Many Sierra Club volunteers and staff attended the 100 No Kings rallies across
Michigan on October 18. Some volunteers attended more than one event. Here is a report written by one of those volunteers. Sincerely, The SEMG Executive Committee

These rallies against an increasingly authoritarian government have grown from 3
million people at the first Hands Off event to 5 million at the first No Kings event to 7
million at October’s event. Our goal must be 20 million. That is how many people
participated in the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, a happening that led to the
formation of the Environmental Protection Agency and still critical legislation like the
Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and Superfund.

I was able to attend the No Kings rally in Detroit. There were 1000s of people there.
They care about an array of different issues – preserving our democracy, gun safety,
reproductive rights, access to healthcare, immigrant rights, racial discrimination, wars of
apartheid and genocide, sex and gender equality and, of course, the environment.
Perhaps most importantly, it is clear they care about each other. Despite their fear and
anger, it was a friendly, polite and earnest crowd. 

So why is the Sierra Club there? Many people join the Sierra Club because they like to “explore and enjoy” nature. Others join to protect charismatic species. They may find the overlay of these other issues uncomfortable or “too political”. They may even disagree with some of the arguments I heard in Detroit.

For me, the answer is simple. You can’t have a Healthy Environment without a Healthy Democracy. The current Federal administration is steadily weakening our democracy. In doing so, they are implementing policies that will forever empty our forests, cloud the air we breathe and sully the waters we cherish. For me the motivation is global warming. I have grandchildren. I know they will live to see the end of glaciers in continental 48, the migration of the sugar maple out of the lower peninsula and year after year of record-breaking storms.

I think Hop Hopkins, the Director of Organizational Transformation at the Sierra Club,
said it best, "You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have
sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can't have disposable
people without racism."

The psychology behind racism allows us to devalue the “others”. The same psychology allows us to devalue nature. When we separate ourselves from others or from nature, when we fail to understand our connections and interdependence, we diminish ourselves if only slower than we dimmish our neighbors or our environment. The current Federal administration is feeding this psychology. I think they do this because of power and money. I fear they do it because they have diminished themselves with their own device.

Please push back on this psychology. Please participate in the next No Kings rally or
the next Earth Day celebration. The Sierra Club has many ways for you to push back.
You can go on an outing and meet others who care deeply about nature. You can
engage our elected officials in protecting our democracy and our environment. You can
table at a public event and raise awareness about global warming.

One of my favorite ways is to participate in the Sierra Club’s monthly Action Hours. The next one is on November 20 at 7PM. You can learn more at sc.org/novactionhour. It’s about having conversations with family and friends about climate change. This will be valuable for Thanksgiving! Writing this blog was hard for me. It required that I really think about why these issues are important to me, so that I can speak up and speak out. Maybe this Action Hour meeting will help you do that?