Sierra Club's Ed Berry is Very Busy Making Political Endorsements

• Name: Ed Berry
• Location: Yonkers, New York
• Contribution: Co-chair of the Atlantic Chapter Political Committee

How did you first get involved with the Sierra Club? I was a classroom teacher, mostly high school, for 41 years. I retired in 2009. I'm also a fisherman; I've enjoyed sailing all my life. I joined the Sierra Club about 15 years ago, but I joined like most people—you pay the dues and you read the magazine. Then I started hearing about fracking. They were talking about taking water out of streams, out of lakes, and I thought, "What's that all about? You take millions of gallons of water and you aren't paying any money for it?" That seemed wrong. So after retiring, I started to get more involved.

How did you end up as political co-chair of the Atlantic Chapter? One cold, cold January day, I drove to Albany, New York, for a demonstration against fracking. My family said, "Ed, what are you doing? You don't even know anybody up there." I said, "What the hell am I going to do—sit home and just let them get away with this stuff?" I met Roger Downs, the Atlantic Chapter's conservation director, and the next thing I know I'm back in Yonkers sitting in meetings at people's houses. Eventually, I stepped in temporarily as political co-chair. That was seven years ago.

What does being political co-chair entail? I keep in contact with county officials, state assembly representatives, and state senators, and I try to cultivate relationships with them—Democrats and Republicans. I always believe in keeping the lines of communication open. My co-chair and I also work on political endorsements. We were, as the kids would say, "mad crazy" this past fall doing endorsements, but that was a good thing because we had so many people running who had never run before. The Trump election electrified people here. We got a big bump in membership. And they weren't people who just read the magazine like I did 15 years ago. They wanted to do something. 

What else do you do besides political endorsements? I work a lot with labor groups. I taught at a trade-and-technical high school, and I was on the union committee. A lot of my youngsters went into trade work—heating, air conditioning, carpentry. The electricians, the communications workers, certainly the teachers—we're often on the same page. We're all in the same leaky rowboat. We have to work together. If we don't, the boat is going to sink real soon.

This article appeared in the March/April 2018 edition with the headline "The Cultivator."