Letter from Sacramento: Evolving to Meet this Time

A friend who worked for a local chapter of the Sierra Club about 35 years ago tells a story that illustrates one of the challenges of change.

As the story goes, a dedicated volunteer served as the phone receptionist in the chapter office. One day, my friend, who worked on conservation issues that involved local organizing and advocacy, heard the volunteer say loudly into the phone: “Conservation? We don’t do conservation....We are a hiking club!”

This is so Sierra Club in that there are so many different interpretations of what we are, even among our members.

Since Sierra Club’s founding in 1892, there have been members who join for the hikes and backpacking trips, and members who join to make a difference for the environment. And there have been members who want to do both.

What has changed over time is that making a difference for the environment has expanded as the world has changed.

In its earliest days, the Club’s founders were all about getting people into the Sierra Nevada to build a constituency for protecting that magnificent range of light. Later, Club members moved into actively lobbying to protect important natural areas all over the country.

In the last three decades Sierra Club volunteers and staff have broadly expanded the sorts of environmental issues that we’ve focused on, especially in California.

Here we still work to preserve forests, deserts and coastal areas--the wildlands that provide the wildlife habitat so necessary to retain biodiversity. But we’ve increasingly added in work about toxics, air pollution, water pollution and climate change. We advocate for electric vehicles and renewable energy alongside our push for healthy soils and sustainable stream flows.

In the last five years--and especially since the inauguration of the most intentionally divisive president in U.S. history--Sierra Club’s advocacy has stretched more than any other time in our organization’s history. In California and across the country, we have incorporated into our agenda support for policies that recognize the systemic inequities that prevent people from fully participating in civic engagement.

We have supported policies that protect Dreamers, provide sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, ensure health access, and protect workers from toxics exposure and other unhealthy and unjust work conditions. We have supported raising the minimum wage and lowering the number of big corporations that escape paying their fair share in taxes.

In the last few weeks, we have supported eight bills identified by the California Legislative Black Caucus as needed to help end systemic racism in California. One of those, Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5, flew through the legislature and will allow voters in November to roll back restrictions on affirmative action put in place in 1996.

Our staff and our volunteer legislative committee that directs our bill selection did not hesitate when this bill package was recommended to them for a support position.

But I do occasionally get emails from members who feel we’ve strayed too far from our original purpose: protecting the wildlands. I also have received an email from a member or two who is just fed up with our activities to help dismantle systemic inequities.

So why have we expanded the types of policies that demand our environmental organization’s support?

We don’t just explore, enjoy and protect the outdoors. We live in the world.

Lately, many of our Club leaders, like a lot of people in America, have been reawakened to the level of cruelty and bigotry targeted at Black Americans. It’s forced us to look inside ourselves and to change what we do to address the moment.

Again, we haven’t given up on protecting the outdoors. But if the world is set up so that Black people are prevented from birdwatching, or murdered by a policeman over a $20 bill, there’s something deeply wrong with that world.

As a large grassroots organization with the power to alert and influence, we have a responsibility to expand our policy portfolio.

We have a responsibility to change again, to evolve.

We are more than just a hiking club.

Sincerely,