The Grassroots organization Voters for wind did not begin by accident or divine intervention, but was the result of a well-organized, phony grassroots effort.
In 2007 British Petroleum hired Marion Trieste to do "outreach work" part of Marion Trieste's work involved helping to launch the "grassroots" organization Voters For Wind (VFW). Designed to quell community opposition to their project.
Marion Trieste community organizer and wind facilitator continues to market her strategy to developers.
On her website Trieste explains in her words. ~
The cost of failure due to public opposition is why organizing local community supporters is so important. Developers with the foresight to make public outreach a top priority find it well worth the investment. Trieste Associates is uniquely positioned to help companies prepare project developers to build their support base and protect the proposed development from costly delays due to public opposition.
Trieste Associates believes in taking a grassroots, public education approach to this unfortunate public controversy that has delayed or prevented many proposed wind developments. We believe individuals, when armed with the facts about wind power technology, and site-specific benefits, will understand its value and withdraw their opposition. Our outreach campaigns are designed to inform local decision-makers, identify project champions, and tap into the silent majority of community supporters. Our work is cost-effective, personal, and non-confrontational.
Now Trieste is offering a manual and training services designed as a how to guide for developers.
Orchestrated grass roots organizations have the potential to alter an entire culture or community however, approached incorrectly; it will turn on those who seek to exploit it. Unfortunately for Trieste this is exactly what happened in Cape Vincent and Lyme.
Marion Trieste was hired by British Petroleum to make all the bad anti - windies go away. She formed Voters for Wind ~ a fake grassroots organization to give the illusion that the communities embraced BP’s industrial wind project. But the plan back fired exposing the deceptive methods used by British Petroleum to push their project on unsuspecting communities.
5 comments:
Every anti-pinwheel organization and everyone who is likely to get screwed by Big Wind and Big Andy should have a copy of Marion's Manual. Kind of like the CIA getting a hold on the Taliban's training manual. It's all about knowing your enemy and Trieste Associates are definitely the enemy.
During a talk at Jefferson County Community college, Marion Trieste said that, "wind development has brought the people of Cape Vincent together."
She also made the claim that industrial wind was the most efficient of all the energy producers. When called to task on that "fact", she did not back down.
Fortunately only sixteen people were sitting in the auditorium that day to suffer the distortions of Trieste.
Half of those were her enchanted green shirts from Lyme and the Cape.
It is amazing how low you can go after you have convinced yourself you are working to advance the "greater good." This conviction that the people don't really know what is good for them is the insidious element that gives the hardcore green movement the freedom they need to lie to us. They have to lie to us, they reason, because we are unwilling to go along as we should.
Can you imagine if the wind industry had been a little more cautious in where they jammed their pinwheels? We'd all be sitting here saying, pinwheels are good, clean and green. We'd see and hear about them in Kansas, Texas and the Dakotas, but we'd never hear all the negative crap we've come to understand when Big Wind tries to jam a pinwheel up our pie holes. We wouldn't give a crap about tax credits for the industry either. We'd be singing the same tune as Obama in Washington and the NYTimes in the Big Apple. We've got to save the planet so what if it costs a few cents more, we'd say. But we all know better now, now that Big Wind tried to jam 150 pinwheels up our pie holes. I wonder if Big Wind and Marion will ever sit down, have a beer or two and in a quiet moment think about where it all went wrong. What could we have done better, she might say. Is there a lesson in how we've approached the fair citizens of Cape Vincent? Oh, are there lessons, lots of lessons. However, this is just one of the lessons. Big Wind shudda kept their 500 ft pinwheels out of our pie holes. The hell with 1000 ft setbacks, or even 1500 ft setbacks. Suppose the industry only sited their pinwheel factories no closer than 1 mile from people. Yeah, go out of their way NOT to offend. If they did they may not have jammed as many as they have up our rural, Northeastern pie holes, but I gotta believe Big Wind's future would look a lot brighter now if they had been a tad more sensitive to people's concerns. By people I don't mean lease holders either. Here's the Cape's lesson in the form of a social formula: Greed + insensitivity = lost opportunity. Put that in your manual Marion.
What kind of person develops a plan to screw over a community?
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