We are delighted to announce the 2021 recipients of the Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter’s 11th annual awards. The awards will be presented at a ceremony streamed live online on Thursday, September 23rd, 2021. Tickets and sponsorships for the online event support the work of the SF Bay Chapter. More information about sponsorship benefits and links to purchase tickets and sponsorships can be found on our 2021 Awards Ceremony webpage.
2021 Honorees:
Richmond City Council Member Eduardo Martinez will receive the inaugural Community Defender Award, which recognizes outstanding work in the area of environmental justice, for his defense of Richmond communities and the environment from corporate pollutors including the coal and oil industries, and his campaigns to ensure safe and equitable access to the land, air, and water that belongs to all of us.
Sunrise Bay Area will accept the Rising Voices Youth Award for their work to inspire and engage local youth to combat the climate crisis and create an equitable green economy.
Berkeley City Council Member Kate Harrison will be honored with the Trailblazer Award for her work to advance groundbreaking environmental legislation including the nation’s first building electrification ordinance to phase out polluting gas infrastructure.
Wildlife biologist and environmental activist Bruce Hamilton will receive the Ed Bennett Lifetime Achievement Award following a 44-year career as “Chief Agitator” in the Sierra Club, working tirelessly to protect and promote the natural world, wildlife, wild places, Indigenous rights and climate justice.
More information about the 2021 honorees:
Eduardo Martinez: 2021 Recipient of the Inaugural Community Defender Award
The Community Defender Award recognizes outstanding work in the area of environmental justice.
In 2014, grounded in an educational, environmental platform, Eduardo Martinez victoriously ran for Richmond City Council alongside Gayle McLaughlin and Jovanka Beckles against a three-million-dollar Chevron-led campaign designed to seat pro-industry, anti-environment candidates. Since winning his seat on the Council, Martinez has been a tireless advocate for protecting the environment and fighting for environmental justice, pressing to hold Chevron accountable for its pollution and health hazards for the community; championing the Richmond coal ordinance; developing Just Transitions plans for Richmond; working to clean up the toxic AstraZeneca site; and working to protect Point Molate as a public park. He continues to defend the land, air, and water that belong to all of us and plan for a just transition reasoned and measured to minimize disruption to the lives we live.
Councilmember Martinez was born in Dumas, Texas in 1949 and moved to the Bay Area in the 1970s, receiving a B.A. in Liberal Arts and a Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential from San Francisco State University. From 1989 to 2010, Eduardo worked as a teacher, mainly in West Contra Costa Unified School District.
Kate Harrison: 2021 Recipient of the Trailblazer Award
The Trailblazer Award is dedicated to thought leaders tackling environmental challenges.
Councilmember Kate Harrison was elected to the Berkeley City Council in March 2017 after a decades-long career in the public sector focused on protecting the most vulnerable. In office, she has been a champion for the climate, most recently authoring legislation phasing out natural gas in new buildings, establishing a climate equity fund to assist low-income residents with transitioning to a zero-carbon future, and establishing building electrification incentives for retrofitting existing gas buildings. Her 2019 building electrification ordinance was the first in the nation, paving the way for similar actions by dozens of California cities. She is also involved with local politics outside of the Council as a founding member of the Berkeley Progressive Alliance and the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club.
Sunrise Bay Area: 2021 Recipient of the Rising Voices Youth Award
The Rising Voices Youth Award recognizes young people advocating for the environmental needs of their communities, as well as individuals or organizations that lift up youth voices calling for stronger, healthier, and cleaner communities.
Sunrise Bay Area is a youth movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. They're building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people. They work to pass Green New Deal legislation at the local, state, and federal level that addresses climate change while ensuring that communities on the front lines of this crisis, including fossil fuel workers, are not left behind.
Bruce Hamilton: 2021 Recipient of the Ed Bennett Lifetime Achievement Award
The Ed Bennett Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a committed individual who has devoted their entire career to our shared mission and whose work makes a lasting impact on our lives.
Bruce Hamilton joined the Sierra Club in 1970 as an undergraduate studying wildlife biology at Colorado State University. After graduation, he moved to Wyoming and became active in the Sierra Club's newly organized Wyoming Chapter, serving on the National Public Lands Committee while also working as a Field Editor for High Country News. In 1977, he joined the Sierra Club national staff as the Northern Plains Regional Representative covering Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and Nebraska. He worked with regional volunteers on wilderness, wild rivers, strip mine regulation, stopping synthetic fuels development, clean air, and the Sierra Club's mega campaign of passage of the Alaska Lands Act in 1980, which doubled the size of the National Park System and National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
In 1983, Bruce was selected to be the first National Field Director and moved to the Bay Area to work in the Bush Street headquarters. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, Bruce helped build up the national field office network to expand coverage to every state and provide coordination between offices on national campaigns. He helped coordinate campaigns for removing James Watt as Interior Secretary, combating the Sagebrush Rebellion, passing RARE II statewide wilderness bills, strengthening the Clean Air Act, passing Superfund, and launching the Environmental Justice Organizing Program.
As a next step, Bruce became the Associate Executive Director for Conservation and Communications and helped expand the Sierra Club's grassroots organizing capacity, political program, communications department, human rights and justice programs, and critical ecoregion protection program. Bruce was then appointed Deputy Executive Director where he helped design and build up the policy and framework for the Sierra Club to address the impact of the climate crisis on lands and wildlife and promote environmentally beneficial carbon dioxide removal solutions. His final years on the staff were as Director of National Conservation Policy and Internal Governance, helping volunteers to craft, interpret, and implement policies and reform and carry out Board elections and other governance matters.
He retired from the staff on May 1st, 2021, and is now volunteering on national campaigns, archiving his papers, and preparing to conduct an oral history. He lives in Berkeley (Ohlone occupied territory) with his wife, Joan Hamilton, who was the editor of Sierra Magazine. Bruce has teamed up with Joan to help her produce articles, blogs, and guides to regional wild places, with an emphasis on the Diablo Range and post fire ecology and recovery.
In the Bay Area, Bruce has worked with the SF Bay Chapter Federal Lands Committee to develop, communicate, and implement positions on the management of Point Reyes National Seashore, Muir Woods, and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. He worked with the SF Bay Chapter, Loma Prieta Chapter, Redwood Chapter, and Sierra Club California to secure a multi-million dollar bequest to restore, protect and defend the Greater San Francisco Bay Ecosystem.