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by Debbi Landshoff

For the deliberative session on Thursday afternoon, each delegate was assigned to one of 80 round tables. My table had eight people. We seemed a pretty representative bunch--people from chapters, groups, and national committees. We had a lot of experience in range of campaigns. I enjoyed everyone in the group!

Most of us had participated in priority-setting sessions at the local level or within national committees that had a specific charter. In his opening remarks, Carl Pope asked us to go beyond any decisions our groups made earlier; we should listen to and learn from each other develop a perspective on what conservation approaches the Club should take on a national level over the next five years.

For most of the next several hours, each table worked at a series of exercises. We discussed how the Sierra Club has made a difference in the past; what the year 2020 would be like if we achieve our conservation goals; what are the relative merits of each of eight conservation approaches; and the Sierra Club’s current effectiveness in each of these approaches. For the final task of the evening, we took two sets of votes. We voted on each possible combination of the eight proposed conservation approaches, selecting which should take priority for national Sierra Club, and we voted at how effective the Club was on all eight approaches.

Unfortunately, my table at least did not have a grasp of the reason we were having the discussions, so the conversation was not focused in a way that would help us prepare our votes. I voted the way I would have voted whether or not we spent 3-4 hours preparing for the vote. Perhaps, I would have done so in any case. I'll be better prepared at the Saturday deliberative session.

-- September 13, 2005