A pro-life hero and friend Chris Danze alerted me this morning he and his wife will travel to Colorado in 10 days to help "get a construction boycott off the ground" at the site of Planned Parenthood's 50,000 sq. ft. planned mega-mill in Denver.
Little did Chris know in 2003 that his effort to block the construction of a Planned Parenthood mill in his home town of Austin, TX, would have such a long-lasting nationwide impact.
It was Chris's boycott that PP has acknowledged caused it to go stealth with plans for future mills, including Aurora, Denver, and Portland, OR.
You may not know what Chris accomplished. Here's a little history....
CNN, November 14, 2003:
Weeks into the project, the contractor hired to build an abortion clinic hit a brick wall: Plumbers and carpenters would not work for him. Drywall installers and heating subcontractors would not do business with him. Cement suppliers for miles around would not touch the job.He had been hit with a boycott organized by abortion foe and construction-industry executive Chris Danze.
The builder finally quit the job this month, stopping the clinic project in its tracks, in what national Planned Parenthood officials said was the first such boycott they have ever seen.
Danze, a 48-year-old who has protested outside clinics, compares the building of an abortion clinic to construction of a concentration camp during the Holocaust....
The decision by Browning Construction Co., one of the state's largest contractors, to pull out of the project stunned Planned Parenthood, which denounced the boycott and said it will press on with construction to discourage similar tactics elsewhere....
Danze, an owner of Maldonado & Danze Inc., a concrete-foundation contractor, oversaw a telephone and letter-writing campaign urging more than 750 Austin- and San Antonio-area businesses not to provide supplies or services for the project. He recruited contractors to join what he called the Texas Contractors and Suppliers for Life Association.
Soon, contractors were flooded with phone calls from the public warning them to stay away from the clinic project or face losing business....
Danze said hundreds of subcontractors agreed to boycott the project, though not all of them said whether they were anti-abortion. Some simply did not want to get involved in a controversial project, he said.
Newsweek, April 18, 2004:
On a Web site designed for the protest... Danze posted the phone numbers of each company involved in the clinic's construction [and photos, see right], many of them mom-and-pop businesses with a lot to lose.The calls started immediately, and became so overwhelming that one subcontractor reported receiving 1,200 phone calls in one week. Other companies received faxes of aborted fetuses.
After six weeks, the main contractor pulled out, halting the project. Construction resumed in January after Planned Parenthood took over as general contractor, fueled by what it says was an outpouring of monetary and moral support.
But Danze's disruptions had earned the organization's attention. "In the beginning, we did regard Chris Danze as some[one] that was simply nipping at our heels," says Danielle Tierney, spokeswoman for the group's Texas Capital Region. "There was no way we could have predicted his ability to convince our general contractor to withdraw from the project."...
Since then, her affiliate has become more organized, stepping up volunteer recruiting, talking to the media and calling on local and state political allies, including former Texas Governor Ann Richards, to reassure subcontractors that they wouldn't be put out of business for aligning with Planned Parenthood.
(Side note: Ann Richards, now deceased, was mother to Cecile Richards, PP Federation's current president.)
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