Category Archives: Uncategorized

Each year the Salt Lake City Weekly conducts its “Best of Utah”
campaign. Readers vote for their favorite “best of”‘s in various categories.

Today my friend and fellow radical cheerleader communicated with me that she has been informed that her business Free Speech Zone is in the top 3 of whatever category she was voted in (she is uncertain what category that is at this time). At the City Weekly’s Best of Utah Party next week, it will be determined who wins the “Best of” in that category.

This is exciting news since my friend has worked hard to make her shop work. Free Speech Zone is a retail shop that sells all sorts of cool activist “stuff” (gifts, etc.). She makes her extra room available for weekly movies and for community groups to hold meetings and events for free. FSZ is a valuable asset to our peace community here in Salt Lake.

This week’s City Weekly has a feature article on Emery County Election Clerk Bruce Funk‘s decision to blow the whistle on the Diebold voting machines.

Funk has been Emery County’s Elections Clerk for 23 years. He called in Black Box Voting to inspect the new Diebold Voting Machines and guess what?!? They are flawed. The article explains how they are flawed and reports that Funk refuses to use them in this year’s elections.

That does not sit well with the Lt. Governor’s office, particularly Michael Cragun, Director of Elections.

Kudos to Bruce Funk for standing up and speaking out!

Recently I posted about the corporate buy-outs of The Body Shop and Tom’s of Maine.

Scatterbox writes about the polarization of corporate reformists. The article discusses the split positions of activists – some who think the buy out of The Body Shop is horrible and others who think it could be a good thing.

it stands to figure that activists are split in their reaction to The Body Shop’s decision to be acquired by L’Oreal.

In one camp are the pragmatists who accept the relationship between The Body Shop’s social welfare ideals and the profit-driven gluttony of shopping malls where the company sells its products…..In the other camp are the outraged ideologues, violently shaken from their convenient rationalization that a $732 million, publicly traded corporation existed primarily to validate their anticorporate beliefs. The UK-based Ethical Consumer threatens to lower The Body Shop’s “ethical rating,” adding the company to a list of activist group boycotts that already includes Microsoft, Bacardi, Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, Israel, Maxwell House, Procter and Gamble, Shell, Rolls Royce and the whole country of Canada.

Scatterbox proceeds to ask these questions:

Will this stop The Body Shop from leveraging L’Oreal’s resources to expand as a global, socially responsible brand? Nope. But the villianizing and boycotts will further the polarization between corporate activists who want to get results by working within the market economy – and those who dream of destroying it altogether.

“Is The Body Shop window-dressing, or is it an admission that doing good can actually be good for business?” writes Biggs.[of activist site CorpWatch] “Guess it depends on how cynical you are. Personally, I get irked at progressives who attack other progressives for not being pure enough, for questioning any motives that don’t keep us marginalized. Seems to me there’s a place for open minds and optimism. At least until they are proven to be misplaced.”