How to challenge power & systems of injustice: The History of Rainforest Action Network

Join us on October 18th at 4pm for a discussion about how ordinary people can change international systems of corporate and social injustice.

Our panel will feature Prof. David Benac, professor of history at Western Michigan University and author of “A History of Rainforest Action Network and Transnational Organizing”, and other panelists to be announced soon. The discussion will be moderated by Prof. Robert Buzzanco, co-host of The Green and Red Podcast.

For more than forty years, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has excelled at using peaceful civil disobedience, local and international organizing, and strategic communications to change the destructive behavior of some of the world’s biggest banks and corporations. As a result, rainforest conservation became a fixture in American popular culture, the rights of Indigenous peoples emerged as a key area of negotiation in the management of ancestral homelands, and some of the largest companies on the planet now face accountability for their role in our climate and biodiversity crises.

Many of the strategies pioneered by Rainforest Action Network are used by social and environmental movements today. As we see new large-scale resistance from the massive No Kings mobilizations; the anti-data center movements; and fierce resistance to ICE in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, we know that communities and movements are fighting back. In 2026, the history of corporate campaigns and transnational organizing is more important than ever.

WHERE: The Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists; 1924 Cedar St. Berkeley CA

WHEN: October 18th, 2026. Doors open at 4pm. Event begins at 4:30pm

Virtual viewing: We'll also be live streaming the event on the Green and Red Podcast’s YouTube Page

Panelist Bio- Prof. David Benac is an environmental and public historian of the post-WWII United States at Western Michigan University. His research investigates how people act on their perceptions of nature, the science of ecology, and the philosophy of eco-centrism. He is author of Rainforest Radicals: A History of Rainforest Action Network and Transnational Organizing.

Panelist Bio-Pamela Wellner is the Chief Strategist at Amplify Eco, Pamela advises organizations
on communications and campaigns focused on climate change,sustainability, and human rights. She has over 30 years of experience at the intersection of environmental protection,human rights, policy, and public engagement. She has directed cutting-edge sustainability and human rights campaigns for organizations such as Rainforest Action Network, Plastics and Climate Project, Health Care Without Harm,
ClimateWorks, Solar AquaGrid, Center for Sustainable Energy, Greenpeace, and Fauna and Flora International.

For half her career, Pamela worked to protect old-growth forests and communities from rapacious logging and to advance corporate sustainability, campaigning for sustainably sourced products ranging from musical instruments and Hollywood set plywood to tissue paper. She helped found the Forest Stewardship Council. She also directed a campaign pressing oil companies to divest from junta-controlled Burma and investigated human rights abuses and forest destruction tied to TotalEnergies' and Unocal's natural gas pipeline.

Moderator Bio- Prof. Robert Buzzanco is co-host of the Green and Red Podcast, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Houston, and author of Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era, Vietnam and the Transformation of American Life, and American Power, American People.

Other panelists to be announced soon…

Hosted by Rainforest Action Network, Green and Red Podcast, Oil and Gas Action Network, Mt. Diablo Rising Tide and the Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Committee