 All right, great. Thank you everybody for joining us. You are in the right place for the webcast. I am Ann with stand out earth and we have a wonderful panel here with you today and we're so happy to have them. Annie Leonard is the executive director of Greenpeace USA. She began her career at Greenpeace in 1988 and has returned to help the organization inspire and mobilize millions of people to take action to create a more sustainable future together. Annie, thank you so much for being here today. We have Todd Paulia, executive director of stand out earth. Todd can be credited with transforming the paper policies of multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 companies, including Staples, Office Depot, William Sonoma, Dell, Victoria's Secret, 3M and many more. Todd, thank you for being with us today. And Tom Wetterer is general counsel for Greenpeace USA. He's been an attorney with Greenpeace since 1998 and has been heavily involved in defending against the two corporate lawsuits against Greenpeace that we'll be talking about today. And thank you Tom for being here. With that, I am going to turn it over to Annie to begin. Thank you so much, Ann. And thank you so much everybody for joining us today. I know these are incredibly busy times and I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to join us for what I think is a very, very important conversation. Before Todd and Tom go into some of the details of the lawsuits and those campaigns, I wanted to provide a little more context to place where we're having this conversation. Like all of you and actually with many of you, I have spent the last 30 years advocating and protesting and protecting and organizing to save forests and resist toxic dumping and protect community health and fight destructive extraction and oppose excessive consumerism, all of these kinds of things that were enormous threats to people on the planet. And I believe that the activism that we've all done in those last 30 years has made a tremendous difference. But now what is that threat is actually our ability to do that work. And that's very worrisome. I do want to just note the slight privilege for me to say now what is it threat is our ability to do that work, because many communities, especially indigenous communities, communities of color, workers on strike have felt crackdowns often violent for decades. But what I would like to suggest is that this crackdown on activism has reached a new level. And there is right now a broad concerted effort to vilify, criminalize, intimidate, and silence much needed constitutionally protected nonviolent protest and activism. And that would be a problem anytime but it's especially a problem right now, since it coincides with the rollback of the state or the rollback of our government in really standing up or offering any kind of safeguarding for the planet and the public health. So when they they talk Trump and his cronies talk about the deconstruction of the state. What the deconstruction of the state means is deconstruction of laws to protect Aaron water laws to protect land laws to protect public health. And that means in many places, the only thing between corporations desire to plunger the planet and their ability to do that is activists. And that's why it's so important that we keep being activists but that's also why there's such a crackdown on activists. We're seeing this crackdown in a number of different ways. We're seeing it in the vilification of activists. We saw that during Trump's presidential campaign during his big rallies when he talked about the good old days when you could beat up protesters. We're seeing it in the vilification of the peacefully protesting football players who are being cursed at and said that they should be fired. We're seeing it in the criminalization of activism. There are dozens of states now across the country that are considering or have even passed laws that criminalize basic organizing basic tools of our organizing. For example, there's a law that says if any physical or property damage happens at a protest and your organization invited people to that protest, you could be held liable. I mean, if these kinds of things actually become laws that will squelch the kind of basic organizing and outreach and recruitment that all of us do all the time to get people up to events. There's laws that are moving through the process in a couple of states that would indemnify drivers who run into protesters with their cars. One of my colleagues calls it stand your ground with cars instead of guns. This is terrifying. We're seeing it in the militarization of the police. We're seeing much of this crackdown protested on activists that are looking at extractive industries. Last week, 84 Congress members sent a letter to Attorney General Sessions urging him to consider interfering with pipelines as a threat to national security, which I thought was funny because actually those pipelines are the threat to national security because of the climate change they bring. And this letter actually urged that activists be prosecuted as terrorists, as domestic terrorists. And we're also seeing this crackdown on activists in the slapsuits that Greenpeace and Stand and other allies are facing and that Todd and Tom will explain. I do want to say that while I believe the threat is huge and it's beyond anything I've seen in my 30 years of doing this, the solidarity has also been huge. And we have had an outpouring of support from people across the movement spectrum. I want to thank you guys so much for joining with us, standing with us, bringing your voice to the call to protect the right to nonviolent protest. These lawsuits are an attempt to silence us, but they're also an attempt to divide us. And our strongest defense is a united defense. So thank you so much for being part of that united defense. Over to you Tom to explain more about the specifics of the lawsuits. Sure. Yeah, well, they're both, both are well over 100 pages. So I'll just try to, but I'll give the highlights. So the first lawsuit was filed both filed by big corporations first one was filed by resolute forest products, Canada's largest logging company. And they named Greenpeace in the US and Greenpeace International and stand in many, many staff members of the organizations and also filed a lawsuit against Greenpeace, Canada, really over the same campaign to protect the boreal forest in Canada. And also some staff members there back in 2013 may have 2013. And that case is still going on up in in Canada. But down here in the US on October the 16th in San Francisco federal judge. Tom, I'm sorry. Yes, this is your feet is freezing up just a little bit so I might I'm going to pull down your webcam for just a minute so we can definitely hear you. Sorry about that and we'll bring you back up by video for Q&A. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Sorry about that. No, sorry, sorry here. So on October the 16th in San Francisco a federal judge, John, John S Tiger heard our motions to dismiss. We also had an anti slap motion and we and we won the lawsuit in the US filed by resolute was completely dismissed and it was a it was a it was a good day on that here in the US Judge Tiger and I'll just quote he said it perfectly in his decision that the Academy and not the courthouse is the appropriate place to resolve scientific disagreements of this kind. And so good result, but it wasn't a surprise. We said from the beginning that this was a baseless lawsuit that it really was all about legitimate advocacy and constitutionally protected free speech. And, you know, this this the judge with us and that but I do want really what this lawsuit and what the other law the distraction the the energy that's required in the litigation process. And it's it's also to really intended others that that may want to speak up and just to Trump and groups from from also think twice about being dragged through the litigation process as well. So that's really, really what it's about. I want to keep in mind that that, you know, the corporate bully tactic is what it is. It is just to, you know, burden their opponent US Greenpeace International and and other and other groups either as defendants or named as part of this. Tom, sorry, this is and again, we were doing great. And now you're cutting in and out again. I'm going to ask if you can call again. Okay, I'm going to ask if you can use the phone number to call in and well, we'll give you a moment to do that. And Todd, can we have you jump in and then we'll circle back with Tom. Sure. I actually think we should probably give a little bit more detail on the lawsuit itself as we're kind of breaking up during part of what Tom was saying. And just to repeat, what are you saying is, you know, the whole whole goal of this is to really drag people through an expensive and time consuming process where the outcome is pretty much well known because unless you get a judge who is really completely out on a limb, they're not going to rule for the companies in these cases. And part of what Thomas was going through was a little bit of what happens when 18 months of dealing with this, both for standing Greenpeace, knowing that we'll win, but whether that takes 18 months or five years is the thing that's really hard. And luckily, this was quick, relatively quick for legal things these days. And we came out of it so far with a full win. And I'm going to pause for a second and see if we've gotten Tom back so we can continue in this in this vein. I don't see him on the list yet, Todd. I think he'll take one more minute. Okay. I mean, I can just go and we can say way back to Tom at the end. Yeah, and we'll circle back with him once he's on the phone. Okay, so here's what I have good news and bad news for people. I think the bad news is that this is kind of the new normal. I think what we're looking at here. It's been clear to me for more than the last year that this is not a lawsuit so much as it's a campaign. This is something that resolute, you know, the one who brought the first Sir Rico lawsuit against us. And that now Energy Transfer Partners has copied is really trying to drum up a whole new sort of right wing way of going after organizations like Greenpeace Stand and all of you out there in allied organizations. And I think we have to be really prepared. We've been coming up with sort of our best, you know, lessons learned, which is not all the way done yet. But, you know, the top couple of things just to get ready for what I think is an inevitable next wave of these kind of lawsuits is to make sure that you are one, you have good insurance. If we didn't have insurance, we would be in big trouble right now. So having your director's and offers insurance in place, it's the cheapest money we've ever spent. Literally the best thing we've ever spent money on because it has allowed us to continue operating and stay focused. They want to take us all focused. We've not. We've actually expanded our campaigns, expanded our impact during the lawsuit. And that is terrible news for them. The second piece is I would say, you know, every big company in the world has a document, you know, they call document hygiene. Basically you keep documents around as long as you're legally required and no longer because that's the stuff that can just tie you up in knots and, you know, end up being used either legally or in communications to show things that are not even necessarily true. So things taken out of context. We've seen that a number of times over the last several years with different groups working on climate change and other issues. So I think that's, you know, that's another thing that those are my kind of top two recommendations like insurance and document retention. Just get that stuff happening because you don't want to build their case for them. So the thing that I think is really interesting though, you know, SLAPs have been around for a long time. Strategic lawsuits against public participation. And I actually think they're playing out a little differently. Previously, what these things would be would be long grinding affairs where it was relatively quiet for long periods of time and the companies would be grinding the NGO or whoever their target of SLAP lawsuit was the law moved slower. The media moved relatively slow because there's not a lot of action, you know, like the lawsuit gets filed. And then you're just grinding along for 18 months or two years or three years. And I think it's actually quite different now. If you look at resolute and what has happened in the lawsuit against the standard Greenpeace, I think resolute has paid an incredible price. Their brand is synonymous with attacking the First Amendment. They have lost customers because of it. Their customers don't like that they're tied to a company that does this social media media. We've been able to get the word out directly to companies and directly to sports and directly to many people beyond that through social media about what's happening. Resolute share price a few years ago was four times what it is today. The company is incredibly distracted. While share price goes down, the CEO is focusing on trying to get standing Greenpeace instead of building a business that works. So I think, you know, a lot of things, I think the SLAP landscape is changing. I think a lot of the work that we've done with Greenpeace to really push back and fight back against this, as well as having been at least relatively well prepared for the lawsuit has led to substantially different situations. So I think that these things are tough to deal with. I think the bad news is it's here to stay for at least a little while. We need to be better prepared to fight back. But I think we're in a situation where the cost is much, much worse than it used to be. And, you know, I think that if I was resolute, if I was the CEO Garneau, I'd be really nervous about my next board meeting having spent millions of dollars with a share price tanking, with the brand that's synonymous with attacking the First Amendment and having gotten, you know, you know what handed to you in the court of law. It's embarrassing and I would be worried about reporting to my board with those results. So I think the world's changing. I think we're going to have to do a lot of work to change it a little bit more. And really exact more of a cost when companies try to silence us. And this is a great example of what happens when you try to do that. It doesn't work. And with that, I'm hoping Tom is back. He is not. I am trying to bring him back. I don't know if he didn't hear the part about coming in by phone. I'm emailing him and whatnot. I'm sure we'll get him back before the end. But in the meantime, do you want me to talk a little bit about the ETP lawsuit? I think it's time because Todd has covered resolute, which was the first one. Well, that would be great. And I'm going to encourage people. I just saw a question pop up. And you just went mute. You said you saw a question pop up. Oh yes. I'm sorry. So yes, Annie, that would be great. And I just wanted to encourage people to add their questions because we'll be moving into Q and A and not too long. Great. So I'll just briefly talk about this and then hopefully Tom will come back and I, but the first lawsuit was from resolute, which Todd talked about prior to that lawsuit being filed. A really creepy thing happened, which is that private investigators visited homes of former employees of both of our organizations to ask a lot of questions, mostly questions looking for some kind of financial scamming, which there was none so they couldn't find any. And then we got this lawsuit that started again last year. Former staff of a number of different organizations were visited by private eyes with very similar kinds of questions. So another thing you should think about with your staff is really training staff about how to respond if that happens. We found out because staff contacted us from a number of different organizations and then in August, another slap suit was filed against us again by the same lawyer, Casowitz, Trump's longtime go to lawyer. This lawsuit was on behalf of energy transfers partners, which is the company that built the Dakota access pipeline. And the defendants in this lawsuit are Greenpeace bank track, which is a small European organization and earth first, which is not actually been an organization and John and Jane does one through 20. So this lawsuit is even crazier than the resolute one, which is hard to say because that one was pretty, pretty nutty to begin with. This lawsuit accuses us of a couple of things. One is defamation, which is fancy lawyer talk for lying. They're saying that we exaggerated about the environmental and health and human rights impacts of the pipeline. But the second accusation of the lawsuit is where the Rico statute comes in. They're saying that Greenpeace was the head of a criminal enterprise that orchestrated this massive criminal enterprise to obstruct the business of the pipeline. And there's a number of absolute crazy things in this accusation. One is that the entire suit seeks to criminalize constitutionally protected first amendment protected activism. So a huge number of things that they're saying we did wrong, we're allowed to do. Then there's another set of accusations like that we trafficked drugs there, like just sort of hallucinatory accusations that are crammed in there. They say that we were the head of the criminal enterprise, but then they list a number of organizations that are members of the criminal enterprise. And we believe this is one of the attempts to divide us, is that we're the ones actually on the hook for this one is a $900 million lawsuit. But by naming all these other environmental organizations as members of the criminal enterprise, they're sending the message, oh, we know about you too, which is trying to silence. I'll just say one more point and then I'll send it back to Tom. The other thing about this lawsuit that is really downright offensive is it absolutely ignores indigenous leadership. And we were involved in Standing Rock in a very minor way. We were to support and solidarity and we were proud and honored to stand with indigenous allies. But no doubt about it, Standing Rock was an indigenous led movement. And this lawsuit is really quite offensive by implying that we orchestrated it and that we actually manipulated Native Americans. It reminds me of our history books where they think if they just ignore Native Americans, they didn't exist. The truth is this was absolutely an indigenous led movement and that just sort of adding insult to injury is accusing us of all these crazy things and then completely negating indigenous leadership. This lawsuit is moving forward. The next date, I believe Tom can correct me, is November 17th is when our response is due and we will once again ask that this be dismissed as a frivolous lawsuit as we did with Resolute. Tom, I want you to chime in, but you don't know what I just said. It's tricky. But I just gave a summary of the ETP lawsuit. From what I heard, you did an excellent, I don't know. Good. And I'm not even a lawyer. Yeah. I mean, I can just, I can wrap up if you want about the significance of both these cases together and things that we're doing about this threat. You know, again, both were filed by the Casowitz law firm and their Trump's go-to lawyers. Michael Bowie, one of their partners that's involved in both cases, has already said publicly that they're in conversations with other corporations that are kind of waiting in line to file similar lawsuits. And once again, as I said before, we got the good decision in the U.S. case. We are confident of the same result because this is an effective legal product. So we're confident of the same result in the ETP lawsuit. But again, as I said, that's not the main point. It's to really drag us through the litigation process and also intimidate others that may want to exercise their rights to free speech and take out on really any issue. So it's a real threat that's out there, this corporate bully tactic. And really, everyone that's listening today, our supporters, staff supporters, supporters of effective organizations or potentially affected organizations, it's really any advocacy group and even individual activists. It's a threat that could be used against anyone to really try to shut that person or that group up from speaking out on very important issues in a public interest. What you can do really is to amplify this message, first of all, the messages that we're sending out about these lawsuits and really about this overall threat and the larger threats that Annie also spoke with, crackdown on activists in general, helps spread the word on that, helps shine a spotlight on what's going on. And we want to get this message, we want to send a message loud and clear, support the campaigns of the various organizations that you've been supporting. We want to send a message loud and clear to other corporations that we're not backing down, green pieces aren't backing down, stands not backing out, other groups aren't backing down, activists are not going to back down from this threat. We're going to continue to exercise our constitutionally protected rights and we're even going to grow stronger. And our supporters can help us do that, you're in this with us, it's not just the organizations, it's all of us that really need to fight back against this. As an organization, Greenpeace is reaching out to our various allies and we're doing other things to combat this threat legally. Things like working together again to amplify the message of this threat, to share legal resources, share best practices and things of that nature to support one another legally and even outside the courtroom. And if anyone's interested in, you know, contact us and want to talk more about that, I'd be happy to do that. And I think Todd is going to speak a little bit more about some of these things, but I will, I'll turn it over to him. And sorry for the technical difficulties. And while you were gone, I already went, so. Well, there you go. Sorry. No worries and we're just glad to have you back Tom and your audio and video are very solid now. Thank you for your patience to get that back. So everybody following up on what Tom just said, I'm going to send everyone a link to a survey. And we'd love you to fill it out if you are interested in engaging in this work, you don't have to fill it out now. I just want you to have a link. And then we're going to move into Q&A. I feel like the technology deities are sort of on our side, but not completely on our side. So I'm going to simplify things. I'm just going to ask questions on people's behalf today. I like to promote people to panelists, but I think in general that's hard. We might make it might make an exception or two, but I'm going to just get us rolling with some of this. And I have just sent everybody the survey and we've got a lot of people up to maybe 90 people with us on Facebook Live as well as everybody here on Zoom. Welcome. And Howie Chong from our digital team, I think is giving you the link to that survey on Facebook Live also. We would love to find out how you want to be involved in this movement to fight these lawsuits, how you want to protect your organization, all of that. Okay, I'm going to move into the Q&A. And I'm asking a question on behalf of Antonia. Can you give examples of the kinds of documents that we should be careful about keeping around too long, as well as any other details about things we should think about in our communications in order to give us the best chance of getting a case thrown out early. I could take that Tom. Do you want to first crack? Yeah, I can take a first crack. I think first and foremost each organization should look at, and Todd, I don't know if you've mentioned this or not, but a records retention policy. And I mean, that's the first step to sit back and really figure out before a lawsuit is even filed. What's the universe of your documents? And then have someone help you, an attorney or other professionals, because there are certain requirements for that. There might be legal requirements for how long you hold on to things. There might be other things that would dictate that. So I can't give you all the details on that, but definitely look and find somebody that could help you if you do not already have a records retention policy. And then figure out, you know, the different retention periods and then make sure you follow that. And the other thing is, so if you are sued, there's also a duty to preserve documents that may be relevant to the lawsuit. So, again, that's another thing to keep in mind. If you are, you shouldn't be getting rid of anything that may be relevant. There's a duty to hold these documents, so you should also preserve things if you are served the lawsuit. Yeah, and Tom, I spoke to this briefly earlier and what I was recommending is exactly that, a document retention policy so that you make sure you keep the things you're legally required to keep. The actual documents need to be kept for quite a long time, I think seven to ten years, something like that. But there's a whole bunch of things that companies all over the world get rid of on a regular basis and we need to match them. The reason they're getting rid of it is it's a burden to store it. It can create hassles legally. It can create problems in a variety of ways and you have no requirement to keep them. And so, whether you're talking about campaign strategy documents or brainstorms from live meetings where you're talking about how to move a certain company to change its behavior and stop building pipelines or cutting down a forest, there's all sorts of information that we have no reason to keep. Every company in the world gets rid of that stuff immediately and we need to also, this is about arming up for the conflicts to come and we need to be prepared. I agree and I want to add one more thing, is that it's beyond documents and it's really about your overall, your organization's overall culture about communications. So the documents for sure, that's a great place to start. But it's also about cultivating a culture of awareness and responsibility. So it's things like when you had your brainstorm about how to move that company, don't leave all the post-it notes in the rented hotel room that you used for your meeting. It's also in emails. A lot of times staff will, just all of us with our emails, we say some flippant comment that could really be taken out of context. So cultivate an awareness about this. Someone told me a tip that if you think your email is funny, that's probably a red flag. And look back at it and go through and check to make sure no flippant comments about people or economic systems or anything like that that could be taken out of context. As well, another attack on an organization in the last year was against League of Conservation Voters. I don't know if you've heard about this. If you Google it, there was a number, but press about it. League of Conservation Voters was infiltrated earlier this year by some individuals who posed as liaisons to wealthy donors who were concerned about Trump's impact on the environment. And they befriended the people in League of Conservation Voters. They gave donations. They went to their gala. They got to know their board members. They had a number of secret recording devices and just recorded a lot of casual conversations with people. One of League of Conservation's board members runs Green Latinos. They even went to the Green Latinos conference and gave money for low income participants to be able to attend. Like in a lot of ways, they look like the kind of person you would talk to. And it turned out that it appears these people have some link with the James O'Keeffe operation. That's not confirmed, but it appears. So the bottom line is just be really careful about what you write or say to anyone ever and make sure that nothing can be taken out of context and used against you, which does require a sort of a vigilance that we have not always held ourselves to as a movement. And I would actually just take one more kick at the can on that one because it's a really big topic. I mean, and Andy, this goes to office security as well. We had a security, you know, just in the last 10 days or so where we fought an oil company in Canada and its efforts to make sure people were not allowed to participate in pipeline hearings, which is a case that we lost. And this company, because there was a way that they could try to pursue their legal fees, get their legal fees paid by us, they worked their way through the courts for the last few years and actually got awarded attorney's fees. This is a company Enbridge that makes $30 billion a year. And they pursued this all the way all the way to the point where they had bailiffs come to our office and try to repossess our furniture, including our computers, which we fended that off and had a full media presence when they we invited them to come back and in fact take our stuff with the media recording it and they back down at that point. But my bigger point is, you know, what we've done at Stan, which we've never never really done before is even having a front door protocol like nobody gets in. You got to be careful who's, you know, who's answering the door who's who might be coming to your door, what their purposes are. I mean, it is. It sounds a little conspiracy theory, ask, but based on an oil company getting legal fees and an award and a court order to seize all of our stuff and then showing up with bailiffs. This is this is happening for real and we all need to be prepared for it. I'll say as a as a lawyer talking about policies and talking about the records retention policy, certainly organizations should also look at what security policies they have. And as we've heard it just it should be a very comprehensive security policy covering not only physical security, building security, but also, you know, obviously it security as well. So, you know, hopefully people have resources on that if you need some direction reach out to one of us and, you know, we can we can talk and try to, you know, refer people to, you know, some good some good sources there for security policies. Terrific. I want to just bring in a couple quick follow ups. And then we'll move into some other aspects of this. Dr. Dorsey is asking if there's a difference between nonprofit asset protection is distinct from LLC incorporated asset protection any thoughts on that and also if you can talk about whether people have to talk to private investigators if people on your staff or past staff volunteers do they have to you can talk to those two things. Well, I could start well with with the first thing I guess I'd be a little bit reluctant to get into that because it's a little bit it's some legal advice and I wouldn't say I'm necessarily qualified to do this on this on this webinar certainly so and I guess if the doctor would want to maybe follow up we can talk a little bit more and I can get a better understanding and maybe refer him or her to somebody could do that that way. In terms of the second part talking to private investigators. No, staff they do they're not required to talk to private investigators at all and certainly when we went through that that round we've made people aware of that if they're approached they they do not have a duty to do that they're it's not certainly not law enforcement. And so really people should not and and also to make sure that you know we have some reports of people even going with private investigators somewhere getting in vehicles to talk to them we certainly would caution. So you do not do not do that you know and you know we had we don't put your your safety at risk not that you know we heard about any physical safety you know that was at risk that people just in general should not do that at all not not not engage would encourage people though to kind of you know if you can take a picture of who is approaching you. You know again if you can do it in a safe manner. Then it's always good it could be good at least to circle back to figure out who is who is doing this and a picture of their business card and car license plate not just a picture of them but right. The license plate and if you get right and if they give you the or sometimes that they you know if they give you a car go ahead and take it you know for sure. Or if they just show it take a picture as much as you can or you know if you don't have a camera at least remember as many details as you can because it might help in following up to figure out who's who's behind it. You know I would say from our experience and I think I forget what the count is at this point but we've had. You know upwards of 20 people from our staff and green pieces staff get visited by private investigators and we're talking about six or seven states and several provinces in Canada. And at least what we took from this is asked for ID and break out your phone and they're going to run fast. We actually had a case in North Carolina where a former employees wife was an activist also was home and it's super creepy these two guys show up on her front porch. And she had the and with her kids home and she had the wherewithal to whip out her iPhone and they just started running down the street to their car and she got pictures of them and their their car. But if you ask these people and I would think this would be pretty far fetched but given how often it's happening. The chance of somebody out there on the webcast might be approached by a P.I. Ask them for their ID and pull out your phone and they're going to run. Terrific. Terrific. All right I am going to bring up a couple of questions from Peter. And while you answer them I'm going to bring one person on so we can see in here and that's Paul from Amazon Watch who's also been dealing with these kind of suits for quite a while. So bear with me while I do that but let me give you the questions from Peter to address while I bring up Paul. So Peter is asking does this suit fit the definition of frivolous litigation for which costs can be assessed and also assuming the lawsuit is frivolous. Could a complaint be filed with the state bar in which state the slap lawyers are licensed seeking discipline for the unethical abuse of law etc. So Tom's the real lawyer but I'm going to give a quick answer. We are actually looking into whether this could fit into malicious prosecution or frivolous lawsuit. First of all just for context it's really hard to have your case get dismissed on a 12 B6 motion to dismiss. It means you have a terrible case and we just have that happen right so we've won their case was so bad it was dismissed. The next inquiry is really as to whether it's so bad we can get them on malicious prosecution which is a which is a much higher or lower bar depending on how you look at it. But we are actively pursuing that line of thought and we're hoping that we can we can go after them on that Tom. Yeah I would just add also in the in the San Francisco that hearing we also got attorney's fees awarded for the state claims and that was that was held those were held to be a slap it fell under the state anti slap statute. And it so that I think that's also says a lot about what this this case is about and like Todd said. I think that's a very good question about whether it rises frivolous lawsuit and let's say that we're still considering all our options there. And certainly I'll add that the more the more of these that are filed I would argue that you know at each step it becomes even more clear of the frivolous nature after you know corporations and attorneys have seen the results and have judges actually throw them out of court. Okay great. Welcome Paul. Hi, thank you to give you the chance to to jump in a little bit with your experience. Thanks. Yeah I really appreciate you guys letting me jump in. Obviously this is from my view so it's so incredibly important and you know as you probably know several years ago Chevron launched the same type of Rico attack. Greenpeace and other groups came to our defense and we actually filed briefs before the court talking about how they were specifically suppressing First Amendment rights. In Chevron's case which is a company that's been on the hook for billions of dollars. No expense was too much. They hired Gibson Dunn and Crutcher and they've developed an entire arm of their firm just to do this. And the problem there is that they cast about for a long time in many courts till they found a judge they knew was going to rule for them. So they went in knowing they were going to win. They launched the same outrageous kinds of lies which have been disproven by the evidence of bribery and forgery and all the things that they've done. But they won their case. Now they they were defeated when they came after Amazon Watch because fortunately we're in California so we went to the federal judge cousins in San Francisco and he threw out all their subpoenas. However they did bog us down for months to respond to that and thankfully Earth rights defended us and we beat them. But because of the ruling in their favor by Judge Kaplan in New York and it being upheld on appeal and then dismissed or not reviewed by the Supreme Court. They've actually solidified a RICO victory which has allowed them to go after our funders, attack our reputation, threaten people from having anything to do with this case which is in my mind one of the most open and shut environmental crimes in history. And they're continuing to get away with it. And so what my question to the panel would be is you know when we were working with Sierra Club when this first came up we got hundreds of thousands of emails sent to several progressive senators to say this needs to be on your radar as an abuse of what the RICO statute was created for. And I would love to be a part of an effort to go after getting that changed. I mean now that the Supreme Court has in a sense decided by not looking at the case. My perspective and I'm not a lawyer is that now it goes back to the Senate saying this law is being perverted. It's not used in the way it was meant to be used and it's used to go after and suppress the First Amendment rights of groups etc. So can we get together on combating the go to the very heart of the issue that's allowing them to draw in Chevron's case. So many people saying we were all non-party co-conspirators, individuals, shareholders, journalists, bloggers and activists, anybody who you know if the case is well funded enough they could never they could go on in perpetuity and scare so many people away from doing this work that it would effectively shut down the campaigns. So I'm really curious about that and would love to know what people think about it. I'd love to talk more Paul offline soon and often. We're looking at a lot of these things we can push back you know talk about slaps and really you know the slap can be take many forms but it really is these these baseless lawsuits just to drag parties through the litigation process. You know RICO is being used here which is sort of a sort of a special form of slap which the Castwoods firm is kind of designed and is marketing. So it's kind of a subcategory but on all this I think we do need to talk groups need to talk activists need to talk to figure out ways we really can push back because you're right. If these corporations are allowed to simply file the lawsuits even if they win in the end and you know who knows I mean even if they lose in the end and sometimes you know who knows what's going to happen but you know they've already been they already win with that with that tactic right. So I think there's a lot of ways we have to fight back like I mentioned we should talk more if it's through better legislation. Just publicity campaigns other other other other things that we should do together I think we need to talk and plan that out. I should also add that they've the next stage of this is they are personally trying to bankrupt the US lawyer who was involved in the RICO case Stephen Donziger it's not it's not even just they dropped their monetary damages to avoid it a jury. And then after they got their verdict now they're coming back and suing him for 30 million dollars for legal fees and you know whatever make people may think about his style personally. He didn't actually commit any crime and he was doing his job as a lawyer and now his life could be completely destroyed specifically by Chevron because of that as their stated campaign as you was mentioned before this was a campaign. They internal documents show that was our strategy. Let's demonize this guy destroy and make sure no other lawyers want to take this kind of case again because the consequences are too great. Right. Yes. I want to add one other thing Paul on this point you know a lot of states don't even have like you said in California they have a very strong anti slap snatch one on that on state claims. A lot of states don't have those also you know there's the movement to get better federal legislation anti slap so that's another way that you know maybe work together just have more robust anti slap legislation at the state level and also the federal level. You know I just want to offer Rico another. Also I just want a quick response as well in that I think that with resolute the outcome we have right now is the counter example to Chevron where the company paid a huge price is going to continue to pay a huge price we may be able to go after a malicious prosecution. Now ETP is going to follow a totally failed strategy right we're hoping Greenpeace and bank tracking everybody is victorious on that one but I think that's part of what we need to do is a movement is beating these guys and providing the counter example to Chevron as well as getting to the root of the issue which is going to need a different Congress but but maybe one is coming. If Trump continues to dive in the polls but I also think the counter narrative that we're developing that this is a terrible strategy that hurts your brand that hurts you financially needs to get out there more and that's going to do a lot to slow down and stop these kind of attacks. I want to just add that there's two different counter narratives that that is one that a slap suit is a loser strategy. But the other counter narrative is about activism and the opponents are pushing a counter narrative like we saw in this letter that went to sessions last week signed by 84 Congress members saying that activism against pipelines is domestic terrorism. We have to promote a counter narrative that activism is really what made America great and if you look throughout history. Every time we had major social progress on anything it's because there were activists pushing it so in all of the comms and communication and public speaking and interviews that we do if we can just keep putting forward that that narrative. I hope that we come out of this not just victorious in the court of law but really safeguarding societal respect for First Amendment constitutionally protected activism. Terrific. Okay I'm going to try to have us do one more question and then give a little moment for any last comments from panelists. Paul, thank you for bringing all that in much appreciated. So I have a question from Harry, which I think is really interesting, which is in in the suit, the ETP suit, I think this is the ETP suit. There are organizations, other organizations besides Greenpeace that are mentioned, but not named as defendants. And also there are 20 John Doe defendants have any new defendants been added since lawsuit since the lawsuit was filed. And I'm adding this how what what can it mean when there are John Doe's named named like that what what could that mean. I guess I can start with that the not not to our knowledge there have there have not been any new defendants that have been added in the ETP lawsuit and then with regard to the john and Jane Doe's and what can that mean. Well, you know, it can, I think it's just part of the intimidation tactic to, you know, the way this is set up and basically the corporation saying alleging that there's this, this vast criminal enterprise. And some of those members, those alleged members are named and others aren't there's a placeholder there in the complaint for those that they may name later. And so it just kind of goes to that idea of these cases and the chilling effect that the corporations are trying to send the others that are out there. You know, basically doing the same thing that the those that have been named as defendants or, or as part of the criminal enterprise have been doing and just speaking out and in, in this case, to support an indigenous led movement to protect their, their, their lands, their, their rights, their water. The intimidation tactic, in my view. Intimidation and division tactic is that I think they're trying to divide us. You know, some of us were named as defendants, some were just mentioned as members of the criminal enterprise. That that could be a really effective way to divide us because the ones who were just mentioned but not named could say, Yikes, I'm not going to do any more of this work because I don't want to get named, or it could look like, well there's a lot of things that could look like that are not helpful. The point is we have to not allow these attempts to divide us to succeed because we're really only going to get through this kind of attack if we stay united. Okay, great. I am going to pull up. In case people aren't seeing it in the chat. I'm going to pull up the address for this survey. We're really looking forward to staying connected to you all for the long term. There are a lot of ways obviously for us to fight this fight, so I'm going to bring up that survey. And I am going to invite our panelists to make any actually one moment before I ask for last thoughts. I'm going to bring in our, I'm going to bring in Howie for a moment who's been monitoring everything on Facebook, and is going to shut down that broadcast in a moment. Let me see if I can bring Howie in. There's Howie. Hey Howie. Hi folks, can you see me. Yes. Great. So we've had a bunch of people coming on on Facebook. Thank you very much for those who are coming in on Facebook. Just if you want to get more involved, no more about our webcasts. The link is now pinned on the top of the comment section on Facebook. So we're just going to end the Facebook broadcast now. And if you want to be a part of our next broadcast or any of one of these broadcasts, please go to the webcast webcast link that's pinned down there stand on earth slash webcast and then signed in so that you'll be able to hear the full webcast from here on in from the beginning to end. So thanks again everybody and we really appreciate your work and your involvement here. So and if you could, if you could give me the power, the power to stop the Facebook live. Okay, I'm going to do that right now. Howie, thank you so much and thanks for all the Facebook live folks for joining today. Thank you everybody for joining us on Facebook live. Here we go Howie. And while Howie and I do that little tech toggle in the background. I want to invite our panelists to share last thoughts to take us out. I'm just going to the same order that we started. I want to thank everybody again it was very interesting to see the questions that were coming up. These are the exact questions we're discussing all day every day that we're really grappling with. There's an emerging coalition of groups are interested in this developing. Please sign up on that survey fill it out and we will be in touch keep you informed. I often think about that famous quote about first they came for the trade unionists and I was silent because I wasn't a trade unionist and basically goes through every category and then it says, then they came for me and there was only one left. We cannot let that happen here is that first they're coming for stand in Greenpeace or they went to Amazon watch even earlier, but we've got to stand together because if they can knock us out one at a time. Then it's just a real threat to all of the work that we're doing which is just needed now more than ever as I laid out in my introductory comments so thanks for being part of this resistance with us. Sure. And yeah, this fight is really just beginning in a lot of ways and we have a great example of what a win looks like and we need to keep making that happen. So let's stick together. We were lucky in that we were sued with the great group Greenpeace and spend it's been both horrific and fun working with with their team to fend this off. We've been able to do so so far and I wanted to just say thanks to Greenpeace but also thanks to all of you out there being sued for 300 million is not as much fun as it sounds. And it was a you know at times a pretty scary thing even though we were able to really keep focused expand our work expand our impact, but it's it's uncomfortable and for some of you out there maybe even still on this recording. Both our supporters are volunteers, activist allies that kept us going for the last 18 months when we were hitting low points. Thank you so much. And we will be there for you. If this comes around into into your work when this comes around. And I would I would just say that, you know, good to have to to win the hearing, obviously in in San Francisco in the US case. But again, the lawsuit continues in Canada by resolute against the Canadian office and individuals, and it's the same type of of speech and they're going to win that lawsuit as well. But again, it was filed in 2013. And as I said, we're going to win the energy transfer lawsuit, but we'll still have to go through the litigation process, but we need to win outside of the courtroom to that's what everyone really should also keep in mind. And, you know, we can't do this alone as Annie said we're really all in this together we need to all our supporters to really to really fight back in a variety of ways, and we really have to send the message together back to these corporations that this tactic is is counterproductive. There's a waste of, of the company's assets, and it's, you know, we are not backing down it's only embolden us. So together we have to send that very strong message back to the corporations, and we need to be able to, to protect the democratic space that is is seems to be shrinking more and more every day in a variety of ways. Terrific. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Annie, Tom and Todd. Thank your teams behind the scenes who helped everybody be here today, including Howie and others on our team. And for everybody joining today. Thank you so much. We will have the recording link to you. The link will probably come in a impersonal email from the webcast system but it'll take you to the recording and please fill out the survey if you want to be part of this fight for the long term. And thanks again everybody for a great event today. Thanks folks. Thank you. Thanks, Ann. Thank you.