Gettin' Greenpeaced

Noted Portland advertising agency Weiden + Kennedy is getting a lot of attention for creating and distributing a handout for canvassers.

The card-sized handout, which targets activists soliciting everything from donations to signatures, reads:

I know you’re just doing your job,

but the methods you’ve been asked to use are manipulative and make me less trustful of friendliness in general

and that, not indifference towards your cause,
is why I’m not going to talk to you.

Though all Portlanders seem to agree that getting ‘Greenpeaced’ is annoying and unnecessarily intrusive, many are finding the handout rude and belittling.Personally, I think it’s harsh to hand out a card instead of dignifying someone with a polite verbal response. That being said, I don’t think the words on the card are all that mean or derisive.

The handout makes clear that it’s nothing personal, nothing against the canvasser or his cause. It just says that one doesn’t agree with how the canvasser chooses to conduct his business.

I’m reminded of peaceful protesters: those grannies against the war who sit quietly with their signs and hand out fliers; those kids in the 1960s who quietly put flowers in the barrels of soldiers’ guns; those other folks in the 1960s who simply marched and handed out fliers for civil rights. All those people acted the way they did because they didn’t like how the government was conducting its business. Why can’t someone quietly disagree with how Greenpeace conducts its business?

Any reasonably intelligent person, which all these canvassers are, should be able to understand that and the words on the card, and should not take offense. After all, they’ve got to have pretty tough hides to stand on a corner while bustling people try to avoid them and ignore their advances.