Alfred Brownell is an environmental and human rights lawyer and executive director of Green Advocates (GA), a Liberian NGO that he founded in order to represent communities seeking to protect their environmental and human rights. Brownell also established a network to connect community-based organizations throughout Liberia—the Alliance for Rural Democracy (ARD)—to collaborate on environmental justice work. In 2010, Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL), a Southeast Asia-based agro-industrial company, signed a deal with the Liberian government for a 65-year lease of 543,600 acres of forestland to develop palm oil operations. To establish palm oil plantations, GVL cleared community forests and sacred sites without notice or adequate compensation. In the process, allegedly GVL destroyed farmlands and polluted local water sources, endangering the communities’ freshwater supply and harming their culture and livelihood. When residents spoke out against this, Liberian authorities harassed, threatened, and arbitrarily detained residents without charge. Brownell and his family were forced to flee Liberia and take temporary refuge in the United States. Threatened with his life and disparaged by the Sirleaf Johnson administration as an anti-development agitator and economic saboteur, he has been attacked at home because of his work, especially against GVL.