Critics and activitists against Globalization are being funded by some deep
pockets, and deep ecology is also being funded...
http://specials.ft.com/countercap/FT37OP0LUSC.html
Anita Roddick's Body Shop is currently being pursued by potential buyers. If
the sale goes through, Roddick, who is on the board of the Ruckus Society,
is looking forward to increasing support for anti-sweatshop activists,
independent media organisations, dissent groups, local environmental
start-ups, socially responsible ventures and a range of others.
"I will not be funding large organisations, but poverty, human rights
abuses, civil rights, economic rights is where my heart lies," she says.
Depending on the terms of the sale, Roddick would have the kind of funds at
her disposal to be talked about as a radical funding figure in the same
league as one of the leading businessman-turned-philanthropists: Doug
Tompkins.
Tompkins gave the money to set up the Foundation for Deep Ecology, which is
based in California. Today, it has a roughly $90m endowment, according to a
Deep Ecology director. The money comes thanks to Tompkins' business acumen.
He started and built Esprit, the retail chain, and North Face, the
mountainwear business. Since he sold it, he has been using the money to buy
land for environmental conservation and funding anti-globalisation projects.
To activists, Tompkins, who now lives out of telephone contact on a vast
environmental retreat in Chile bigger than Massachussetts, is the model of
the new philanthropy.
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