Come and Knock on Our Door

By Brant Ran

Meet Annie, one of RAN’s newest organizers on the Old Growth Campaign. She’ll be spending time in Seattle and LA this summer. Here’s her story about why door-to-door aint just for girlscouts.

“Camp out ’till they get out” action in Canyon Country-July 21st and 22nd

We drove the RV into Pardee’s Hearthstone housing development lnear LA ast Friday at 11am—it’s one of the nation’s largest homebuilders owned by the world’s largest lumber company—Weyerhaeuser.

It took a couple minutes, but we figured out a way to rig the 20 foot “Wake Up Weyerhaeuser” banner and took a look around. It was a hot day, at least 100 degrees, the development was up the hill behind us, and the Pardee sales office was directly across the street. I thought I’d go inside and introduce myself.

I walked into Pardee’s sales office and asked to speak to a sales manager. He told me that Weyerhaeuser is committed to sustainable logging and that he didn’t understand why we were there. I gave him some of our campaign information and told him about how Pardee homes are built from forests clearcut from Grassy Narrows’ homeland—a good example of Weyerhaeuser’s destructive logging practices and disregard for Indigenous rights.

We browsed the model homes and handed out postcards and talked to prospective home-buyers. We also went door-to-door and talked to people living in the developments about why we were there. Northern Los Angeles County is known to be very conservative, but nearly everyone we talked to was supportive—some really enthusiastic. I’m looking forward to building relationships more Pardee homeowners. Our work here is just beginning, but with each new activist and supportive resident, we’re scoring victories for forests and Indigenous Rights.