There is no doubt that, for the past decade or so, maintaining one’s liberal-leaning purity has become harder and harder — mainly because issues and perspectives are rarely as black-and-white as pundits, prognosticators and those with palpable self-interests (read: fundraising) based to a large extent upon maintaining societal rifts would have us believe. More than that, though, there are very real issues-based schisms that occasionally furrow liberal-leaning brows and force upon those of us who proudly hug trees and chomp granola to venture down paths that often lead us away from long-held beliefs and maybe even away from our most foundational moral convictions.

Earth First! was forced many years ago to deal with this reality when it faced a rift between members of that once-mighty (and mighty cool) group who considered themselves more social liberals and those who considered themselves more environmental liberals. Though, of course, there is significant overlap between those two liberal camps, there is also serious disconnect, as evidenced, as but one of many examples, by the ongoing immigration debate. Social liberals are far more likely to argue in favor of orderly immigration and immigrant rights, while environmental liberals (read: yours truly) are more inclined to argue against immigration because immigration results in population increase in this country (verily, without immigration, the U.S., is at ZPG), and population increase undeniably directly negatively impacts the environment.

Though I am hardly an expert on all this, I am interested enough in the concept of the various manifestations of that which we call liberalism (a word/classification that, in its denotative sense, bears little resemblance to it current political use) that, whenever material even remotely on the subject enters my email inbox, I push the pause button and check it out. So, when a recent series of press releases from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) castigating actor/environmentalist Robert Redford because of his stance against oil and gas drilling leases close to Arches and Canyonlands national parks started coming my way, my attention was drawn like space debris to a black hole. Those press releases contained the incendiary headlines: “Robert Redford’s Newest Role: Playing ‘Grinch’ to Low-Income Families” and “Black Ministers to Protest Robert Redford’s Environmental ‘Grandstanding’ as Harmful to Poor.” I mean — shit! — in my little universe, Robert Redford is about a holy as holy gets. What’s all this then about Saint Redford harming the poor?

The meat of the story contained within those CORE press releases was that, by very publicly opposing a series of oil and natural gas well leases proposed for Bureau of Land Management turf near Arches and Canyonlands, Redford was by default contributing to higher heating fuel costs, which, in turn, unfairly punish poor people, most of whom are urban dwelling and/or old and/or members of one minority or another. By extension, of course, CORE was standing up for those apparently incapable of standing up for themselves.

There is no way to accurately express to those reading these words how many press releases I receive. Literally hundreds a week, many of which are from industry groups dedicated, among other nefarious things, to draining every last drop of fossil fuel from the earth at the very first opportunity. (Most often, these kinds of press releases camouflage their true agendas within such catch phrases as “energy independence,” “economic development” and “national security.) I usually trash these examples of corporate propaganda as quickly as possible.

But this wasn’t the National Association of Unrepentant Money-Grubbing Land Rapists issuing these anti-Redford press releases. This is CORE we’re talking about here, the very group, formed in 1942 by James Farmer, that was at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, that initiated the Freedom Rides in 1947 (you want to talk about some big stones!), and, in 1963, organized the March on Washington, which drew more than 250,000 people to the nation’s capital (some estimates put the attendance at more than a million) and culminated in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famed “I Have A Dream” speech, justifiably considered one of the top examples of persuasive oration in American history. Those are bona fides that are hard to trump in the world of liberal politics/consciousness/causes.

Those CORE press releases naturally gave me some pause; they made me reflect upon — for a few nanoseconds at least — the possibility that, perhaps, the potential down-the-road ramifications of the environmental- leanings-made-manifest of not only myself, but also of a high percentage of the people I hang with end up fucking innocent people over. Could there be a real possibility that we are, as many people contend, self-absorbed, classist and elitist as we go about the business of trying to preserve the last remnants of Planet Earth? Do our efforts to save the last vestiges of undisturbed Utah desert translate in the real world to poor black people shivering to death in Harlem? Is such a thing possible? (There is, I would argue, nothing wrong with occasional introspection and contextual self-examination, even of one’s core, DNA-level beliefs.)

Journalistic due diligence required that I Google CORE. And, sadly and stunningly, by so doing, I learned that whatever holiness the group might have once been able to claim in liberal circles long ago dissipated. According to Wikipedia, after a long series of internal conflicts, Farmer, the group’s founder, resigned in 1966. (In 1993, Farmer called CORE “fraudulent.”)

Since 1968, CORE has been led by National Chairman Roy Innis, who supported Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972. Innis, according to several websites, was a supporter of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and is a member of the board of directors of the NRA. (I should point out that, while I have nothing per se against responsible private gun ownership, the NRA can kiss my ass.) According to www.panna.org, CORE’s 2005 Martin Luther King Celebration honored, among others, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s election puppeteer, and Hugh Grant, chairman and CEO of Monsanto, the company that first produced DDT and a corporate supporter of CORE.

It was even more disheartening, given CORE’s Monsanto connection, to learn that the group supports use of DDT — long rationally banned in the U.S. — in Africa and that, it 1995, it helped produce a Monsantofunded video titled “Voice of Africa,” which promoted the use of genetically modified crops in Africa.

Sigh.

More to the point of this screed, I learned, through www.exxonsecrets.org, that one of CORE’s major fiscal sponsors is, you guessed it, Exxon, the very company that to this day continues to appeal court-ordered monetary reparations associated with the Exxon Valdez “incident.” Thus, because of this one corporate relationship, we can assume that CORE’s stance on those oil and gas leases in Utah is not exactly pure as the newfallen snow. Whatever CORE-press-release-based (and ultimately short-lived) angst I initially felt regarding the potential impact of opposing natural gas wells in Utah evaporated into a Western sky that still remains mostly clear and blue.

Shortly after Colorado Senator Ken Salazar was sworn in as our new Secretary of the Interior (a nomination, I should point out, that was greeted with incredulity by many environmentalists because, in the opinion of a slew of my fellow pinkos, Salazar is not green enough), he withdrew 103,000 acres of oil and natural gas leases outside not only Arches and Canyonlands, but also Dinosaur National Monument and Nine Mile Canyon. Salazar directed the BLM to return $6 million to the companies that had successfully bid on those leases. Whether Robert Redford’s very public opposition to those leases played any part in Salazar’s decision, I cannot say, as several attempts to get comment from the new Secretary of the Interior were unsuccessful. Either way, almost immediately, CORE issued a scathing press release castigating Salazar’s decision. It was titled, “Ken Salazar Is Going Hollywood: His ‘Cave-In” to Actor Robert Redford on Utah Leases Exposes Poor Families, Elderly to Higher Energy Costs.”

I contacted Redford about all this through his Sundance Institute, and a spokesperson replied: “Mr. Redford stands behind his opposition to the Bush Administration's efforts to take public land in Utah, adjacent to national parks and monuments, and auction it off to private industry. He rejects the argument that these leases have anything to do with home heating prices this winter. The fact remains that the Bush BLM has issued more than 25,000 permits to drill in the last four years alone. Companies hold leases to nearly 34 million acres that are not in production. Thus there is not a lack of land to drill on as some would lead you to believe. Mr. Redford remains firmly committed to expanding the investment in sustainable sources of clean energy to replace those which are toxic, polluting and non-sustainable and which endanger the public health, environment and economy for all Americans. He commends Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, for his decision to step back and take a fresh look at the Bush Administrations imbalance regarding public lands, and for promising to reassess policies surrounding development on them.”

CORE is far from the only group to have responded negatively to Salazar’s decision to pull those leases. And surely the CORE folks have as much right to their opinion as do any of us. But every other negative press release I have received on the subject of these Utah-based oil and gas leases has been up front about who they are and who they represent. In none of its communiqués to me has CORE revealed that it has received almost $300,000 since 1998 from Exxon. Instead, it chose to couch its environmentally specious positions in terms of civil rights and shivering poor people. I have yet to see a CORE press release admonishing the new Obama administration to focus big time on the development of green energy in order to make certain the poor city people it claims to care so much about do not shiver to death in their urban abodes.

All this got me wondering if there is anything left in this whole wide world that is not diluted, compromised, co-opted or overtly polluted? I mean, anything? When you’ve got the group that drove Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to Washington D.C. to deliver the “I Have A Dream” speech now shilling for Exxon, Monsanto and the NRA under the guise of protecting poor people, it’s difficult to answer that question any way save the most cynical, “ixnay.” It’s even more difficult to even entertain the potential veracity of their message knowing that it is potentially tainted by the long reach of extractive-industry- based corporate financing.

Damn!

Dr. King, whose “I Have A Dream” speech invokes the majesty of mountains from New Hampshire to California, must be rolling over in his grave.

— M. John Fayhee