Riddle me this:
What do Tzeporah Berman, Stand.earth, Happy Planet Food/Juice Company, Rubbermaid, the Great Bear Rainforest, the National Observer, and Hollyhock (Cortes Island), all share in common?
Answer:
Renewal Partners — an organization founded by Joel Solomon & Carole Newell.
So first, who is Joel Solomon?
He is son of this Joel Solomon, a wealthy Tennessee shopping mall and real estate developer who headed the General Services Administration for the Carter administration in the 70’s.
Joel Solomon has been instrumental in developing the Hollyhock Institute, which has been “serving” (though I’d call it conditioning and brainwashing) staff and campaigners in the environmental movement’s ngo’s for decades:
Hollyhock Leadership Institute
In the early 2000s, Dana Bass Solomon became CEO. Soon after, like many others at Hollyhock, she found unexpected love. She married Board Chair, Joel Solomon, a social enterprise impact investor. Together they led the organization for two decades.
Read more from Joel himself, on changing the nature of business.
This is also Joel Solomon:
Joel Solomon is also very much a part of Tides Canada. Tides Canada, for those not in the know, is an active granting agency, doling out incentives and dollars (in that order) to “support” environmental organizations and campaigns. A Tides grant is typically a good indicator that the grant-winning org is continuing on with more funded diversions from reality. That is to say, if the grant is going to saving trees, old-growth clearcutting will continue. If it is to promote wild salmon habitat, salmon farms will flourish while wild stocks decline. If it is to combat runaway climate change, well…
That’s because when you mix a capitalist with a social venturist, it’s all about the money, always and forever.
There have even been times when all these mixed charms have generated some unwanted attention. A cleaver in the left vs. right dichotomy of identity politics, nonetheless Vivian Krause is to this day vilified by so-called lefty environmentalists, for her verified research and accurate reporting into this particular matter.
Joel Solomon’s sister, by the way, is Linda Solomon, the poor outlier who started the National Observer on her dining-room table.
With further $$ support from none other than Carole Newell, heiress to the Tupperware fortune.
But we do know anyone with a dining room table and a little chutzpah can start their own media platform, right?
Says her first job was waitress, then geologic field work, hmmm…
Oh! But she is indeed heiress to the Tupperware fortune.
Back in 2016, Newell Rubbermaid (NWL) had a market cap of $12.2 billion.
And look! Here she lays claim to financing (er, philanthropying?) the Great Bear Rainforest conservation effort. Which for many has become known as the Great Bear Loophole. Or as written up in BC Business, The Great Bear Market:
The eyes of the world are watching B.C.’s bold experiment to marry conservation with economic opportunity, ecology with jobs, hopefully blazing a path for others to follow…Lonely as this place seems, the world is watching what happens to culturally and ecologically rich places such as Roscoe Inlet. Beautiful treasures like this fjord have moved more than one wealthy philanthropist with an environmental conscience to dip into their bank account and cut a healthy cheque to help preserve it, help push resource development in a more sustainable direction… It is here that one of the world’s most innovative and hard-fought conservation efforts is unfolding. It could be a template for sustainable economic development and conservation that the rest of the world will look to for inspiration. Either that, or it will be a fantastic disappointment.
If wealthy philanthropists (Carole Newell, by chance?) are buying “treasures” in the GBR to save them from devastating expropriation, one wonders just what kind of deal they struck out there? But to move on…
So for some time, while Carole Newell was playing enviro philanthropist saving the Great Bear Rainforest, she was also having a hand on the rudder of Hollyhock programming. Her special interest continues to be (so far as I know) their leadership-social change institute.
She has also supported enviro stars like Tzeporah Berman with upstart enviro organization Forest Ethics, which would become Stand.earth, for instance. Along the way.
Friendly Neighbours on Cortes
It should be noted, that Joel and Carole and Tzeporah are tight neighbours on an exclusive strip of white-sand beach on Cortes Island. Joel bought the land and has been growing a friendly community of neighbours there since.
One prominent neighbour is Ian Watson (uranium and gold mining magnate, past chair and lifelong member of the Institute for Noetic Sciences.) He produced a three-hour documentary on forgiveness, too.
Who else lives along that prime stretch of beachfront real-estate? Why none other than past-Vancouver mayor (the one who resided over the great real-estate transformation of Vancouver) Gregor Robertson, with whom Joel Solomon developed a clearly inter-beneficial arrangement.
Joel Solomon supported his social venture Happy Planet Juice back in the day with angel “green venture” seed money. Then he helped to scheme and finance the Vancouver “progressive” voting block VISION to elect Robertson as mayor of Vancouver.
Things sometimes did get messy and make media, but $$ is slippery and can make bad things go away…
RENEWAL PARTNERS
Now, some time ago, Joel teamed up with Carole Newell, to form Renewal Partners, “Canada’s largest mission capital firm”.
There’s a whole lot more to this story, I’m just getting going.
But for now, the take-aways are this:
1. There exists a complex of super-wealthy financiers who are wielding “new-capitalism” ideals to distort and conceal what are otherwise portfolio investments, veiled as grants and social venture/enterprise funding.
Their self-stated mission is to influence and set agendas for environmental and social justice ngo’s.
2. This cohort of financiers are friends and literally neighbours, sharing a billionaire’s stretch of beach on Cortes Island. (Joel bought the original property and has since doled out parcels for welcome friends.)
3. These billionaire financiers have established Hollyhock on Cortes Island as a base of operations. Having ingratiated a large community of ngo staff & activists (from Canada and the U.S.) by lulling them with a rainforested island getaway complete with hot-tubs, special catering, and a blend of workshops and professional development offerings ranging from Tantra for Couples to
Leadership programs.
Don’t you wonder about their wine offerings? But I digress…
Finally, ask yourself, are these moneyed players who are pulling the strings and setting the agendas for our environmental conservation efforts really in it for the right reasons?
Or else — what are they up to, really?
-end-
Darren Alexander has worked in past with non-profit environmental organizations including Sierra Club BC and Forest Ethics. He currently admin’s Juan de Fuca Forest Watch and other campaign initiatives, seeking to circumvent the limitations of ngo’s by way of sharing the information and resources required to grow grassroots and autonomous citizen movements.
He is super-stoked to be one of the founding fires behind the Fairy Creek Blockades.
