate Release: May, 27, 2009

Home Depot has Earth First! activists arrested for action against dams

in Patagonia

Denver, CO-- Two Earth First! activists were arrested at a Home Depot

this morning in Glendale. The arrests followed a banner being hung off

the roof of a Home Depot store reading "Dam Home Depot, NOT

Patagonia!" Supporters of the arrested activists demand that Home

Depot cut all ties and voice their opposition to this project at

tomorrows corporate shareholders meeting tomorrow in Atlanta, Georgia.

The banner-drop action was intended to remind both the public and the

company: "We've fought The Home Depot before and won." Almost ten

years ago, Earth First! groups around the country joined with

Rainforest Action Network and others forced Home Depot to adopt wood

product policies that removed old growth from their shelves. But their

involvement in the HidroAysen project in Patagonia, Chile shows their

commitments to 'green business' practices looking a lot like empty

Public Relations.

International Rivers, an organization working to protect rivers and

defend the rights of communities that depend on them, explains that:

The HidroAysen project involves 3 dams on the Pascua River and 2 dams

on the Baker River that would flood globally rare forest ecosystems

and some of the most productive agricultural land in the Aysen region.

Electricity from these dams would be sent thousands of kilometers

north to serve Chile’s biggest cities and its mammoth copper industry.

More than 1,500 miles of transmission lines would require one of the

world's longest clearcuts--much of it through untouched temperate

rainforests found nowhere else on the planet. US retailer The Home

Depot is the largest buyer of timber products from the main Chilean

interest promoting the dams. The Home Depot has been asked by

thousands of people, including socially responsible investors, to stop

buying timber from suppliers that plan to destroy the rivers and

forests of Patagonia.

According to Ron DeFeo of Home Depot (from a blog post this morning):

"we don’t think it’s our place to weigh in on an issue that we have no

expertise or influence over." While DeFeo denies the company's

involvement and refuses to accept the research of International

Rivers, his blog post admits that "the president of our supplier’s

parent company owns shares, along with his family, in one of the

companies that would work on the project."

Earth First!, which is more of a movement than an organization, has

autonomous groups around the world who target corporations that are

responsible for devastating the planet. The movement currently has a

national Roadshow crossing the country to mobilize people to take

action against companies like Home Depot, which is currently featured

on their website www.earthfirstroadshow.wordpress.com

More information about this campaign at:

http://internationalrivers.org/patagonia