Greenpeace

In the decade from 1969 to 1979, Greenpeace evolved from a loosely organized protest-group in the unlikely setting of Vancouver, Canada, into an international phenomenon that went head-to-head against governments and corporations, attracting the support of ordinary citizens alongside celebrities, politicians, writers, musicians and visionaries. Greenpeace is the definitive record of this extraordinary journey, indelibly portrayed by someone who helped make it happen?Pulitzer Prize nominee Rex Weyler.

?Ecology? Look it up. You?re involved.? With this slogan, posted guerrilla-style on billboards, the group that would become ?Greenpeace? launched its first campaign … and sparked a mind-shift that has literally changed how we think about the world around us.
With an historian?s insight and a novelist?s style, Weyler introduces us to the characters and events that shaped an ?eco-navy??from the first voyage into the Pacific to ?stop the bomb? to the risky mission to ?save the whales? to the struggles with money and ideology that accompanied success. Greenpeace is a remarkable achievement: a gripping story; a snapshot of the mid-20th-century zeitgeist; a fascinating study of media manipulation; an uncompromising look at the sometimes brutal internal struggles of activist organizations; and above all, an inspiring call-to-arms that deepens our understanding of what it means to be politically engaged. Greenpeace shows why and how the revolution begins … and leads us through the aftermath.
Rex Weyler was a co-founder of Greenpeace International and a director of Greenpeace Canada until 1982. His photographs and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Oceans, Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, New Age Journal and National Geographic. Weyler is the author of a Native American history, Blood of the Land, and he co-authored the classic Chop Wood, Carry Water. He is the co-founder of Hollyhock Educational Institute and lives in Vancouver.
Excerpt:
?We, the children of Celia Clinton Elementary School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, enjoyed the air raid drills of 1954. We stood in lines on the playground and goofed off. We watched the bald-headed principal come out in his shiny grey suit and herd the teachers as they herded us. The classroom version of the drill had us under our desks, little seven-year-old fingers clasped behind our heads, elbows at the ears, like the fingers and elbows of thousands of other children in Moscow, Frankfurt, New York, and Winnipeg. An alternative strategy was to take the position under the windows. Not away from the windows, our teacher explained, but under them, so when the glass was blown out, it would sail harmlessly over our heads. I doubted the tactic. I wanted to be far away from any bomb that would blow out our windows and I resolved that when the real one came, I would escape and run home. Then, I thought about my older sister. I would pick her up in grade three. But where was that??
?A fascinating and intimate history. Read it and recognize how much our world owes to Greenpeace.? ?Zac Goldsmith, Editor of The Ecologist
?This time the story is true. These people changed the world.? ?Peter Singer
?It shows the enormous power of speaking truth with courage and imagination.? ?Bonnie Raitt