Criticism
In 2003, the organization was the subject of a Congressional investigation as to whether it should be allowed to keep its tax-exempt non-profit 501(c)(3) status. RAN was subpoenaed by the House Ways and Means Committee to hand over every document and piece of footage relating to all protests the organization participated in since 1993, in order to investigate whether they should be entitled to the tax-exempt status. The organization’s then-Executive Director Michael Brune labeled this investigation "the latest attempt to intimidate RAN's supporters, and a part of a larger and more disturbing effort by corporate interests to stifle dissent and control free speech."
The organization has come under fire from environmentalists opposed to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for its membership in that group, though RAN maintains that their engagement is necessary to push for stronger protection of forests and the rights of forest communities by the FSC.
In 2003, the group was criticized by the television show Penn & Teller: Bullshit! stating that the group is composed of activists possessing very little knowledge of the causes they champion.
Read more about this topic: Rainforest Action Network
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)