The following is a communiqué from the Plymouth Anarchist Collective who organise in and around Plymough, Massachusetts, USA. There are contact details at the end for those who might wish to contact with them.

Bill Nye The Science Guy is coming to Plymouth in October 2025 as the Keynote Speaker for the Plymouth Foundation’s annual Blue Future Conference. This conference, the organization behind it, and the hiring of Bill Nye as a speaker all exemplify the epitome of greenwashing. 

The Blue Future Conference is marketed as a “launchpad for ideas, innovation, and partnerships that are transforming the region’s marine economy.” While centering technocratic approaches to so-called “sustainability” and “innovation” in the marine sector, the conference hilariously also has a panel on climate resilience. Their website boasts that Bill “has a relevant and inspiring message for people to be good stewards of our planet and science-engaged in today’s world.”

The Plymouth Foundation hosting this conference is a quasi-governmental non-profit that is driving deforestation, private commercial development, and ecologically catastrophic sand and gravel mining in Pine Barren forests throughout Plymouth. Their actions are actively driving biodiversity loss and making our communities more vulnerable amidst escalating ecological crises.

A May 2025 report by the Community Land and Water Coalition provides substantial evidence that the relationship between the Plymouth Foundation and the Town of Plymouth functions to funnel public and Indigenous lands into private hands without public transparency. The distinction between the Town and the Foundation is ambiguous, as several town officials (ie Derek Brindisi, Town Manager & Lee Hartman, Director of Planning & Development) work as directors at the Foundation in what is clearly an unethical conflict of interest. The foundation has also received $2 million in taxpayer dollars as a part of its agreement with the town.

Since its inception in 2001, the Foundation and the town have collaborated to facilitate the destruction of several sensitive ecosystems, including on the ancestral reservation lands of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe in what were violations of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and brazen acts of settler-colonial violence. 

In one example, the Town sold a 33 acre parcel of publicly held conservation land in 2022 - which should have been under the jurisdiction of the tribe given its location within their reservation boundaries - to the Plymouth Foundation for a whopping $1. In February 2025,  the foundation sold the parcel to Standish Investment Group LLC and EJ Pontiff for $3.4 million. They clearcut the forest and proceeded to mine the land via sand & gravel mining. They shamelessly profiteer off of Ecocide and ongoing genocide of native americans. This is a microcosmic example of how settler colonial violence continues to replicate today, the fundamental role of capitalism in driving ecological degradation, and the role of the State in serving Capital accumulation over people + sustainability.

The Foundation currently has approx $2.3 million assets, which largely come from land sales to private developers and sand & gravel mining – a form of earth removal that requires clear cutting forests and aggressively mining the earth to the extent that restoration becomes impossible. Sand mining also poses a dire public health crisis due to the resulting pollution of our aquifer and production of carcinogenic silica dust that gets blown around town and inhaled.

The sand & gravel mining crisis is a part of a larger issue of escalating regional deforestation driven by private “development” &  sanctioned by municipialities that is dramatically altering our local landscapes, plummeting  biodiversity, and making our communities less resilient amidst climate collapse.