June 3 - 6, 2024
retail
Patagonia Tackles Trump: 'The President Stole Your Land'
- by Sarah Mahoney @mahoney_sarah, December 4, 2017
The outdoor industry is coming out swinging after President Donald Trump announced dramatic reductions in two national monuments in Utah, including a potential lawsuit from industry leader Patagonia.
With ads–and its entire homepage–screaming “The President Stole Your Land,” Patagonia says Trump’s move is illegal and promises legal action. Outdoor retailer REI also reacted swiftly, asking its followers to change their social-media profile pictures to a “We (Hear) Our Public Lands” photo.
President Trump’s announcement new came amid a tense morning, with the Salt Lake City Tribune reporting hundreds of protesters, including many from Native groups, facing off against police in riot gear. Many knelt in the streets and blocked traffic, before backing off to boo Trump as he departed, chanting, “Whose land? Our land!” (Protest signs included “Trump: A monumental mistake,” #What would Teddy do?” and “Keep your tiny hands off our public lands.”)
advertisement
advertisement
“The Administration’s unlawful actions betray our shared responsibility to protect iconic places for future generations and represent the largest elimination of protected land in American history,” says Patagonia’s president and CEO Rose Marcario, in a statement. “We’ve fought to protect these places since we were founded and now we’ll continue that fight in the courts.”
The Outdoor Industry Association, which had encouraged members to come to Salt Lake City and protest, characterized President Trump’s order as “part of a long pattern of attacks on public lands.” It says the announcement is “detrimental to the $887 billion outdoor recreation economy and the 7.6 million American jobs it supports,” adding that it will hurt hundreds of local Utah communities and businesses, and “stifle millions of dollars in annual economic activity and threatens thousands of jobs in the region.”
“This is a blow for anyone who loves the outdoors,” REI says on its Facebook page. “We are not alone in this view. Since April, 2.8 million Americans have spoken directly to the Department of the Interior to advocate for protecting our national monuments. These voices have fallen on deaf ears.REI will not retreat from our strong belief that there is common ground in the outdoors.” (This summer, REI made a video addressed to Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, and urging people to contact the department to urge protection of the new monuments.)
The decision to shrink the monuments is seen as a positive among energy industry advocates, and for conservative politicians who view former President Barack Obama’s national monument designation as federal overreach. On Twitter, Sen. Orrin Hatch says Trump’s move “gives Utahns a voice in the protection of Utah lands,” calling it “a balanced solution and a win for everyone on all sides of this issue.”
This was no more illegal than it was for Obama to take the lands and restrict them in the first place without going through Congress.
Nor was it really the Fed's lands to take or give anyway having stolen the lands in the 1800s from the UT territories and Mormon land owners. That was an legal seizure too, one based on religious bigotry and sponsored by US Goverment fears and desire to take and keep power in the territories. That land belongs to the states and its residents. The only right thing to do is return it to the states and let the people who live there decide what to do with it.
Obama's land grab was pandering to his environmental base, it did nothing to protect the lands as they were already protected. It just relabeled it to ensure its usage was restricted to federal interests over local ones. It was not done through Congress but through executive order. Which every President has the right to undo at their discretion.