Dear Friends, Comrades, Brothers and Sisters,
These are the words Kumi frequently uses to communicate with the broad family of influential people he has worked with over the years and I hope you will allow me to address you in this way also. I am Ana Toni, Board Chair of Greenpeace International and my contacting you today on Kumi's behalf since he is currently unable to do so himself.
It is how he would have started this message if he was not in a Greenlandic jail for breaching a security zone and boarding a dangerous deep water drilling rig in the frigid arctic some 120 km off Greenland, to call for it to stop drilling.
Kumi lept into a high speed Greenpeace inflatable and crossed into the five hundred meter exclusion zone around the oil rig, he lept from the inflatable onto one of the rigs giant legs and climbed 30 meters to the platform, resisting efforts to stop him with high pressure water cannon loaded with freezing arctic water. Kumi delivered the signatures of 50,000 people who have called for an end to the drilling and for the publication of the operators secret oil spill response plan.
You don't have to imagine it, you can watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psoEt4rzHbs
The reality of Kumi's incarceration (he is likely to be released sometime next week) prompts us to take this liberty in asking you to join him in calling for a halt to dangerous deep water drilling in the Arctic. In his own words: "For me this is one of the defining environmental battles of our age, it’s a fight for sanity against the madness of a mindset that sees the melting of the Arctic sea ice as a good thing. As the ice retreats the oil companies want to send the rigs in and drill for the fossil fuels that got us into this mess in the first place. We have to stop them. It goes right to the heart of the kind of world we want and the one which we want to pass onto our children."
We would respectfully ask you to help us promote Kumi's action by sharing the link to the video on your personal social media feeds (Twitter, Facebook etc) and in any other way you deem appropriate, I know Kumi would greatly appreciate it.
Yours sincerely,
Ana Toni
Board Chair
Greenpeace International